"Enūma Elish" and Priestly Mimesis: Elite Emulation in Nascent Judaism

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes Greek characters omitted (or Cyrillic characters omitted.)) Human development depends on our tacit inclination to imitate cultural patterns modeled by others. Though this mimetic behavior is obvious when we are young, tendency to replicate our neighbor's conduct is very strong and continues throughout our lifetime. In fact, we could accurately say that mimesis is an essential ingredient in human experience. Given that tacit imitation plays such a vital role in development of human persons, it cannot be a surprise that more explicit, intentional acts of imitation are also important factors in development and perpetuation of human culture. I have in mind a phenomenon known in technical literature as elite emulation. Elite emulation often appears in colonial or imperial contexts, when peripheral social groups are oppressed and threatened, or at least feel threatened, by a larger social core.1 In these cases, it is common for peripheral cultures to seek legitimacy by symbolically imitating prestigious culture that dominates them. Doing so is always an exercise in similarity and alterity, in seeking both to imitate and to differentiate oneself from the other.2 The Cuna natives of Panama are a notable and interesting success in this regard, having preserved their distinctive identity into twenty-first century in face of European colonialism.3 A powerful image of their mimetic response to colonialism is found in Cuna dress: men are inclined to wear European attire with coats and ties, while women wear traditional dress, with their nose-rings, vivid and strikingly beautiful blouses, and head coverings. Native and foreign imagery are here juxtaposed in a powerful mechanism of cultural survival. What I would like to explore in this article is a similar expression of elite emulation found in Hebrew Bible, specifically in Priestly material of Pentateuch. On this nearly everyone will agree. One of Priestly Writer's most important textual interlocutors was non-P material in Pentateuch. This opinion is commonly held both by those who view P as supplemental and by those who view it as an originally independent composition. I have no interest in challenging this very sensible consensus, but I believe that P's intertextual relationships are more diverse and complex. This is one in a series of articles in which I will present evidence for close relationship that obtained between Hebrew Priestly Writer and literary traditions of Mesopotamia. I will argue that Priestly Writer was an avid student of ancient texts and that his anthology of Israelite tradition was deliberately shaped to follow patterns and motifs found in Mesopotamian literature. To my mind, elite emulation provides best explanation for this feature in Priestly literature. The present article focuses on an example of this mimetic phenomenon drawn from P's adaptation of Babylonian Akitu festival. I am particularly interested in way that P has used myth recited during festival, Enuma Elish, and also certain rituals used in conjunction with that myth. My argument will proceed as follows. First, I will offer a few comments about special problems and challenges that inhere in evaluations of intertextuality. My aim will not be to resolve those problems, which are in some respects intractable, but mainly to highlight them for purposes of clarity. Second, I will adduce evidence to support conclusion that important aspects of P's narrative, and also some of its rituals, were designed to mimic traditions from Mesopotamia, especially from Akitu and Enuma Elish. I will then conclude my discussion by exploring implications of my work for our understanding of P, giving special attention to still-debated question of when and to whom it was written. I. THE PROBLEM OF INTERTEXTUALITY Whether one embraces radical deconstruction of Jacques Derrida or tamer postmodernism of Hans-Georg Gadamer, there is general agreement among theorists that all texts are intertextual, that written words always draw on precedent of earlier discourse and then become fodder for future discourse. …