THE PATRIARCHAL PERIOD:
The Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550BC)
It is with Abraham and the other Patriarchs that the biblical story is first reported in the context of a historical
setting which can, with some certainty, be identified. While the Bible does not attempt to correlate the Patriarchal
narratives with the chronology of any other nation, two passages place the Patriarchs some 400 (Gen 15:13) to 430
years (Ex 12:40-41) prior to the Exodus event. There are good reasons to place the Exodus near the beginning of the
thirteenth centuryBC
The Near East in the Middle Bronze Age
Mesopotamia
The Amorites
. Towards the end of the third millennium
BC
, rulers of the Sumerian Ur III Dynasty of Lower
Mesopotamia began to feel the pressure of a semi-nomadic group referred to in their writings as the mar.tu. The
MAR
.
TU
also appear in Akkadian texts where they are called
Amurru
, or “westerners”—the Amorites. This group
migrated into Sumer and Akkad and, as heirs of the Sumerians, established kingdoms around conquered cities.
1
Although textual evidence is lacking—aside from the biblical references to Amorites as inhabitants of Canaan—
a wave of Amorites apparently also moved down the Levantine coast into the region of Palestine sometime shortly
before or after 2000
BC
.
2
With the dominance of Ur broken, southern Mesopotamia broke into a mosaic of smaller states. Southern
Mesopotamia was the scene of a str
uggle between Isin, ruled by Sumerian speaking Semitic kings, and Amorites at
Larsa, while Eshnunna, a city with Elamite connections, asserted its independence. Meanwhile, to the north, the
Assyrian kingdom first became viable in the region which would later bear its name.
While these struggles need not concern us, two important law texts are known from the “Isin and Larsa Period”
(ca. 2000-1800
BC
): the code of Lipit-Ishtar, a ruler of Isin, and the laws of Eshnunna.
3
The former was laid out in
Sumerian, while the latter was written in Akkadian. Both antedate the most famous of ancient law codes, the Code of
Hammurabi (see below), and like it exhibit parallels to the biblical Covenant Code (Ex 21-23). These similarities
indicate a long standing legal tradition, at least among certain populations of the Near East.
The Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550
BC
about 1894BC, an Amorite prince established himself in a city near Kish, known in Sumerian as
Ka-dingir(“Gate of God”), in Akkadian as bab-ilu(“Gate of God”) or
Bab-ilanu(“Gate of the gods”). This is the place knownin Hebrew asbabel
and passed to us by way of the Greeks as “Babylon.” A dynasty arose there with eleven kings
ruling some 300 years. The names of the kings are Amorite, and the dynasty is called the First (or Amorite) Dynasty
of Babylon.
No comments:
Post a Comment