Commentaries Were Written as Soon as Ancient Texts Were Composed

The Bible is the most interpreted book in the world. Its interpretation is found in inner-biblical exegesis^[1] and in the literature of the Second Temple period, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of course rabbinic and medieval commentaries. But the type of interpretation found in the Bible is not specifically Jewish: Over one thousand tablets containing commentaries on ancient cuneiform literature from Mesopotamia have been found, dating from the end of the 8^th century B.C.E. through the 1^st century B.C.E.^[2]

They mainly contain interpretations of technical texts such as omen literature, medical texts, and lexical texts, but also some literary texts such as the creation myth Enuma Elish, and even one small fragment containing a commentary on the Laws of Hammurabi.^[3]

For example, a 4^th-century B.C.E. cuneiform tablet from the city of Uruk preserves a commentary on the first part of a medical diagnostic series, in which various objects that the healer encounters on his way to see the patient are interpreted as omens related to the patient’s condition and prognosis.^[4]

The commentary tablet first cites an omen from the medical text. Both texts are written in a very laconic manner, and are therefore often difficult to understand, so I have added explanations in the parentheses to explain the context:

^{SpTU 1, 028 r 8′} “(If the healer on the way to the patient) sees a corpse – that patient will recover.”^[5]

An explanatory comment then follows the omen:

^{SpTU 1, 028 r 8′} A body; as in (the case that) he saw (the patient’s) substitute.

The implicit question that interests the commentary is, why would the sight of a corpse indicate the recovery of the patient?^[6] The commentary explains that the dead person serves as a substitute for the sick person; in other words, the person whose body was seen died instead of the patient and, therefore, the patient will survive and recover.

Multiple Interpretations of a Single Omen

Another 4^th-century tablet from Uruk preserves a three-part commentary that provides a good opportunity to further examine the interpretive methods of Mesopotamian commentators. The text concerns an omen, from the same diagnostic text as in the previous example, that predicts the death of the patient when the healer sees a baked brick on his way to him. Again, I have added notes in parenthesis to explain the context:

^{SpTU 1, 027 r 21} “If he (the healer on the way to the patient) sees a baked brick (Akkadian: agurru)—the patient will die.”^[7]

1. The Literal Sense

The first comment is:

^{SpTU 1, 027 r 21} Actual.

It affirms the literal meaning of the text: When the text says that the healer encountered a brick, this is none other than an actual brick.

The omen, however, seems to present two problems. First, why would the sight of a baked brick predict the death of the patient? Second, within the Mesopotamian urban landscape, many buildings, especially monumental ones, were built with baked bricks, and therefore the frequent sight of bricks would predict the death of many patients. Two additional comments attempt to resolve these issues by reinterpreting the omen.

2. A Survivor of a River Ordeal

The second explanation breaks the word agurru, the Akkadian word for “baked brick,” into its two main syllables, a and gur, and interprets them as individual words.^[8] It is not a baked brick that was encountered by the healer, but rather a person who was supposed to die in the river ordeal but returned from it:

^{SpTU 1, 027 r 21} Secondly: (The noun agurru, “baked brick,” refers to) a man who returned from the river ordeal, (because the syllable) a (from agurru, means in Sumerian) “water,” (and the syllable) gur (from agurru, means in Sumerian) “return.”

In other words, the patient will die because the survivor of the river ordeal has earned his life back again. This interpretive method is not as farfetched as it may seem at first. In the cuneiform writing system, each syllabic sign also had one or more semantic meanings, usually going back to the Sumerian language, so searching for such meanings is inherent in the writing system and in the Sumerian-Akkadian bilingual tradition of Mesopotamia.

3. A Woman Carrying a Child

Drawing on a different set of meanings for the syllables a and gur, the third explanation claims that the healer encountered a pregnant woman who is carrying a child:

^{SpTU 1, 027 r 22} Thirdly: (the noun agurru refers to) a pregnant woman, (because the syllable) a (from agurru, means in Sumerian) “child,”^[9] (and the syllable)…gur (from agurru, means in Sumerian) “carry.”

Using the same logic as in the first example of the corpse, but in the opposite direction, the creation of a new life acts as a replacement for the patient who is about to lose his life. This example is one of the rare instances in Mesopotamian commentaries where there is an explicit reference to the literal meaning of a text, and this literal meaning is opposed to other non-literal meanings.

It is not clear, however, why multiple explanations for the text were preserved. Does presenting them together mean that the “baked brick” in the text can be interpreted as both a pregnant woman and a person returning from the river ordeal, in addition to being just a brick? Or are these three different, mutually exclusive and perhaps competing explanations, perhaps attributable to three different sources (whether written tablets or oral scholarly explanations)?

Similarities to Rabbinic Commentaries

The interpretive methods in the commentary examples noted above are all found in rabbinic commentaries as well, whether in early midrashic literature on the Bible or in later Talmudic interpretations. Rabbinic commentaries don’t always choose to interpret texts according to their literal meaning (cf. the later notions of פשט, “simple, straight meaning,” often associated with literal meaning, vs. דרש, “exegetical meaning,” often associated with non-literal meaning).

Actually

As in the Akkadian example, rabbinic interpretations may explicitly mark a literal interpretation as such, especially when it is contrasted with a non-literal interpretation. In earlier halakhic Midrash this is done by the use of the words ודאי and ממש, both referring to something “real, true, actual,” semantically and syntactically similar to the Akkadian term translated here as “actual.” For example, commenting on the verse:

^{שמות ב:כב} וַתֵּלֶד בֵּן וַיִּקְרָא אֶת-שְׁמוֹ גֵּרְשֹׁם כִּי אָמַר גֵּר הָיִיתִי בְּאֶרֶץ נָכְרִיָּה.

^{Exod 2:22} She bore a son, whom he named Gershom; for he said “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.”

The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael quotes the following dispute:

^{מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל עמלק א} נכריה ר' יהושע אומר ארץ נכריה היתה לו ודאי. ר' אלעזר המודעי אומר בארץ נכריה [נכר יה].

^{Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yismae’el Amalek 1} “Foreign” (נכריה) – Rabbi Joshua says: it was a foreign land to him – actual (ודאי). Rabbi Elazar the Modiite says: in a land foreign to the Lord (i.e., נכריה = נכר + יה).^[10]

Alternatively

Rabbinic sources often enumerate different interpretations, either attributing them to different sources (specifically different Rabbis) or introducing them with the phrase דבר אחר, “an alternative saying.” For example, the Mishnah presents two interpretations of the phrase, from Qeri’at Shema (Deut 6:5), ובכל מאדך, “and with all your might”:

^{משנה ברכות ט:ה} חַיָּב אָדָם לְבָרֵךְ עַל הָרָעָה כְּשֵׁם שֶׁהוּא מְבָרֵךְ עַל הַטּוֹבָה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (דברים ו) וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יְיָ אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ. בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ, בִּשְׁנֵי יְצָרֶיךָ, בְּיֵצֶר טוֹב וּבְיֵצֶר רָע. וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ, אֲפִלּוּ הוּא נוֹטֵל אֶת נַפְשֶׁךָ. וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ, בְּכָל מָמוֹנֶךָ. דָּבָר אַחֵר בְּכָל מְאֹדֶךָ, בְּכָל מִדָּה וּמִדָּה שֶׁהוּא מוֹדֵד לְךָ הֱוֵי מוֹדֶה לוֹ בִּמְאֹד מְאֹד.

^{b. Berakhot 9:5} One is obligated to recite a blessing for the bad (that befalls him) just as he recites a blessing for the good (that befalls him), as it is stated: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut 6:5). “With all your heart” –with your two inclinations, with your good inclination and your evil inclination. “With all your soul” – even if he (= God) takes your soul. “And with all your might” – with all your money. Alternatively: “With all your might” – with every measure that he (= God) metes out to you, you should be thankful to him very much.^[11]

These texts also create the dilemma of whether the different explanations should be understood as simultaneous, i.e., as a polysemic text that contains various meanings, both non-literal and literal, or as different, mutually exclusive interpretations.

Abbreviations

Notriqon (נוטריקון), in which words are parsed into units, each carrying a semantic meaning, is an exegetical technique parallel to the Akkadian commentary’s parsing words into syllables. As was seen in the example cited above from the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, parsing a word into two semantic elements (נכריה = נכר יה) is presented as an alternative to a literal interpretation (ודאי).

What do the similarities between the Mesopotamian commentaries and the rabbinic interpretation of the Bible mean?^[12] Are these simply two scholarly traditions that share some similarities? Or do the similarities indicate that the early Jewish exegetical tradition was influenced by the Mesopotamian one in some way? And if so, how, when, and where did these two traditions come into contact?

There is no conclusive or agreed upon answer to these questions.^[13] What is clear, though, is that a comparative look at both textual traditions can illuminate the research of both Akkadian texts and rabbinic texts.

What Can We Learn from Akkadian Commentaries?

Assyriologists researching Akkadian commentaries may gain additional insights by shifting their focus from interpretive techniques to the motives of the interpreters, applying, for example, Nehama Leibowitz’s (1905–1997) famous approach to the study of the medieval biblical commentator Rashi (Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac; 1040–1105)—מה קשה לרש"י, “what is bothering Rashi?”^[14] The discussions on the meanings of the text, polysemy, levels of meaning, and literal vs. non-literal meanings, so dominant in the study of Midrash and Talmud, can also be applied when studying similar phenomena in Mesopotamian commentaries.

Such an approach may also be fruitful in the opposite direction: Researchers of rabbinic texts who examine ancient Mesopotamian commentaries may encounter phenomena previously thought to be unique to Midrash or to the Talmud, or to be influenced by Greek texts.^[15]

Commentary vs. Internal Exegesis

We sometimes think of commentaries as “second order” sophisticated texts on the earlier “first order” basic texts. Thus, for example, a commentary on the Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish, is a sort of “second floor” to the “first floor” of the text of Enuma Elish itself. While in many respects this is true, it is not the whole picture. Ancient texts were never separated from their interpretation. They were transmitted along with a tradition of understanding them and explaining them (even if this interpretation changed over time).^[16]

Perhaps it was also this tradition of study and interpretation, and not only the text alone, that came into contact with the people and the textual materials that resulted in the biblical text. For example, if Enuma Elish stands in the background of the first creation story in Genesis,^[17] perhaps this background also included the myth’s interpretative tradition. It is possible that a continuous transmission of both texts and interpretations influenced both the biblical text and its interpretive traditions.

Divine Texts and Their Commentaries

Lastly, I would like to highlight the theme of authority—both the authority of the text that is commented upon, and the authority of the commentator (or commentary). In the Jewish and Christian interpretation, the Torah is a divine text, and this has molded the way it is interpreted, and generally, the way in which it is approached.

On the other hand, the commentators on this divine text hold a human authority, though it is one that often traces itself in some way to divine authority.^[18] This authority allows and legitimizes the commentators to find different meanings, to derive new laws, and at times even to change the supposedly literal meaning of the text.

Similarly, in the Mesopotamian tradition, many of the texts which were attributed to divine authorship (especially omen texts) have commentaries on them, and the commentators saw themselves as continuing a tradition of scholarly engagements with texts that goes back to mythological sages (Akkadian: apkallū) of primordial times.^[19]

Further comparative study will surely bring new light to the history of interpretation in Mesopotamian texts, in early Jewish texts, and in the possible relationship between them.