"Quando in alto i cieli ...": La spiritualita mesopotamica a confronto con quella biblica.

• Author: Gadotti, Alhena
• Position: Book review

"Quando in alto i cieli ... La spiritualita mesopotamica a confronto con quella biblica. By Giorgio Buccellati. Il paese delle quattro rive, Corpus Mesopotamico, vol. 4. Milan: Jaca Book, 2012. Pp. xxv + 323. 28 [euro] (paper).

With "Quando in alto i cieli....," Giorgio Buccellati provides us with an ambitious tour de force of the spiritual life of the ancient Mesopotamians, informed by a constant comparison with the biblical data. This topic is notoriously difficult to address, not only because we lack any religious and theological treatises written by the Mesopotamians, but also because of the sheer amount of available archaeological, artistic, and epigraphic evidence, as well as the interpretative problems connected to it. Indeed, in the words of the great Assyriologist A. L. Oppenheim, "a systematic presentation of Mesopotamian religion cannot and should not be written" (p. 172). It is a testament to Buccellati's keen intellect and breadth of knowledge that he has chosen to write on such a challenging topic.

To be sure, Buccellati focuses not so much on religion, which he defines as "the codification of the [human] interaction with the absolute [i.e., the divine], which remains empirically unknown, yet empirically presupposed" (p. 3). Rather, the author is interested in Mesopotamian spirituality, defined as "the inner leap towards the absolute (...) as well as the personal enrichment one can derive from it" (p. 6).

"Quando in alto i cieli ..." is divided into twenty-six chapters organized into six parts. It begins with an introduction (chapters 1-2), which includes an overview of the methodological approaches employed; this is followed by part one (chapters 3-6), consisting of a lengthy discussion of the divine element, and by a much shorter introduction to the human element (chapter 7). The latter serves as a gateway to the first section of the book (chapters 8-15), on the individual and his relation with spirituality. The second section discusses the community and its rapport with the sacred (chapters 16-23). A conclusion (chapters 24-27), entitled "The Apex of Desire," brings the book to a close. Indexes and an appendix of selected documents in translation conclude the work, which is unfortunately devoid of maps, relevant photos, footnotes, references, or bibliography.

Chapters 1 and 2 present the reader with important background information about the nature of the work. From the very beginning, Buccellati makes it very clear that...