Gospel & Universe ♒️ The Currents of Sumer

The Exegete & the Philologist

Enns & Bottéro - Sensitivities & Contexts - The Sensitive Philologist

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On this page I give an introduction to the exegete Peter Enns and to the philologist and historian Jean Bottéro. I also define several key terms, such as philology and Ancient, and present the argument I’ll pursue over the next seven pages: while Enns opens up a space for diverse biblical interpretation, Bottéro opens up a larger, more comparative, and more inclusive space in which we can explore historical context and radically diverse forms of religion.

Enns shows the Bible to be valuable not despite its ambiguities and contradictions, but because of them, yet he also plays a zero-sum game in relation to the Mesopotamian tradition. For Enns it’s Bible 1 + Mesoptamia -1 = 0. For Bottéro on the other hand, its Bible 1 + Mesopotamia 1 = 2. Enns’ approach is nothing new, however: it fits with two Christian views which are highly problematic from an agnostic point of view: 1. monotheism is categorically superior to polytheism, and 2. Jewish culture is superior to Mesopotamian culture.

Although I’m critical of Enns when he downgrades Mesopotamia to make the Bible look better, I appreciate his open, witty, learned approach. His writing does two excellent things: 1. it helps believers to appreciate ambiguity and paradox, which serves as an antidote to dogma and superiority, and 2. it helps agnostics and skeptics to see the Bible as a diverse and interesting text: it’s not so much accurate in its history as it is insistent in its theology; and it’s not so much integrated in its coherence as it is integrative in its requirement that the reader take an active part in understanding it, rather than a passive part in accepting doctrines and rules.

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Enns & Botteró

In How the Bible Actually Works* (2019), Peter Enns explores the idea that the Bible is 1. ancient, 2. ambiguous, and 3. diverse. In a book full of humour and lively wit, Enns argues that those who look for clear answers are likely to be disappointed, and those who want to straighten out the contradictions and ambiguities will be frustrated. The subtitle (or cover-page asterisk) is: *In Which I Explain How an Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers — and Why That’s Great News.

To agnostics, Enns’ premise is refreshing, since it challenges centuries of mainstream Christians arguing that the Bible is so holy and perfect that 1. it can’t be questioned, 2. everything in it is consistent and true, 3. we can all understand this ancient assortment of books, and 4. we can all apply this ancient assortment of books to our Modern lives. 

I write “assortment of books” because the word Bible comes from the Greek tà biblía, 'the books', and this relates to Enns’ third point about diversity. According to biblical scholars, the Bible isn’t the product of one author, although many traditional Christians believe it to be written by Moses. In La Naissance de Dieu / The Birth of God (1986), the French scholar Jean Bottéro notes that this diverse philological aspect of the Bible isn’t a contradiction or dilution, but rather a richness. Those who redacted and added to the Bible over the centuries knit the texts together in a skillful manner:

Le travail a été, en général, assez soigneusement exécuté pour que les lecteurs ingénus ne s'en avisent pas trop. Mais il n'a point résisté aux examens « de laboratoire », lesquels, au bout du compte, loin de démolir l'histoire biblique, l'ont en quelque sorte enrichie par le dedans, remettant au jour plusieurs sources là où l'on pensait n'en avoir gardé qu'une. 

The work was in general executed carefully enough so that the inexpert reader didn’t notice much. But this didn’t escape the laboratory examination, at the end of which, far from demolishing biblical history, it had in some ways enriched it, bringing to light many sources where we had thought there was only one.

[Please note: all translations of Botteró are my own free translations.]

Enns shares a key trait with Bottéro: both refuse to ignore the philosophical ramifications of science. For Bottéro, science principally means philology, the study of the origins and meanings of historical texts. More specifically, Bottéro is an expert in Assyriology, which focuses on the cuneiform texts of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria. In Babylone et la Bible, a series of interviews he gave with Hélène Monsacré in 1994, Bottéro explains the relation between archaeology, philology and history, in the context of his study of the complex civilizations of Mesopotamia (I’ve broken his paragraph in two so that those who want to look at his original text can read along more easily):

Le clair-obscur de l'archéologie ne me convenait guère, mais j'ai toujours accordé la plus capitale importance à la philologie: connaissance approfondie du système de l'écriture (dans une civilisation où elle pose tant de problèmes par son étrangeté et sa complication extrême) des langues impliquées, du plus grand nombre possible de textes, et de tous les détails, de tous ordres, qui peuvent jour un rôle dans les décisions infinies que l’on doit prendre à tout instant devant des textes à interpréter la philologie, la plus solide, c est l'assise de tout, on ne peut rien faire de sérieux sans elle.

The semi-darkness [or light-and-dark or chiaroscuro] of archaeology never sat well with me, but I always accorded a capital importance to philology: the deep knowledge of writing systems (in a civilization where it poses so many problems because of [Mesopotamian] strangeness and its extreme complication) of the implied languages, of the largest number of possible texts, and of all the details, of all natures, that could play a role in the infinite decisions that you have to take at every instant in order to interpret — philology is the most solid, the basis of everything; you can’t do anything serious without it.

Mais, après la traduction et la pénétration philologique « mot à mot » des documents, beaucoup pensent que le travail s'arrête là, alors que, pour un historien digne de ce nom, il commence. Après et à travers les textes, bien compris, il faut rechercher, autant que possible, leurs auteurs, les hommes, qui les ont pensés et écrits, et leur système de pensée et de vie. Voilà ce qui m'a toujours paru le plus important, le plus digne que l'on 'y consacre lorsqu'on fait de l’histoire.

But, after the translation and the word-by-word philological understanding of documents, many people think that the work ends there, whereas for the historian worthy of his name, it only begins. After, and through, a deep understanding of texts, it’s necessary to research, as much as possible, their authors, the men who thought and wrote them, as well as their system of thinking and living. That’s what always seemed to me the most important, the most worthy thing that you can consecrate yourself to when you’re engaged in the work of history.

While Enns uses philology at times, and while he constantly refers to history, for him the term science takes on a more general meaning, and includes the key fields of astronomy, geology, evolution, and genetics. I say “key” because these fields are the ones which have given the biggest headaches to those who insist on a literal reading of the Bible — a literalism that Enns challenges throughout his writing.

Enns writes — in a blunt, humorous vein — that he wanted to become an astronomer, until he found out “you need math.” His scientific view of outer space didn’t fit with the Bible’s view of a still, flat Earth or with King David’s wonderful heaven (I can’t help thinking here of all the glorious trecento visions of angels with trumpets blasting their adoration into the depths of space). Instead of fitting what science says into the Bible, he admits that the biblical view is a problem for him:

With all due respect to Israel's primo king, David and I are not on the same page here. I'm more with the seventeenth-century philosopher Baise Pascal, who lived when modern science was coming into its own, and who had public nervous breakdowns in his Pensées such as: "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me."

Enns’ point here is intriguing to agnostics because 1. it does what agnosticism does: it approaches truth not as we desire it to be, but as we see it despite our desire, and 2. it approaches truth from the rather alien side of belief (alien for the agnostic, that is). From different angles, Enns and I both try to see the relation between gospel or revealed truth and the universe as it is, unvarnished by doctrine, certainty, or fixed ideas.

Enns and Bottéro also share one key thing: both examine ideas people profess about the Bible yet which aren’t backed up by a closer, more scholarly exploration. While Enns stresses the ideas in the Bible, Bottéro examines ideas in, around, and before the Bible.

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Sensitivities & Contexts

More than the average agnostic, Enns and Bottéro both remain deeply sensitive to the religious sensibilities of those who hold the Bible to be a sacred text.

Agnostics may find Enns a tad too sensitive, yet his sensitivity is natural and appropriate, given that he’s a Christian. In this sense he’s working from within the tradition, in order to keep it critical, vigilant, vital, and relevant. 

Some agnostics may also have a problem agreeing with Enns when he assumes a Christian definition of God and the Son of God, and when he asserts that the Bible actually has a particular way of working. Yet these agnostics might remember that Enns is largely writing to a Christian audience, so it’s natural for him to assume that his readers believe in God, His Son, and biblical authority. Personally, I hope that other mainstream Christians follow his program of looking more closely at 1. how ancient and strange the biblical texts are, 2. how traditional believers may be missing the point when they explain them too literally and too clearly, and 3. how they may even be distorting or erasing ambiguities and subtleties for the sake of clarity and simplicity. 

Here comes the sensitive part, at least as far as an agnostic approach to belief is concerned.

There is, however, one line of thinking which Enns follows that can’t be easily reconciled with scientific, philological, historical, or agnostic thinking: his assumption of the superiority of monotheism over polytheism, which is extended in his view that the Judaeo-Christian tradition, with its Bible at the core, is more important and true than other traditions, notably the Mesopotamian tradition. Enns’ points are hard to accept for a number of reasons: no religion and no holy book relies on making sense; Enns downgrades and hence misrepresents Mesopotamian religion and culture; monotheism isn’t categorically superior to polytheism, especially when the polytheism in question has elements which give unity and other positive meanings to the theological system.

I’m of course assuming here that a holy book is more than the arguments within it. It’s also a source book for diverse ideas, a book of origins showing where certain ideas come from, and a symbol of the totality of a belief system. Yet from the point of view of experience, science, and verification, no one major religious tradition and no one holy book makes more logical sense than another.

Religions are systems of experience and belief, not of logic. These systems aren’t universal, either in their theological details or in the details of their history, culture, and geography. Beliefs that develop on the Nile are different from those on the Euphrates, or Jordan, or Saraswati (the now invisible river of the Vedic poets), or Drôk-gâi (the Murky River, an early name for the Yellow River).

From an agnostic, philological, scientific, historical, and comparative religion point of view, it’s difficult to say that one major religious narrative, which describes things we can’t see or verify, is more reasonable than the next. Furthermore, I would argue that it’s impossible to say that one major religion, with its billions of followers and its own way of relating to its followers, is more true than the next. When agnostics hear such things as one true God, one Chosen People, the Elect, or one true Holy Book, they not only beg to differ, but refuse to agree.

On the following pages I’ll take issue with Enns, yet this doesn’t mean that I don’t accept his notion that the Bible is a valuable text which deserves to be questioned, appreciated, analyzed, and struggled with. It’s just that I can’t accept the notion that it’s better than all the others because it argues for monotheism and because the culture it comes from is superior to Mesopotamian culture. My focus will therefore be less on his exploration of what’s in the Bible than what’s around and before it, using Bottéro as a cornerstone and as an authoritative exegete.

For all his new and challenging ideas, Enns appears to use the old and rather circular notion that the Bible is uniquely great because its stories urge us to come to terms with the one true God, whose nature is confirmed by the stories in the Bible. I have no problem with the idea that the Bible is great, but I have a problem with the idea that it’s uniquely and overwhelmingly great, especially in relation to the Mesopotamian stories which give it a larger context — and which also give us a chance to savour its ancientness, diversity, and ambiguity.

None of this means that the Bible isn’t a great work which gives meaning to many lives. Nor does it mean that the Bible doesn’t serve as the pre-eminent unified holy text leading us from a complex Ancient World, where each city-state had its god, to a Classical world where the Jewish tradition gives rise to an exemplar and mystical figure who many believe to be the redemptive incarnation of God. My point isn’t to question the diversity of the biblical tradition, but to enlarge it by supplying a more enriching Mesopotamian context than Enns allows. Nor is my point to question Christ’s divine nature or the redemptive message he brings, but rather to see the Christian tradition as allowing for other sorts of redemption. Behind my argument is the notion that Christianity doesn’t make itself more holy by downgrading the redemptive and compassionate elements of other traditions.

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The Sensitive Philologist

Given the sensitivities involved in biblical criticism and scholarship, it’s helpful to bring in a scholar like Bottéro, since he’s deeply respectful of the biblical tradition, yet he’s also deeply critical in the sense that he uses critical thinking, not the sanctity of scripture, as his guide.

Bottéro’s respectful scholarship is clear to see in two fascinating paragraphs from “The Birth of the West” — in Mésopotamie: L’écriture, la raison et les dieux / Mesopotamia: Writing, Reason, and the Gods, 1987, translated by Zainab Bahraini and Marc Van De Mieroop.

In the first paragraph he starts by noting that in his earlier work he “so sufficiently praised the authors of the Bible that one cannot doubt either [his] inveterate admiration or the good reasons for it.” He says that his preference for biblical over Akkadian texts wasn’t just a question of content, but also of form: he says that “biblical Hebrew, by far closer to the beautiful Arabic language, is phonetically richer, more vigorous, more sonorous, and more fascinating.” He adds that Sumerian (which predates the first Semitic language, Akkadian), “is SO remote from us and SO strange that one has to be a person with a very low melting point to be excited when listening to it.”

He says he found “an infinite formal and cold prosaicness,” where feelings appeared “fabricated, if not stilted, the few times they are visible.” He found “unending and gloomy lists of words […] juxtaposed with no clear connections between them, without the least apparent attempt to subsume this infinite number of pieces into larger units or synthetic concepts, into abstractions that are more familiar and more useful for our way of thinking.” Even when he saw logic and coherence, the Mesopotamian fragments seemed to him “earthbound, singularly lacking in absolute value.” He concludes the paragraph, “Was there not enough to discourage even the best will in the world, and to send [him] very soon back to the Bible, or to Greece, and their universe which was accessible to [him]?”

His second paragraph illustrates a deep shift from cold scholarship to fascination and even a degree of warmth. He says that he “was able to uncover more easily here and there parts that somewhat warmed [his] heart.” He says that he “soon became especially convinced that where warmth, glitter, and the power of words were absent, there ruled secretly the intelligence of thought, a strident need for uncovering, a thirst to understand, and an extraordinary creativity.” He then begins to see Mesopotamian writing not in comparison to the rich textures of the Bible, but in the context of early human civilizations:

In such a harsh country, deprived of almost everything except clay, bitumen, and reeds, with a muddy and fertile soil, and two rivers to irrigate it serving as the only earthly resource, these people, just emerged from the uncertainties, the poverty, and the primitiveness of prehistory, conceived and created everything. In a few centuries they developed for themselves an existence that was economically opulent, they constructed a political and military power that was for a long time unique, and almost always unequalled, in the entire Near East.

He finishes the second paragraph by noting that developments in Mesopotamia were colossal not just because Mesopotamians were the first to build civilizational systems and to create numbers and writing and so much else, but also because they articulated complex questions about human existence, and came up with a system of thinking and feeling that attempted to confront these questions:

They were the very first to expend a considerable amount of energy not only for making use of the world by the ingenuity of their rapid technological progress but also for attempting to understand it by their observations, their comparisons, their thinking, and their interpretations. In a sense they made up a particular system of thought, unprecedented in those distant times, but also admirable in itself even if it is so remote from our own. And the system was especially fruitful if we judge it by the elements that have been retained from it until today.

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Next: Zero & Positive Sums

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