Ezekiel: A Jewish Priest and a Babylonian Intellectual

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Of interest:

 

Ezekiel: A Jewish Priest and a Babylonian Intellectual 

 

Ezekiel, a priest born, raised, and educated in Judah, lived and prophesied much of his adult life in Babylonia in contact with cuneiform scholars and scribes. Ezekiel’s use of Akkadian loanwords,^[1] his allusions to masterpieces of cuneiform literature (such as the Gilgamesh Epic), and his understanding of Babylonian cosmology all attest to his rather complete integration into the cultural milieu of Babylon.^[2]

 

Dr. Laurie Pearce

 

Continued

 

05/21/2017

 

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^[1] For example, *אֶשְׁכָּר (Ezek 27:15) from Akkadian iškaru, “work assignment, materials, series”; *צוּרָה [Ezek 43:11] from Akkadian uṣurtu, “plan, blueprint, design.”Additional examples can be seen in Abraham Winitzer, “Assyriology and Jewish Studies in Tel Aviv: Ezekiel among the Babylonian Literati” in Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations Between Jews, Iranians, and Babylonians in Antiquity (Uri Gabbay and Shai Secunda; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 165-166.

^[2] Abbreviations to Assyriological publications follow the conventions of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD). Most of them can be conveniently referenced on the abbreviations page of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI).