Coronavirus: What We Can Learn from the Bible and the ANE

U bēlī liwa’’er-ma mārū ālānī ša kīma laptū ana ālānī lā lapūtim lā irrubū assurri mātam kalaša ulappatū, ARM 26, p. 127; no. 17, lines 22–5. See Walther Farber, “How to Marry a Disease: Epidemics, Contagion, and a Magic Ritual against the ‘Hand of a Ghost,’” in Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman Medicine, ed. Herman F. J. Horstmanshoff and Marten Stol (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 119–20, n. 21

Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 221.

For this reason, there are numerous methodological problems with attempts to correlate ancient diseases with modern names, for example the much discussed question of the relation between biblical tzara‘at and leprosy (Hansen’s Disease). See further my TABS piece “Tzaraat in Light of its Mesopotamian Parallels.”

Translation: Luke E. Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 75.

For this rendering of פס"ח see Alan Flashman, "How Pesach Became Passover," TheTorah (2019); Barry Dov Walfish, “Why ‘Passover’? On the True Meaning of Pesaḥ-פסח,” TheTorah (2016).

See also Baruch Levine, In the Presence of the Lord (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 75.

See Martin Noth, Exodus: A Commentary (OTL; trans. J.E. Anderson; London: SCM Press, 1965), 91–92; William H.C. Propp, Exodus 1–18 (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1999), 375–376, 401–402. In support of reading this verse as a personalized destroyer, the narrative in 2 Sam 24:16 describes God as sending a “destroying emissary” (mal’akh ha-mašḥit).

The substantivized participle mašḥit is flexible and refers to a military force in 1 Sam 13:17 and 14:15, which shows that there is no reason to assume that it refers to a personalized demonic entity in Exod 12.