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i

Before and After Babel

ii
iii

Before and
After Babel
Writing as Resistance in Ancient
Near Eastern Empires
z
MARC VAN DE MIEROOP
iv

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers

the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

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© Oxford University Press 2023

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You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Van de Mieroop, Marc, author.
Title: Before and after Babel : writing as resistance in ancient Near
Eastern empires / Marc Van De Mieroop.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022029901 (print) | LCCN 2022029902 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197634660 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197634684 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Cuneiform writing—History. |
Writing—Middle East—History—To 1500.
Classification: LCC PJ3211.V36 2023 (print) | LCC PJ3211 (ebook) |
DDC 492/.1—dc23/eng/20220920
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029901
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029902

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197634660.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

v

For Hector, who will always be remembered

vi
vi

Contents

Illustrations ix

Introduction 1

PART I : The Babylonian Cosmopolis: The Cuneiform Sign

1. Reading Gilgameš in the Zagros Mountains: The Eighteenth

Century bc 11

2. In the Spell of Babylonian Writing 36

3. Mystery Guardians of an Ancient Tradition 53

4. The Height of Cosmopolitanism: Reading Gilgameš in Hattusas 70

Coda 103

PART II : The Vernacular Millennium: The Tower of Babel

5. Scrupulous Continuity 109

6. Luwian: The Ephemeral Success of a Non-​Cosmopolitan Tradition 138

7. Vernaculars That Changed the World: Phoenician and Aramaic 149

8. From Minority Languages to World Literatures: The Hebrew Case 176

9. From Minority Languages to World Literatures: The Greek Case 199

vi

viii Contents

10. The Vernacular and Its Consequences 218

Epilogue: Clash of Cosmopoleis? 241

Notes 253
Bibliography 287
Index 333
ix

Illustrations

Map I.1 The ancient Near East 9

Figure 1.1 Babylonian school tablet from the early second millennium 15
Figure 2.1 An Old Assyrian loan document from Kaneš 48
Figure 3.1 A bilingual prayer from Sippar-​Amnanum 57
Map II.1 The western Near East in the first millennium 107
Figure 5.1 Cuneiform and alphabetic scribes 114
Figure 6.1 Shell inscribed with Luwian hieroglyphs 140
Figure 7.1 Brick inscribed with the name of Adad-​nadin-​aḫḫe 171
Figure 9.1 A 5th-​century Attic painted amphora inscribed with
names of the characters depicted 206
Figure 10.1 The Kilamuwa stele 222
x
1

Introduction

Historians of antiquit y would be out of a job were it not for the writ-
ten word. From their perspective, writing was one of the most important inven-
tions in world history—​had it not been created, we could still study people of the
distant past, but we would not know their names and most of their thoughts, and
numerous other aspects of their existence would be so unclear to us that we could
not apply most methods of historical analysis to them. From the perspective
of the ancient people, too, writing was a critical invention. Even if few of them
knew how to write, for those who did it provided opportunities unimaginable
otherwise. Beyond its very practical applications, writing opened up intellectual
prospects and pathways. It allowed scholars to speculate, to communicate and
record ideas. Not all languages were written down, however. Potentially scribes
had many options, but they were not allowed to use them all if they wanted to be
taken seriously. Only certain languages were considered suitable for intellectual
pursuits, as is still true today when no one publishes scholarly research in collo-
quial idioms. Throughout history not all scripts had the same status either: cur-
sive scripts are not considered suitable for monumental inscriptions, for example.
A present-​day parallel may be that no academic publication would accept a con-
tribution in which emojis make its point.
The choices of languages and scripts are not inconsequential. For modern his-
torians they determine what they can investigate through written remains—​some
scripts remain undeciphered and some languages incomprehensible. Moreover,
throughout history when scribes utilized certain languages and scripts, they
became part of specific traditions that could extend back millennia in time and
carried much intellectual baggage. It is thus important for us to understand
what scripts and languages the people we study used and why. This book inves-
tigates these matters in the long history of the ancient Near East, exceedingly
well documented with hundreds of thousands of manuscripts. They stretch in

Before and After Babel. Marc Van De Mieroop, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197634660.003.0001
2

2 Before an d Aft er Babel

time from the fourth millennium bc to the first centuries ad, in space from the
eastern Mediterranean to western Iran. In this vast domain we can recognize mul-
tiple attitudes toward the uses of languages and scripts—​attitudes that give us
insight into these ancient people’s thoughts that go much deeper than what they
expressed with the words they wrote down.
This book will contrast two distinct approaches toward the writing down of
languages in this long time frame and wide geography. On the one hand, there
was the shared use of the Babylonian languages—​Sumerian, Akkadian, and
their combination in bilingual texts—​all written in the same cuneiform script
across many regions and by people who spoke a wide variety of languages. This
was a cosmopolitan tradition with roots in the southern region of Iraq today,
but scribes from all over the Near East maintained and developed it. Over many
dozens of generations they copied out and rewrote texts that were in foreign lan-
guages, one of them already a dead language early in this sequence. On the other
hand, there was a wide variety of languages with several linguistic backgrounds,
spoken and written down regionally and in multiple scripts. Those were the ver-
naculars of the eastern Mediterranean with a great diversity of texts written in
each of the individual cases, some of them with ephemeral existences, others with
a very long-​term impact on world literature. This book will argue for an evolution
in the attitudes of writers toward these systems with radical differences between
the second and first millennia bc. In the earlier millennium no one who wrote a
work of high literary or scholarly value would think of doing so in anything but
the cosmopolitan Babylonian idiom; in contrast, in the later millennium numer-
ous vernacular systems existed alongside the cosmopolitan one which survived in
the imperial centers of Mesopotamia alone. A major question will be what caused
the change in behavior and what the consequences were.
The existence of cosmopolitan and vernacular writings is not unparalleled in
world history. My work here owes much to that of Sheldon Pollock in his studies
of two other examples, somewhat later in history than what I study here, in the
first millennium ad: the Sanskrit and Latin cosmopoleis and the vernaculars that
succeeded them. I use the terms “cosmopolitan” and “vernacular,” which can be
employed in different contexts, as he does, that is, applied to literate culture and
irrespective of the geopolitical circumstances. In a cosmopolitan system people
with different cultural backgrounds, speaking diverse languages and living in
distinct political formations share the same language and script for their writ-
ten communications. In contrast, vernaculars make use of individual languages
and oftentimes scripts to record all types of writing. Those are not limited to
documenting speech but also enable high literary and scholarly creativity. The
vernaculars exist in a context that includes the cosmopolitan and interact with it.1
Very importantly, these usages are all the outcome of choices made consciously. It
3

Introduction 3

is not the case that one is elite, the other popular, but the same kind of people—​in
the cases studied here, those attached to courts and government institutions—​
decide which system to use. It should be clear that the evidence we will deal with
does not reveal the conditions among the populations in general. One of the
remarkable aspects of the eastern Mediterranean world, today and in the past, is
the diversity of languages its inhabitants actively use. I will repeat that through-
out the book in order to counteract groups like Daesh but also its critics, who
try to erase that fact and whose rewriting of history has penetrated the world’s
perception of the region. Although the polyglot situation I will describe in the
distant past was surely not the same as now, the general setting of people living
in the same region and using multiple languages and scripts is. But while we may
have access to all levels of society today if we make the effort, that is not true
for the past when only written remains inform us. And those of the periods dis-
cussed here are all the products of small segments of the populations, the literate
men and women, some with basic levels of education, others with much more
advanced ones. Not only the Babylonian cosmopolitan system was one of high
culture, so were the vernaculars.
The Sanskrit and Latin cases show different reasons for the existence of cos-
mopolitan systems and for the appearance of vernacular ones. The ancient Near
Eastern situation has its own distinctive features, the bilingualism of the cosmo-
politan tradition a very major one. I aim to demonstrate in the first part of this
book how the Babylonian cosmopolis functioned as a truly “international” (an
anachronistic term in a period without nations) system with active participation
and input of many different people. In the second part, I will describe the emer-
gence of some of the vernaculars (not all as there were too many and the evidence
on them can be too scanty to allow for substantive conclusions) and their rela-
tionship to the cosmopolitan tradition that continued to exist, as well as what the
consequences of their appearance were. My discussion will deal with many texts,
cultures, and traditions that have been the subject of numerous investigations
and have provoked much scholarly debate. While my bibliography is already very
long, I cannot say that I have been able to consult all this work and integrate it
here. Some colleagues may feel slighted, which was not my intention. Obviously
there will be people who disagree with my interpretations while others will feel
that my discussions are too superficial. My aim is to stimulate further debate by
combining topics often studied independently is a wider context, and I welcome
elaborations including those that prove me wrong.
I could not resist to call the book Before and After Babel, using the probably
somewhat hackneyed biblical reference to “the confusion of tongues.” It is espe-
cially appropriate for this study, however, because the story in the biblical book
of Genesis dramatically explains how humankind came to use multiple languages.
4

4 Before an d Aft er Babel

The story focuses on Babel, the city of Babylon, and its tower, which stand as
the icons of Babylonian culture. I will focus here on that other cultural icon of
Babylonia, the cuneiform script. While at one time every Near Eastern literate
intellectual understood that script, that was no longer the case when Genesis was
written. How could that have happened?
Without having planned this, it became clear to me while writing the vari-
ous chapters of this book that the Epic of Gilgameš provides the clearest example
of how people throughout Near Eastern history changed their attitudes toward
what to write and how. I do not want to repeat here the idea, popular a century
ago, that Gilgameš inspired the stories of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Paul—​a
theory elaborated at length by Peter Jensen in his monumental Das Gilgamesch-​
Epos in der Weltliteratur (1906–​1928). But Gilgameš was a central character in
the literary imagination of the ancient Near East. Stories about him certainly cir-
culated in writing in the early second millennium ascribing a remarkable array
of adventures and accomplishments to him. After an Akkadian-​writing author
at that time molded them into a whole that we now call the Babylonian Epic of
Gilgameš, discarding some earlier ideas but also enriching the character with new
aspects, the text was copied and elaborated by numerous ancient Near Eastern
authors over many centuries. Manuscripts with sometimes surprisingly new vari-
ants continue to appear. This was not the preserve of Babylonians; authors from
Anatolia, Syria, and the Levant engaged with the epic, modified it, excerpted it,
and translated it. And once cuneiform was no longer the dominant script, people
referred to elements of it in a variety of languages. They did not translate passages,
but reformulated them to fit new contexts and ideologies or simply mentioned
characters from the epic. Gilgameš started out as a truly cosmopolitan text, shared
by all those who knew cuneiform. Every author contributed in shaping this text,
which was alive and never finished, and as a study of the evolution of the epic
now decades old pointed out, each of these versions should be “taken seriously
as a piece of literature in its own right.”2 But it was also a text that was so famous
in the ancient Near East that writers who did not use cuneiform knew about ele-
ments of it and reacted to it. The memory of the main character and some others
in the epic lingered for a long time in the later Near East. Thus I decided to refer
to the epic at least once in every chapter (whenever possible) as a narrative strat-
egy. This book is not an analysis of Gilgameš and its history, but the epic is just
one illustration of the long history of interaction with and manipulation of texts
that was common practice in the ancient Near East.
That is the aim of this book: I want to shed light on a millennia-​long tradi-
tion about how and what to write, a tradition that upheld a system of thought
inherently connected to the script. While it dominated the entire Near East for
more than a thousand years, it lost that power later on. But that did not mean
5

Introduction 5

that its presence was not acknowledged or inconsequential. When competing,

less encompassing systems emerged, they did so in dialogue with it. For a full
understanding of the literate cultural history of the ancient Near East—​which
gave rise to traditions that had a massive impact on the later world—​we need to
understand this interplay between the cosmopolitan and the vernacular.
I started to think about elements of this book when I was invited to par-
ticipate at a conference the Center for Canon and Identity Formation at the
University of Copenhagen organized in 2010 and only afterward realized the
scale of the project. Throughout the subsequent decade I brought up aspects of
it to many people, whose comments influenced the final outcome without either
they or I being fully conscious of it, as all of the discussions were in informal set-
tings. I hope my friends and colleagues with whom I chatted over the years do not
feel snubbed if I do not mention them by name. Writing a book takes time and
the American Council of Learned Societies helped me find it when it enabled
me to extend a sabbatical leave in 2016–​2017 for another semester. At the same
time, my home institution, Columbia University, remained an ideal supporter of
this type of research through its leave policies and other assistance. Paradoxically
perhaps, the COVID-​19 epidemic stirred me to work hard on finishing the book,
a process whose final stages OUP’s Stefan Vranka skillfully and enthusiastically
guided. I am grateful to all people and institutions named and unnamed for their
generous help. I dedicate this book to Hector, who came into our lives right after
the manuscript was finished and tragically left us much too soon thereafter—​it
will always remind me of him.
6
7

PART I

The Babylonian Cosmopolis

The Cuneiform Sign

In those days the lands of Šubur and Hamazi, twin-​tongued Sumer—​the

great country of princely order—​, Akkad—​the country that has every-
thing befitting—​, and the land of Martu—​where one lies in green pas-
tures—​, the whole universe of people entrusted to him, addressed the god
Enlil in a single language.
Back then, because of the contests between lords, princes and kings,
Enki—​because of the contests between lords, princes and kings, Enki—​,
the lord of abundance, who speaks the truth, the wise lord who looks after
the land, the leader of the gods, chosen for his wisdom, the lord of Eridu,
put foreign languages in their mouths, while the language of mankind had
been one.

These words written on a clay tablet sometime in the early centuries of the sec-
ond millennium bc are part of the epic we call Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta,
a story that recounts the contest between Enmerkar, the king of the southern
Babylonian city Uruk in modern Iraq, and the unnamed lord of Aratta, a city in
modern Afghanistan. While Enmerkar bluntly demanded submission, his dis-
tant rival replied with seemingly impossible requests, such as a delivery of grain
in nets. Yet Enmerkar always found solutions. The hero of the tale is the herald,
also nameless, who made seven trips carrying messages back and forth. Framing
these travels are two passages that form a pair. In the first, just quoted, the author
looked back at a golden age when everyone—​in the north and the east, in Sumer
and Akkad, and in the west—​spoke the same language. Because lords, princes,
and kings squabbled, Enki, the god of wisdom had changed that, and now there
were foreign tongues.
8

8 Before an d Aft er Babel

The counterpart to this passage comes when the herald prepared for his final
trip to present the lord of Aratta with a counterchallenge. Enmerkar’s words were
so complex that he was unable to memorize them. So Enmerkar invented writing:

Those were his words, but their content was too deep. The herald could
not repeat them as the words were too heavy. Because the herald could not
repeat them as the words were too heavy the lord of Kulab (that is, Uruk)
patted some clay and placed the words on it as if it were a seal. Before that
day no one put words on clay. Now, when the sun rose on that day, it was
so. The lord of Kulab placed his words on clay—​so it was!1

Putting his words on clay, Enmerkar wrote cuneiform, the script also used for all
the epic’s manuscripts. With this act he outwitted his opponent, reversing the
confusion with which Enki had ended the golden age: a single system of writing
became the means of communication everywhere. And that system was cunei-
form, the script with signs made up of a combination of wedges impressed on clay.
Cuneiform is perhaps the most iconic feature of ancient Babylonian culture.
People there and throughout the Near East utilized it from the mid-​fourth millen-
nium bc to the first century ad to record a gigantic mass of writings the known
remains of which number more than a million today. They impressed the signs
on clay tablets or in wax spread onto wooden and ivory boards, carved them into
stone, engraved them in metal, and tattooed them onto the skins of people and
animals. The texts record a multitude of languages: Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite,
Hurrian, Urartian, Elamite, and others, and render what people said or some liter-
alized version of it. They all wrote cuneiform, however, and with the script’s inven-
tion it became possible once again for all the world’s people to use the same system
to address the main god of the Sumerian pantheon, Enlil.
But to those who knew cuneiform writing well it was much more than a record;
it was not secondary to speech but primary to it. As the epic states, its messages
were deeper than could be rendered in speech. Each sign had the potential to reveal
more than its first reading. It was polyvalent in that it could be pronounced differ-
ently, read as an entire word or as a syllable, substituted by other signs, and manip-
ulated in other ways. Its meaning was never fixed; on the contrary, it had to be
explored, expanded, and explained to reveal insights that were only present in the
written word, much richer than the spoken one. The cuneiform sign was not just
iconic for the way it looked but also for the intellectual value it had for the ancient
Babylonians. It was the path to truth.
When Enmerkar’s epic was composed, it was indeed the case that everyone who
wrote—​all over the world from the perspective of someone living in Babylonia—​
did so in the cuneiform script and typically in the Sumerian and Akkadian
9

The Babylonian Cosmopolis 9

languages, distinct yet like twins in their use. Sumer was indeed “twin-​tongued.”
By adopting the writing system, people from all over the Near East became part
of Babylonia’s world and its intellectual practices. They contributed to them by
expanding the procedures within new cultural spheres and for different languages
and thus, together with their colleagues in Babylonia, established a truly cosmo-
politan system. Describing and analyzing this cosmopolis is the subject of Part I of
this book.

Map I.1 The ancient Near East.

10
1

Reading Gilgameš in the

Zagros Mountains
The Eighteenth Century bc

On September 6, 1884, the 49-​year-​old Christian clergyman-​scholar and edi-

tor of a religious newspaper, William Hayes Ward, set out from New York on an
expedition to southern Iraq to identify an archaeological site that the Americans
could explore there. His travels took him through London, Paris, Munich,
Vienna, Budapest, and Constantinople to meet with scholars and study collec-
tions of antiquities before he entered the world of the former ancient Near East
itself by crossing southern Turkey and northern Iraq, and he reached Baghdad
on New Year’s Eve. On the road he saw with envy what the famous British and
French explorers Layard, Botta, and Place had unearthed in Nineveh, Kalhu, and
Dur-​Šarrukin. He pushed on farther south than those Assyrian capitals, however,
despite warnings of the dangers he would face—​and once a herd of wild boars did
block his expedition’s path—​and that Ottoman Turkish government control was
virtually absent there. He wanted to reach the four oldest cities of Babylonia, if
not the world, according to c­ hapter 10 of the book of Genesis, based on a transla-
tion then in standard use: Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar.
Following Henry Rawlinson, he identified the last city with Niffer, a vast set of
mounds, which he mistakenly claimed no archaeologist had previously touched,
and after he returned to New York on June 20, 1885, he urged his colleagues
and financial sponsors to excavate the site as America’s entry into Near Eastern
archaeology. His fundraising efforts were successful: in 1888 the University of
Pennsylvania started work there, which lasted until 1900—​between 1949 and
1990 the University of Pennsylvania and the Oriental Institute of the University
of Chicago followed up the early excavations with 19 further seasons. The site
turned out to be a goldmine, providing rich documentation on an important

Before and After Babel. Marc Van De Mieroop, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197634660.003.0002
12

12 Before an d Aft er Babel

southern Mesopotamian city from the sixth millennium bc to the 8th century
ad. The modern name Niffer or Nuffar still preserves its ancient designation,
Nibru in Sumerian, Nippuru in Akkadian. I will refer to it here as Nippur, fol-
lowing usual scholarly practice.1

Schooling at Nippur
Among the tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets and fragments the archaeolo-
gists found at Nippur over the many seasons of excavations were thousands from
the 18th century bc that contain literary and scholarly writings. The early mem-
bers of the project had a vicious debate—​masking major personality clashes and
a struggle for control over a new scholarly discipline—​over whether or not these
constituted a temple library, a collection of literature and scholarship like the
one of King Assurbanipal the British had discovered in Nineveh. Today every-
one agrees they are the products of schooling, which in the first centuries of the
second millennium bc, a period we refer to as Old Babylonian, took place in pri-
vate residences. Sometimes the students went to the houses of priests and other
educated people; at other times it seems that tutors came to the students. The
teachers were otherwise engaged in business and administration, and it was their
skills as writers that they passed on. When they were priests, for example, they
were the members of the temple staff who kept the accounts—​priesthood was
not just a cultic activity; it involved practical tasks such as the administration of
the temple’s assets. The type of education they provided was essentially home-
schooling probably for some of their own children as well as a few others from the
neighborhood. They taught young boys and some girls how to read and write by
copying out a curriculum of increasingly complicated scholarly and literary texts
in the Sumerian language, which was no longer spoken at the time. The num-
ber of manuscripts from Nippur is gigantic and dominates the record we have of
Sumerian literature of the era. Some 7,000 items exist, making up more than 80%
of the total number of Sumerian literary texts from all sites in the Old Babylonian
period known today. In one house, some 1,300 literary manuscripts and school
tablets were discovered. Even if many of them contain brief extracts only, almost
every modern reconstruction of a work of Sumerian literature relies on Nippur
evidence, which most modern scholars take to have been the dominant tradition.
Nippur versions are often seen as the standard ones, and when those from else-
where show variants, they are considered to be inferior.2
The students started out learning to impress cuneiform signs into the clay and
then wrote out groups of simple signs with the same consonant and the three
vowels distinguished in writing: tu, ta, ti; bu, ba, bi; and so on. They progressed to
the copying of passages from word lists and from lists of personal names, and then
13

Reading Gilgameš in the Zagros Mountains 13

wrote out model contracts and short proverbs, their first introduction to com-
plete sentences. After that elementary stage they reproduced a standard sequence
of Sumerian literary works starting with a group of four hymns: three to kings
and one to the goddess of writing, Nisaba. Modern scholars refer to them as the
Tetrad. The royal hymns were composed in the 20th and 19th centuries and hon-
ored three rulers of the city of Isin, which early in those centuries was politically
the most powerful in Babylonia. By the mid-​18th century the city had long lost its
leading status in the region, but that was irrelevant to the students, who wrote out
praises to these former kings as wise, just, and efficient. This approach to learning
was continued in copying out ten literary compositions—​modern scholars call
them the Decad. The corpus started out with two hymns of praise to kings of the
past: Šulgi, the greatest ruler of the 21st century who had unified Babylonia and
extended its political influence far into neighboring regions (r. 2092–​2045; Šulgi
A) and Lipit-​Ištar of Isin (r. 1936–​1926; Lipit-​Ištar A), already known to students
from the Tetrad. The sequence continued with a Hymn to the hoe, a play on the
syllable “al,” the Sumerian word for this agricultural tool; three hymns to major
deities and their temples; two mythological texts concerning the great gods Enki
and Inana; a hymn to a minor goddess, Nungal; and finally a Sumerian tale of
Gilgameš and Enkidu’s encounter with the monster Huwawa. All the composi-
tions of the Decad were between 100 and 200 lines in length, and we know them
from scores of manuscripts mostly produced by students, roughly 80 of them for
each text. Afterward a wide variety of other Sumerian literary texts were taught,
including literary letters, hymns, and other genres.3
Why were these texts selected? Pedagogical reasons certainly played a role,
and an analysis of the hymn to king Lipit-​Ištar of the Tetrad demonstrated how
it taught basic features of the Sumerian verbal system, elementary sentence struc-
ture, and the stylistic parallelism that characterized much Sumerian literature
(Lipit-​Ištar B). By the time students reached the end of the Decad, they were
expected to have mastered the intricacies of Sumerian grammar and vocabu-
lary. How long the process took is difficult to estimate. Sumerian was just one
of the subjects the students learned—​they also studied music, mathematics, and
surveying—​and as instruction was a private affair with educated men (and prob-
ably some women) teaching small groups of students, we cannot assume they
all went at the same pace. We know that teachers varied in their choice of texts,
although they all selected them from the same corpus. How did instruction hap-
pen in practice? Many modern scholars think that much oral explanation and
recitation was involved. Students may have written out texts that were read aloud
to them, or they did so from memory. There are many examples of school tablets,
however, that contain the teacher’s written paradigm on one side and the stu-
dent’s on the other. When students penned down lists of Sumerian words early
14

14 Before an d Aft er Babel

on in their training, did the teacher translate those and explain why they were
grouped together? That Akkadian was more familiar to the students is clear from
the fact that some texts have short translation notes in that language inserted
into the Sumerian sentences (we call them glosses). It seems likely that not all
students reached the same level, and only the Nippur schools may have taught the
most advanced and extensive curriculum. The poetic works were of little use to
people who ended up writing out standard contracts and accounts; but in mod-
ern times, too, the literature students read in high school has no practical benefit
for most careers. And instruction in other genres of writing took place as well,
albeit in much less standardized fashion. We find multiple copies of Akkadian
letters, for example, which were more functional items in the education of a
scribe. When were these taught, however? They seem not to have been part of
the core curriculum.4
School exercises dominate the manuscript record we have today of Babylonia’s
literature and scholarship in the first centuries of the second millennium bc,
which does give a particular slant to our perception of these writings. It is clear
that the choice of texts was rooted in traditions that went back to the beginning
of writing in Babylonia. An important part of education was the learning of word
lists, a genre modern scholars refer to as lexical texts, which were developed at
the same time as the cuneiform script itself in the late fourth millennium bc.
They recorded words in the Sumerian language in sequences that were grouped
together following various principles of similarity: semantic connections and
resemblances in sound and in the shape of the cuneiform signs used to write them
out. A multitude of lexical lists is preserved from the Old Babylonian period,
and they were part of every level of scribal training, from the most basic when
students learned simple expressions to the very advanced when they explored eso-
teric values of signs and words. A remarkable aspect of this corpus is that it still
included works that had been created 1,500 years earlier preserving the original
order and organization of the entries. The prime example of this was a list of pro-
fessional designations which had been the most prominent in the earliest lexical
corpus known to us from the city of Uruk around 3400 bc and which through-
out the third millennium scribes in Babylonia, and at times in Syria, continued to
reproduce. In the early second millennium many terms in this text were outdated,
but scholars and some advanced students still wrote them out in the sequence
established long before. Those who studied it must have known that they were
heirs to a very old tradition.5
Much more pragmatic in scribal education was the study of legal and
administrative terminology—​after all, most students went on to write docu-
ments using such language later in life. Cuneiform writing was invented for
administrative purposes and 90% of the earliest preserved tablets record
15

Reading Gilgameš in the Zagros Mountains 15

(a) (b)

Figure 1.1 Babylonian school tablet from the early second millennium. On small lentil-​
shaped tablets like this one, some 10 cm in diameter, students learned to write Sumerian
cuneiform by replicating on the reverse (b) the example the teacher had written out on
the obverse (a). Here the exercise was to copy out three times the name of the god Ura.
(MMA 86.11.251. Image in public domain)

transactions in a centralized temple organization. The formulation of such

texts and the areas of activity they encompassed had much changed over the
centuries, but still at the start of the second millennium they were mostly writ-
ten in Sumerian, and students had to acquire the vocabulary of this language
which was no longer spoken. Akkadian, the language most of them proba-
bly used in daily interactions, became more prominent in writing over time,
however, especially in a crucial tool for long-​distance communication, episto-
lary writing. Not only officials of state and other public institutions but also
private entrepreneurs and others wrote letters for which they probably often
engaged professional scribes, although several of them were literate as well. It
is remarkable how poorly attested the teaching of such writing is in the school
material preserved to us.6
The bulk of the writings students copied out was made up of literary texts
entirely in the Sumerian language. Many of these may have been composed in
the late third millennium—​the hymn to King Šulgi of Ur, for example—​and may
have become part of the accepted school curriculum at that time. There is a pas-
sage in a hymn about Šulgi in which the king boasts that he established schools
in Ur and Nippur as centers of learning so that his praises would continue to
be sung:

In the south, in Ur, I caused a House of the Wisdom of the goddess Nisaba
to spring up in sacrosanct ground for the writing of my hymns; up country
16

16 Before an d Aft er Babel

in Nippur I established another. May the scribe be on duty there and tran-
scribe with his hand the prayers that I instituted in the Ekur temple; and
may the singer perform, reciting from the text. The academies are never to
be altered; the places of learning shall never cease to exist. This and this
only is now my accumulated knowledge! The collected words of all the
hymns that are in my honor supersede all other formulations. By the gods
An, Enlil, Utu and Inana, it is no lie—​it is true!

Most scholars interpret this as evidence that the king, who created the highly
centralized Ur III state, established academies for the training of the scribes to
be employed in his administration. His court set up a standard curriculum that
included hymns of praise to Šulgi, both to teach the Sumerian language and in
order to indoctrinate the bureaucrats, who should remain alert to the fact that
their careers depended on the king. The rulers of the first leading dynasty of the
Old Babylonian period from the city of Isin continued the practice, adding new
hymns of praise to the curriculum (to kings Lipit-​Ištar, Iddin-​Dagan, and Enlil-​
bani). It was only after the 19th century that state-​run education devolved into
the hands of private teachers who maintained the core elements of the curriculum
but adapted it to their needs and personal tastes. Even if the centralized control
of instruction may have been a figment of Šulgi’s imagination, it is certain that
throughout Babylonia scribal education was based not only on the same prin-
ciples of copying mainly Sumerian texts but also on the same corpus of texts that
must have been regarded as good pedagogical tools. We can observe that teach-
ers in different towns used somewhat different basic texts, but they chose them
from a common curriculum, which continued to be in use throughout the Old
Babylonian period. The power of tradition seems to have stimulated this continu-
ity. No central authority—​palace or temple—​coordinated schooling.7

A Library at Meturan
In any society, school books do not necessarily reflect what intellectuals read, and
one of the frustrating outcomes of the practice that literate adults tutored stu-
dents privately is that we do not know where the educational material ends and
where works of higher learning start. All the houses excavated at Nippur and Ur
that contained literature and scholarly texts also had remains of student exercises.
This situation has led to the perception that all preserved works from the Old
Babylonian period derive from a school setting. That this was not the case is sug-
gested by the find of a library belonging to active exorcists, not in the Babylonian
heartland, but on its outer fringes in the lower Zagros Mountains. The house that
held the library was discovered at the Iraqi site of Tell Haddad in the early 1980s,
17

Reading Gilgameš in the Zagros Mountains 17

and because neither the archaeology nor the epigraphic finds are fully published
so far, we do not yet know all the details of the collection. But the information
available today already gives a good idea of the contents and character of this
library, which shows a remarkable penetration of Sumerian literature and schol-
arship in the early second-​millennium Babylonian world. Tell Haddad together
with the adjacent site of Tell es-​Sib made up the ancient town of Meturan, stra-
tegically located on the Diyala where the river becomes navigable, some 200 km
northeast of modern Baghdad. The town was not large; its archaeological remains
take up some 12 hectares, while those of Nippur in the same period occupied 150
hectares and those of Ur 60 hectares. Meturan became part of the kingdom of
Ešnunna in the mid-​19th century, which itself fell prey to Hammurabi of Babylon
in 1762. Probably the latter’s military campaign laid waste to the town, and the
conflagration it caused sealed the clay tablets in the ruins and thus preserved
them for us. The number of tablets excavated at various locations in Meturan is
remarkably high for such a small town, some 1,000 in total, by far mostly legal
and economic documents. Among them was a collection of literary and scholarly
texts discovered in a single house. The economic documents found with them
reveal the names of some of the residents: one Bēlšunu, son of Lu-​Lisina and
husband of Bēltani, and one Lisinakam, possibly his cousin, are prominent in the
tablets found in one part of the house (rooms 8 and 10). A Zimri-​Addu appears in
the unpublished texts from another room (30). None of the residents is identified
professionally, but the contents of the literary and scholarly texts found in both
areas show that those who consulted them were exorcists. The tablets of rooms 8
and 10 all contained material to be used in magic rituals, while in room 30 such
texts were kept together with works of Sumerian literature that may have had spe-
cial appeal to an exorcist. There is no clear distinction between the magical texts
from the two areas (which are also near each other in the house), and it seems that
the same people used them. They show what educated persons in a small town far
from Nippur, the intellectual center of Babylonia, read and how they dealt with
the difficult materials.8
We do not know exactly what language the people inhabiting the Diyala Valley
spoke in the early second millennium, but in the written material produced there
Akkadian dominated. A building inscription of an early ruler of Meturan, Arim-​
Lim, was written in that language, as were all official inscriptions of the kingdom
of Ešnunna, which annexed the town. Yet the magical texts from Meturan were
almost entirely written in Sumerian and often rendered that language in a unique
way, different from what was used in Babylonia’s heartland at the same time. The
spellings were what modern scholars call “phonetic,” breaking up words into indi-
vidual syllables while parallels from Nippur and other southern Babylonian sites
used single signs to render them. The choice of Meturan’s writers was not the
18

18 Before an d Aft er Babel

result of incompetence, however. They were aware that each cuneiform sign had
multiple readings, that the same syllable could be written with various signs, and
that the graphic elements in signs could accentuate particular ideas, and often
they played around with those principles to add meaning to the written text.
A simple example is their writing the name of the goddess of grain Ašnan syllabi-
cally as še-​na, the first element of which, še, was the sign for grain. Another may
be the use of the cuneiform sign for “canal,” íd, to render the verb “to irrigate,” a
dè. Other deviations from spellings we encounter in the Nippur material suggest
that the writers heard and read Sumerian words and wrote them down in unorth-
odox ways. These often confuse the modern Sumerologist trained in the reading
of Nippur manuscripts. The editors of the Meturan texts have referred to them as
“graphies presque sauvages,” but this assessment is too negative. The peculiarities
show that the scribes at Meturan truly engaged with the texts. The written format
of the words was meaningful to them, and they aimed to enrich the material with
the variants they introduced.9
The tablets contained incantations that were to be pronounced in Sumerian.
One of them—​unusual because it also included an apotropaic formula in
Akkadian—​had two short Sumerian sections that were written as if in short-
hand, giving the exorcist an aide-​mémoire to recite the full spell. This particular
manuscript was poorly written, but most of the tablets with magical spells from
Meturan were carefully produced, regularly large in size with multiple columns
on each side. They were not at all the work of amateurs or imitators. And the
knowledge of Sumerian to the extent that such works could be created was not
limited to one person in the town. An analysis of the details of spelling shows
that different hands wrote parallel manuscripts. The scribes were probably the
men and women who performed the rituals and spoke the spells. The Akkadian
passage in the unusual text mentioned before contains the first-​person statement,
“Let me cast a spell upon myself, let me enchant with a spell.”10 The exorcists’
concern was to protect farmers against threats to their fields and crops: vermin,
scorpions, invading armies, evil spirits, and so on. The agricultural focus of their
work probably also explains why two manuscripts of a text modern scholars call
The Farmer’s Instructions were found at Meturan. It was part of Sumerian wisdom
literature of the Old Babylonian period and is attested in numerous sources from
Nippur, and fewer from other sites. The Meturan version follows that text but
renders many of its words with unique spellings.
The magical material was most likely used in practice by active exorcists, and
it shows how educated people at Meturan knew the Sumerian language and the
intricacies of the cuneiform writing system to record it. The spells they uttered
had a long recorded history in Babylonia proper, where they were most likely
composed. They were brought as efficacious apotropaic formulae to the upper
19

Reading Gilgameš in the Zagros Mountains 19

Diyala Valley, written and to be recited in Sumerian, a language no one there

ever spoke in other contexts. The recipients in Meturan copied the texts but not
slavishly. They knew Sumerian and the writing system well enough to alter the
spellings of the texts, not always to make them easier to read but to add to their
meaning. The people who did so were probably more familiar with Akkadian
in daily use but maintained the Sumerian versions of the spells, as did their col-
leagues in Babylonia proper. Only rarely did they use Akkadian in this material.
One of the manuscripts mentioned before had an Akkadian passage, and two
hemerologies (that is, lists of actions to take or avoid on specific days) found at
Meturan were interlinear bilinguals with phonetic Sumerian and Akkadian. Two
brief additional texts—​one medical, the other probably a fable—​were also writ-
ten in Akkadian. They show that literary creativity in that language was accept-
able, but it was of marginal importance when compared to working in Sumerian.
The texts discussed so far seem to have been part of a professional library for
specialists who were considered capable of protecting a community of farmers
from threats to their livelihood. They did so with esoteric rituals and by pronounc-
ing sentences in a language almost certainly none of their customers understood.
They were participants in a Babylonian literate culture that they fully mastered
and could develop as they wished. Their interests were not only pragmatic, how-
ever. In one area of the house (room 30) the magical material was kept together
with a rich collection of Sumerian literature. It shows an advanced knowledge of
that literature, with a selection of texts seemingly inspired by the owners’ pro-
fessional interests. The texts they read were concerned with the issues of death
and the hereafter, and the protection against danger, which were explored with
stories regarding two mythological characters: Gilgameš and Adapa. Four of the
five known Sumerian tales about Gilgameš were found at Meturan, all but one of
them in duplicate manuscripts. The selection of texts was not arbitrary, it seems,
and the scribe writing them out established a set sequence in the tales, a concept
that we do not find elsewhere until the Akkadian epic of Gilgameš was composed
later in the Old Babylonian period. Two of the Sumerian tales dealt with death,
and two others with the hero’s battles against monsters. Although all of the man-
uscripts from Meturan were written with the standard Sumerian orthography
known from other Babylonian sources, they can have considerable differences
with these other versions changing individual phrases but not the overall content
and intent of the stories.11
The two tales on death involve Gilgameš himself and his friend and compan-
ion Enkidu. The first, The Death of Gilgameš, was not part of the school curricu-
lum at Nippur, where the text is attested in relatively few manuscripts. It is thus
surprising that at least three copies appeared at Meturan, two in the house of the
exorcists, one from elsewhere in the town, and they show substantial differences
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 CHAPTER XI.
THE KNOWLEDGE WHICH COMES THROUGH FAITH THE SUREST OF ALL.

But the knowledge of those who think themselves wise, whether

the barbarian sects or the philosophers among the Greeks,
according to the apostle, “puffeth up.”[102] But that knowledge, which
is the scientific demonstration of what is delivered according to the
true philosophy, is founded on faith. Now, we may say that it is that
process of reason which, from what is admitted, procures faith in
what is disputed. Now, faith being twofold—the faith of knowledge
and that of opinion—nothing prevents us from calling demonstration
twofold, the one resting on knowledge, the other on opinion; since
also knowledge and foreknowledge are designated as twofold, that
which is essentially accurate, that which is defective. And is not the
demonstration, which we possess, that alone which is true, as being
supplied out of the divine Scriptures, the sacred writings, and out of
the “God-taught wisdom,” according to the apostle? Learning, then,
is also obedience to the commandments, which is faith in God. And
faith is a power of God, being the strength of the truth. For example,
it is said, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard, ye shall remove the
mountain.”[103] And again, “According to thy faith let it be to
thee.”[104] And one is cured, receiving healing by faith; and the dead
is raised up in consequence of the power of one believing that he
would be raised. The demonstration, however, which rests on
opinion is human, and is the result of rhetorical arguments or
dialectic syllogisms. For the highest demonstration, to which we
have alluded, produces intelligent faith by the adducing and opening
up of the Scriptures to the souls of those who desire to learn; the
result of which is knowledge (gnosis). For if what is adduced in order
to prove the point at issue is assumed to be true, as being divine and
prophetic, manifestly the conclusion arrived at by inference from it
will consequently be inferred truly; and the legitimate result of the
demonstration will be knowledge. When, then, the memorial of the
celestial and divine food was commanded to be consecrated in the
golden pot, it was said, “The omer was the tenth of the three
measures.”[105] For in ourselves, by the three measures are
indicated three criteria; sensation of objects of sense, speech,—of
spoken names and words, and the mind,—of intellectual objects.
The Gnostic, therefore, will abstain from errors in speech, and
thought, and sensation, and action, having heard “that he that looks
so as to lust hath committed adultery;”[106] and reflecting that
“blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God;”[107] and
knowing this, “that not what enters into the mouth defileth, but that it
is what cometh forth by the mouth that defileth the man. For out of
the heart proceed thoughts.”[108] This, as I think, is the true and just
measure according to God, by which things capable of measurement
are measured, the decad which is comprehensive of man; which
summarily the three above-mentioned measures pointed out. There
are body and soul, the five senses, speech, the power of
reproduction—the intellectual or the spiritual faculty, or whatever you
choose to call it. And we must, in a word, ascending above all the
others, stop at the mind; as also certainly in the universe overleaping
the nine divisions, the first consisting of the four elements put in one
place for equal interchange; and then the seven wandering stars and
the one that wanders not, the ninth, to the perfect number, which is
above the nine,[109] and the tenth division, we must reach to the
knowledge of God, to speak briefly, desiring the Maker after the
creation. Wherefore the tithes both of the ephah and of the sacrifices
were presented to God; and the paschal feast began with the tenth
day, being the transition from all trouble, and from all objects of
sense.
The Gnostic is therefore fixed by faith; but the man who thinks
himself wise touches not what pertains to the truth, moved as he is
by unstable and wavering impulses. It is therefore reasonably
written, “Cain went forth from the face of God, and dwelt in the land
of Naid, over against Eden.” Now Naid is interpreted commotion, and
Eden delight; and Faith, and Knowledge, and Peace are delight,
from which he that has disobeyed is cast out. But he that is wise in
his own eyes will not so much as listen to the beginning of the divine
commandments; but, as if his own teacher, throwing off the reins,
plunges voluntarily into a billowy commotion, sinking down to mortal
and created things from the uncreated knowledge, holding various
opinions at various times. “Those who have no guidance fall like
leaves.”[110]
Reason, the governing principle, remaining unmoved and guiding
the soul, is called its pilot. For access to the Immutable is obtained
by a truly immutable means. Thus Abraham was stationed before the
Lord, and approaching spoke.[111] And to Moses it is said, “But do
thou stand there with me.”[112] And the followers of Simon wish to be
assimilated in manners to the standing form which they adore. Faith,
therefore, and the knowledge of the truth, render the soul, which
makes them its choice, always uniform and equable. For congenial
to the man of falsehood is shifting, and change, and turning away, as
to the Gnostic are calmness, and rest, and peace. As, then,
philosophy has been brought into evil repute by pride and self-
conceit, so also gnosis by false gnosis called by the same name; of
which the apostle writing says, “O Timothy, keep that which is
committed to thy trust, avoiding the profane and vain babblings and
oppositions of science (gnosis) falsely so called; which some
professing, have erred concerning the faith.”[113]
Convicted by this utterance, the heretics reject the Epistles to
Timothy. Well, then, if the Lord is the truth, and wisdom, and power
of God, as in truth He is, it is shown that the real Gnostic is he that
knows Him, and His Father by Him. For his sentiments are the same
with him who said, “The lips of the righteous know high things.”[114]
 CHAPTER XII.
TWOFOLD FAITH.

Faith as also Time being double, we shall find virtues in pairs both
dwelling together. For memory is related to past time, hope to future.
We believe that what is past did, and that what is future will take
place. And, on the other hand, we love, persuaded by faith that the
past was as it was, and by hope expecting the future. For in
everything love attends the Gnostic, who knows one God. “And,
behold, all things which He created were very good.”[115] He both
knows and admires. Godliness adds length of life; and the fear of the
Lord adds days. As, then, the days are a portion of life in its
progress, so also fear is the beginning of love, becoming by
development faith, then love. But it is not as I fear and hate a wild
beast (since fear is twofold) that I fear the father, whom I fear and
love at once. Again, fearing lest I be punished, I love myself in
assuming fear. He who fears to offend his father, loves himself.
Blessed then is he who is found possessed of faith, being, as he is,
composed of love and fear. And faith is power in order to salvation,
and strength to eternal life. Again, prophecy is foreknowledge; and
knowledge the understanding of prophecy; being the knowledge of
those things known before by the Lord who reveals all things.
The knowledge, then, of those things which have been predicted
shows a threefold result,—either one that has happened long ago, or
exists now, or about to be. Then the extremes[116] either of what is
accomplished or of what is hoped for fall under faith; and the present
action furnishes persuasive arguments for the confirmation of both
the extremes. For if, prophecy being one, one part is accomplishing
and another is fulfilled; hence the truth, both what is hoped for and
what is past is confirmed. For it was first present; then it became
past to us; so that the belief of what is past is the apprehension of a
past event, and the hope which is future the apprehension of a future
event.
 And not only the Platonists, but the Stoics, say that assent is in
our own power. All opinion then, and judgment, and supposition, and
knowledge, by which we live and have perpetual intercourse with the
human race, is an assent; which is nothing else than faith. And
unbelief being defection from faith, shows both assent and faith to be
possessed of power; for non-existence cannot be called privation.
And if you consider the truth, you will find man naturally misled so as
to give assent to what is false, though possessing the resources
necessary for belief in the truth. “The virtue, then, that encloses the
church in its grasp,” as the Shepherd says,[117] “is Faith, by which
the elect of God are saved; and that which acts the man is Self-
restraint. And these are followed by Simplicity, Knowledge,
Innocence, Decorum, Love,” and all these are the daughters of Faith.
And again, “Faith leads the way, fear upbuilds, and love perfects.”
Accordingly he[118] says, the Lord is to be feared in order to
edification, but not the devil to destruction. And again, the works of
the Lord—that is, His commandments—are to be loved and done;
but the works of the devil are to be dreaded and not done. For the
fear of God trains and restores to love; but the fear of the works of
the devil has hatred dwelling along with it. The same also says “that
repentance is high intelligence. For he that repents of what he did,
no longer does or says as he did. But by torturing himself for his
sins, he benefits his soul. Forgiveness of sins is therefore different
from repentance; but both show what is in our power.”
 CHAPTER XIII.
ON FIRST AND SECOND REPENTANCE.

He, then, who has received the forgiveness of sins ought to sin no
more. For, in addition to the first and only repentance from sins (this
is from the previous sins in the first and heathen life—I mean that in
ignorance), there is forthwith proposed to those who have been
called, the repentance which cleanses the seat of the soul from
transgressions, that faith may be established. And the Lord, knowing
the heart, and foreknowing the future, foresaw both the fickleness of
man and the craft and subtlety of the devil from the first, from the
beginning; how that, envying man for the forgiveness of sins, he
would present to the servants of God certain causes of sins; skilfully
working mischief, that they might fall together with himself.
Accordingly, being very merciful, He has vouchsafed, in the case of
those who, though in faith, fall into any transgression, a second
repentance; so that should any one be tempted after his calling,
overcome by force and fraud, he may receive still a repentance not
to be repented of. “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received
the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for
sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery
indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.”[119] But continual
and successive repentings for sins differ nothing from the case of
those who have not believed at all, except only in their
consciousness that they do sin. And I know not which of the two is
worst, whether the case of a man who sins knowingly, or of one who,
after having repented of his sins, transgresses again. For in the
process of proof sin appears on each side,—the sin which in its
commission is condemned by the worker of the iniquity, and that of
the man who, foreseeing what is about to be done, yet puts his hand
to it as a wickedness. And he who perchance gratifies himself in
anger and pleasure, gratifies himself in he knows what; and he who,
repenting of that in which he gratified himself, by rushing again into
pleasure, is near neighbour to him who has sinned wilfully at first.
For one, who does again that of which he has repented, and
condemning what he does, performs it willingly.
 He, then, who from among the Gentiles and from that old life has
betaken himself to faith, has obtained forgiveness of sins once. But
he who has sinned after this, on his repentance, though he obtain
pardon, ought to fear, as one no longer washed to the forgiveness of
sins. For not only must the idols which he formerly held as gods, but
the works also of his former life, be abandoned by him who has been
“born again, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,”[120] but in the
Spirit; which consists in repenting by not giving way to the same
fault. For frequent repentance and readiness to change easily from
want of training, is the practice of sin again. The frequent asking of
forgiveness, then, for those things in which we often transgress, is
the semblance of repentance, not repentance itself. “But the
righteousness of the blameless cuts straight paths,”[121] says the
Scripture. And again, “The righteousness of the innocent will make
his way right.”[122] Nay, “as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord
pitieth them that fear Him.”[123] David writes, “They who sow,” then,
“in tears, shall reap in joy;”[124] those, namely, who confess in
penitence. “For blessed are all those that fear the Lord.”[125] You see
the corresponding blessing in the gospel. “Fear not,” it is said, “when
a man is enriched, and when the glory of his house is increased:
because when he dieth he shall leave all, and his glory shall not
descend after him.”[126] “But I in Thy mercy will enter into Thy house.
I will worship toward Thy holy temple, in Thy fear: Lord, lead me in
Thy righteousness.”[127] Appetite is then the movement of the mind
to or from something.[128] Passion is an excessive appetite
exceeding the measures of reason, or appetite unbridled and
disobedient to the word. Passions, then, are a perturbation of the
soul contrary to nature, in disobedience to reason. But revolt and
distraction and disobedience are in our own power, as obedience is
in our power. Wherefore voluntary actions are judged. But should
one examine each one of the passions, he will find them irrational
impulses.
 CHAPTER XIV.
HOW A THING MAY BE INVOLUNTARY.

What is involuntary is not matter for judgment. But this is twofold,

—what is done in ignorance, and what is done through necessity.
For how will you judge concerning those who are said to sin in
involuntary modes? For either one knew not himself, as Cleomenes
and Athamas, who were mad; or the thing which he does, as
Æschylus, who divulged the mysteries on the stage, who, being tried
in the Areopagus, was absolved on his showing that he had not been
initiated. Or one knows not what is done, as he who has let off his
antagonist, and slain his domestic instead of his enemy; or that by
which it is done, as he who, in exercising with spears having buttons
on them, has killed some one in consequence of the spear throwing
off the button; or knows not the manner how, as he who has killed
his antagonist in the stadium, for it was not for his death but for
victory that he contended; or knows not the reason why it is done, as
the physician gave a salutary antidote and killed, for it was not for
this purpose that he gave it, but to save. The law at that time
punished him who had killed involuntarily, as e.g. him who was
subject involuntarily to gonorrhœa, but not equally with him who did
so voluntarily. Although he also shall be punished as for a voluntary
action, if one transfer the affection to the truth. For, in reality, he that
cannot contain the generative word is to be punished; for this is an
irrational passion of the soul approaching garrulity. “The faithful man
chooses to conceal things in his spirit.”[129] Things, then, that
depend on choice are subjects for judgment. “For the Lord searcheth
the hearts and reins.”[130] “And he that looketh so as to lust”[131] is
judged. Wherefore it is said, “Thou shalt not lust.”[132] And “this
people honoureth me with their lips,” it is said, “but their heart is far
from me.”[133] For God has respect to the very thought, since Lot’s
wife, who had merely voluntarily turned towards worldly wickedness,
He left a senseless mass, rendering her a pillar of salt, and fixed her
so that she advanced no further, not as a stupid and useless image,
but to season and salt him who has the power of spiritual perception.
 CHAPTER XV.
ON THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF VOLUNTARY ACTIONS, AND THE SINS
THENCE PROCEEDING.

What is voluntary is either what is by desire, or what is by choice,

or what is of intention. Closely allied to each other are these things—
sin, mistake, crime. It is sin, for example, to live luxuriously and
licentiously; a misfortune, to wound one’s friend in ignorance, taking
him for an enemy; and crime, to violate graves or commit sacrilege.
Sinning arises from being unable to determine what ought to be
done, or being unable to do it; as doubtless one falls into a ditch
either through not knowing, or through inability to leap across
through feebleness of body. But application to the training of
ourselves, and subjection to the commandments, is in our own
power; with which if we will have nothing to do, by abandoning
ourselves wholly to lust, we shall sin, nay rather, wrong our own soul.
For the noted Laius says in the tragedy:
“None of these things of which you admonish me have escaped me;
But notwithstanding that I am in my senses, Nature compels me;”

i.e. his abandoning himself to passion. Medea, too, herself cries on

the stage:
“And I am aware what evils I am to perpetrate,
But passion is stronger than my resolutions.”[134]

Further, not even Ajax is silent; but, when about to kill himself, cries:
“No pain gnaws the soul of a free man like dishonour.
Thus do I suffer; and the deep stain of calamity
Ever stirs me from the depths, agitated
By the bitter stings of rage.”[135]

Anger made these the subjects of tragedy, and lust made ten
thousand others—Phædra, Anthia, Eriphyle,
“Who took the precious gold for her dear husband.”
For another play represents Thrasonides of the comic drama as
saying:
“A worthless wench made me her slave.”

Mistake is a sin contrary to calculation; and voluntary sin is crime

(ἀδικία); and crime is voluntary wickedness. Sin, then, is on my part
voluntary. Wherefore says the apostle, “Sin shall not have dominion
over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”[136]
Addressing those who have believed, he says, “For by His stripes we
were healed.”[137] Mistake is the involuntary action of another
towards me, while a crime (ἀδικία) alone is voluntary, whether my act
or another’s. These differences of sins are alluded to by the
Psalmist, when he calls those blessed whose iniquities (ἀνομίας)
God hath blotted out, and whose sins (ἁμαρτίας) He hath covered.
Others He does not impute, and the rest He forgives. For it is written,
“Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are
covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin,
and in whose mouth there is no fraud.”[138] This blessedness came
on those who had been chosen by God through Jesus Christ our
Lord. For “love hides the multitude of sins.”[139] And they are blotted
out by Him “who desireth the repentance rather than the death of a
sinner.”[140] And those are not reckoned that are not the effect of
choice; “for he who has lusted has already committed adultery,”[141]
it is said. And the illuminating Word forgives sins: “And in that time,
saith the Lord, they shall seek for the iniquity of Israel, and it shall
not exist; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found.”[142]
“For who is like me? and who shall stand before my face?”[143] You
see the one God declared good, rendering according to desert, and
forgiving sins. John, too, manifestly teaches the differences of sins,
in his larger epistle, in these words: “If any man see his brother sin a
sin that is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life: for
these that sin not unto death,” he says. For “there is a sin unto
death: I do not say that one is to pray for it. All unrighteousness is
sin; and there is a sin not unto death.”[144]
 David, too, and Moses before David, show the knowledge of the
three precepts in the following words: “Blessed is the man who walks
not in the counsel of the ungodly;” as the fishes go down to the
depths in darkness; for those which have not scales, which Moses
prohibits touching, feed at the bottom of the sea. “Nor standeth in the
way of sinners,” as those who, while appearing to fear the Lord,
commit sin, like the sow, for when hungry it cries, and when full
knows not its owner. “Nor sitteth in the chair of pestilences,” as birds
ready for prey. And Moses enjoined not to eat the sow, nor the eagle,
nor the hawk, nor the raven, nor any fish without scales. So far
Barnabas.[145] And I heard one skilled in such matters say that “the
counsel of the ungodly” was the heathen, and “the way of sinners”
the Jewish persuasion, and explain “the chair of pestilence” of
heresies. And another said, with more propriety, that the first
blessing was assigned to those who had not followed wicked
sentiments which revolt from God; the second to those who do not
remain in the wide and broad road, whether they be those who have
been brought up in the law, or Gentiles who have repented. And “the
chair of pestilences” will be the theatres and tribunals, or rather the
compliance with wicked and deadly powers, and complicity with their
deeds. “But his delight is in the law of the Lord.”[146] Peter in his
Preaching called the Lord, Law and Logos. The legislator seems to
teach differently the interpretation of the three forms of sin—
understanding by the mute fishes sins of word, for there are times in
which silence is better than speech, for silence has a safe
recompense; sins of deed, by the rapacious and carnivorous birds.
The sow delights in dirt and dung; and we ought not to have “a
conscience” that is “defiled.”[147]
Justly, therefore, the prophet says, “The ungodly are not so: but
as the chaff which the wind driveth away from the face of the earth.
Wherefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment”[148] (being
already condemned, for “he that believeth not is condemned
already”[149]), “nor sinners in the counsel of the righteous,” inasmuch
as they are already condemned, so as not to be united to those that
have lived without stumbling. “For the Lord knoweth the way of the
righteous; and the way of the ungodly shall perish.”[150]
 Again, the Lord clearly shows sins and transgressions to be in our
own power, by prescribing modes of cure corresponding to the
maladies; showing His wish that we should be corrected by the
shepherds, in Ezekiel; blaming, I am of opinion, some of them for not
keeping the commandments. “That which was enfeebled ye have not
strengthened,” and so forth, down to, “and there was none to search
out or turn away.”[151]
For “great is the joy before the Father when one sinner is
saved,”[152] saith the Lord. So Abraham was much to be praised,
because “he walked as the Lord spake to him.” Drawing from this
instance, one of the wise men among the Greeks uttered the maxim,
“Follow God.”[153] “The godly,” says Esaias, “framed wise
counsels.”[154] Now counsel is seeking for the right way of acting in
present circumstances, and good counsel is wisdom in our counsels.
And what? Does not God, after the pardon bestowed on Cain,
suitably not long after introduce Enoch, who had repented?[155]
showing that it is the nature of repentance to produce pardon; but
pardon does not consist in remission, but in remedy. An instance of
the same is the making of the calf by the people before Aaron.
Thence one of the wise men among the Greeks uttered the maxim,
“Pardon is better than punishment;” as also, “Become surety, and
mischief is at hand,” is derived from the utterance of Solomon which
says, “My son, if thou become surety for thy friend, thou wilt give
thine hand to thy enemy; for a man’s own lips are a strong snare to
him, and he is taken in the words of his own mouth.”[156] And the
saying, “Know thyself,” has been taken rather more mystically from
this, “Thou hast seen thy brother, thou hast seen thy God.”[157] Thus
also, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy
neighbour as thyself;” for it is said, “On these commandments the
law and the prophets hang and are suspended.”[158] With these also
agree the following: “These things have I spoken to you, that my joy
might be fulfilled: and this is my commandment, That ye love one
another, as I have loved you.”[159] “For the Lord is merciful and
pitiful; and gracious[160] is the Lord to all.”[161] “Know thyself” is more
clearly and often expressed by Moses, when he enjoins, “Take heed
to thyself.”[162] “By alms then, and acts of faith, sins are purged.”[163]
“And by the fear of the Lord each one departs from evil.”[164] And the
fear of the Lord is instruction and wisdom.“[165]
 CHAPTER XVI.
HOW WE ARE TO EXPLAIN THE PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE WHICH
ASCRIBE TO GOD HUMAN AFFECTIONS.

Here again arise the cavillers, who say that joy and pain are
passions of the soul: for they define joy as a rational elevation and
exultation, as rejoicing on account of what is good; and pity as pain
for one who suffers undeservedly; and that such affections are
moods and passions of the soul. But we, as would appear, do not
cease in such matters to understand the Scriptures carnally; and
starting from our own affections, interpret the will of the impassible
Deity similarly to our perturbations; and as we are capable of
hearing; so, supposing the same to be the case with the Omnipotent,
err impiously. For the Divine Being cannot be declared as it exists:
but as we who are fettered in the flesh were able to listen, so the
prophets spake to us; the Lord savingly accommodating Himself to
the weakness of men. Since, then, it is the will of God that he, who is
obedient to the commands and repents of his sins should be saved,
and we rejoice on account of our salvation, the Lord, speaking by the
prophets, appropriated our joy to Himself; as speaking lovingly in the
Gospel He says, “I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat: I was thirsty,
and ye gave me to drink. For inasmuch as ye did it to one of the
least of these, ye did it to me.”[166] As, then, He is nourished, though
not personally, by the nourishing of one whom He wishes nourished;
so He rejoices, without suffering change, by reason of him who has
repented being in joy, as He wished. And since God pities richly,
being good, and giving commands by the law and the prophets, and
more nearly still by the appearance of his Son, saving and pitying, as
was said, those who have found mercy; and properly the greater
pities the less; and a man cannot be greater than man, being by
nature man; but God in everything is greater than man; if, then, the
greater pities the less, it is God alone that will pity us. For a man is
made to communicate by righteousness, and bestows what he
received from God, in consequence of his natural benevolence and
relation, and the commands which he obeys. But God has no natural
relation to us, as the authors of the heresies will have it; neither on
the supposition of His having made us of nothing, nor on that of
having formed us from matter; since the former did not exist at all,
and the latter is totally distinct from God, unless we shall dare to say
that we are a part of Him, and of the same essence as God. And I
know not how one, who knows God, can bear to hear this when he
looks to our life, and sees in what evils we are involved. For thus it
would turn out, which it were impiety to utter, that God sinned in
[certain] portions, if the portions are parts of the whole and
complementary of the whole; and if not complementary, neither can
they be parts. But God being by nature rich in pity, in consequence
of His own goodness, cares for us, though neither portions of
Himself, nor by nature His children. And this is the greatest proof of
the goodness of God: that such being our relation to Him, and being
by nature wholly estranged, He nevertheless cares for us. For the
affection in animals to their progeny is natural, and the friendship of
kindred minds is the result of intimacy. But the mercy of God is rich
toward us, who are in no respect related to Him; I say either in our
essence or nature, or in the peculiar energy of our essence, but only
in our being the work of His will. And him who willingly, with discipline
and teaching, accepts the knowledge of the truth, He calls to
adoption, which is the greatest advancement of all. “Transgressions
catch a man; and in the cords of his own sins each one is
bound.”[167] And God is without blame. And in reality, “blessed is the
man who feareth alway through piety.”[168]
 CHAPTER XVII.
ON THE VARIOUS KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE.

As, then, Knowledge (ἐπιστημη) is an intellectual state, from

which results the act of knowing, and becomes apprehension
irrefragable by reason; so also ignorance is a receding impression,
which can be dislodged by reason. And that which is overthrown as
well as that which is elaborated by reason, is in our power. Akin to
Knowledge is experience, cognition (εἴδησις), Comprehension
(σύνεσις), perception, and Science. Cognition (εἴδησις) is the
knowledge of universals by species; and Experience is
comprehensive knowledge, which investigates the nature of each
thing. Perception (νόησις) is the knowledge of intellectual objects;
and Comprehension (σύνεσις) is the knowledge of what is
compared, or a comparison that cannot be annulled, or the faculty of
comparing the objects with which Judgment and Knowledge are
occupied, both of one and each and all that goes to make up one
reason. And Science (γνῶσις) is the knowledge of the thing in itself,
or the knowledge which harmonizes with what takes place. Truth is
the knowledge of the true; and the mental habit of truth is the
knowledge of the things which are true. Now knowledge is
constituted by the reason, and cannot be overthrown by another
reason.[169] What we do not, we do not either from not being able, or
not being willing—or both. Accordingly we don’t fly, since we neither
can nor wish; we do not swim at present, for example, since we can
indeed, but do not choose; and we are not as the Lord, since we
wish, but cannot be: “for no disciple is above his master, and it is
sufficient if we be as the master:”[170] not in essence (for it is
impossible for that, which is by adoption, to be equal in substance to
that, which is by nature); but [we are as Him] only in our[171] having
been made immortal, and our being conversant with the
contemplation of realities, and beholding the Father through what
belongs to Him.
Therefore volition takes the precedence of all; for the intellectual
powers are ministers of the Will. “Will,” it is said, “and thou shalt be
able.”[172] And in the Gnostic, Will, Judgment, and Exertion are
identical. For if the determinations are the same, the opinions and
judgments will be the same too; so that both his words, and life, and
conduct, are conformable to rule. “And a right heart seeketh
knowledge, and heareth it.” “God taught me wisdom, and I knew the
knowledge of the holy.”[173]
 CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MOSAIC LAW THE FOUNTAIN OF ALL ETHICS, AND THE SOURCE FROM
WHICH THE GREEKS DREW THEIRS.

It is then clear also that all the other virtues, delineated in Moses,
supplied the Greeks with the rudiments of the whole department of
morals. I mean valour, and temperance, and wisdom, and justice,
and endurance, and patience, and decorum, and self-restraint; and
in addition to these, piety.
But it is clear to every one that piety, which teaches to worship
and honour, is the highest and oldest cause; and the law itself
exhibits justice, and teaches wisdom, by abstinence from sensible
images, and by inviting to the Maker and Father of the universe. And
from this sentiment, as from a fountain, all intelligence increases.
“For the sacrifices of the wicked are abomination to the Lord; but the
prayers of the upright are acceptable before Him,”[174] since
“righteousness is more acceptable before God than sacrifice.” Such
also as the following we find in Isaiah: “To what purpose to me is the
multitude of your sacrifices? saith the Lord;” and the whole section.
[175] “Break every bond of wickedness; for this is the sacrifice that is

acceptable to the Lord, a contrite heart that seeks its Maker.”[176]

“Deceitful balances are abomination before God; but a just balance
is acceptable to Him.”[177] Thence Pythagoras exhorts “not to step
over the balance;” and the profession of heresies is called deceitful
righteousness; and “the tongue of the unjust shall be destroyed, but
the mouth of the righteous droppeth wisdom.”[178] “For they call the
wise and prudent worthless.”[179] But it were tedious to adduce
testimonies respecting these virtues, since the whole Scripture
celebrates them. Since, then, they define manliness to be
knowledge[180] of things formidable, and not formidable, and what is
intermediate; and temperance to be a state of mind which by
choosing and avoiding preserves the judgments of wisdom; and
conjoined with manliness is patience, which is called endurance, the
knowledge of what is bearable and what is unbearable; and
magnanimity is the knowledge which rises superior to
circumstances. With temperance also is conjoined caution, which is
avoidance in accordance with reason. And observance of the
commandments, which is the innoxious keeping of them, is the
attainment of a secure life. And there is no endurance without
manliness, nor the exercise of self-restraint without temperance. And
these virtues follow one another; and with whom are the sequences
of the virtues, with him is also salvation, which is the keeping of the
state of well-being. Rightly, therefore, in treating of these virtues, we
shall inquire into them all; for he that has one virtue gnostically, by
reason of their accompanying each other, has them all. Self-restraint
is that quality which does not overstep what appears in accordance
with right reason. He exercises self-restraint, who curbs the impulses
that are contrary to right reason, or curbs himself so as not to indulge
in desires contrary to right reason. Temperance, too, is not without
manliness; since from the commandments spring both wisdom,
which follows God who enjoins, and that which imitates the divine
character, namely righteousness; in virtue of which, in the exercise of
self-restraint, we address ourselves in purity to piety and the course
of conduct thence resulting, in conformity with God; being
assimilated to the Lord as far as is possible for us beings mortal in
nature. And this is being just and holy with wisdom; for the Divinity
needs nothing and suffers nothing; whence it is not, strictly speaking,
capable of self-restraint, for it is never subjected to perturbation, over
which to exercise control; while our nature, being capable of
perturbation, needs self-constraint, by which disciplining itself to the
need of little, it endeavours to approximate in character to the divine
nature. For the good man, standing as the boundary between an
immortal and a mortal nature, has few needs; having wants in
consequence of his body, and his birth itself, but taught by rational
self-control to want few things.
What reason is there in the law’s prohibiting a man from “wearing
woman’s clothing?”[181] Is it not that it would have us to be manly,
and to be effeminate neither in person and actions, nor in thought
and word? For it would have the man, that devotes himself to the
truth, to be masculine both in acts of endurance and patience, in life,
conduct, word, and discipline by night and by day; even if the
necessity were to occur, of witnessing by the shedding of his blood.
Again, it is said, “If any one who has newly built a house, and has
not previously inhabited it; or cultivated a newly-planted vine, and not
yet partaken of the fruit; or betrothed a virgin, and not yet married
her;”[182]—such the humane law orders to be relieved from military
service: from military reasons in the first place, lest, bent on their
desires, they turn out sluggish in war; for it is those who are
untrammelled by passion that boldly encounter perils; and from
motives of humanity, since, in view of the uncertainties of war, the
law reckoned it not right that one should not enjoy his own labours,
and another should, without bestowing pains, receive what belonged
to those who had laboured. The law seems also to point out
manliness of soul, by enacting that he who had planted should reap
the fruit, and he that built should inhabit, and he that had betrothed
should marry: for it is not vain hopes which it provides for those who
labour; according to the gnostic word: “For the hope of a good man
dead or living does not perish,”[183] says Wisdom; “I love them that
love me; and they who seek me shall find peace,”[184] and so forth.
What then? Did not the women of the Midianites, by their beauty,
seduce from wisdom into impiety, through licentiousness, the
Hebrews when making war against them? For, having seduced them
from a grave mode of life, and by their beauty ensnared them in
wanton delights, they made them insane upon idol sacrifices and
strange women; and overcome by women and by pleasure at once,
they revolted from God, and revolted from the law. And the whole
people was within a little of falling under the power of the enemy
through female stratagem, until, when they were in peril, fear by its
admonitions pulled them back. Then the survivors, valiantly
undertaking the struggle for piety, got the upper hand of their foes.
“The beginning, then, of wisdom is piety, and the knowledge of holy
things is understanding; and to know the law is the characteristic of a
good understanding.”[185] Those, then, who suppose the law to be
productive of agitating fear, are neither good at understanding the
law, nor have they in reality comprehended it; for “the fear of the
Lord causes life, but he who errs shall be afflicted with pangs which