Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem Culture and History of the Ancient Near East
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Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem Culture and History of the Ancient Near East Founding Editor M.H.E. Weippert Editor-in-Chief Thomas Schneider Editors Eckart Frahm W. Randall Garr Baruch Halpern Theo P.J. van den Hout Irene J. Winter VOLUME 71 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/chan Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem Story, History and Historiography Edited by Isaac Kalimi and Seth Richardson LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sennacherib at the gates of Jerusalem : story, history and historiography / edited by Isaac Kalimi and Seth Richardson. pages cm. — (Culture and history of the ancient Near East ; volume 71) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-26561-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-26562-2 (e-book) 1. Sennacherib, King of Assyria, –681 B.C. 2. Jerusalem—History—Siege, 701 B.C. I. Kalimi, Isaac. II. Richardson, Seth. DS73.83.S45 2014 933’.03—dc23 2013040379 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1566-2055 ISBN 978-90-04-26561-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26562-2 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Dedicated to the blessed memory of our dear friend and colleague, Professor David Weisberg z”l, who constantly strove for justice, loved kindness, and walked humbly with God and every human being. CONTENTS The Contributors ............................................................................................. ix 1. Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem—Story, History and Historiography: An Introduction ................................................. 1 Isaac Kalimi and Seth Richardson PART ONE I WILL DEFEND THIS CITY TO SAVE IT 2. Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah: The Chronicler’s View Compared with His ‘Biblical’ Sources ................................................. 11 Isaac Kalimi 3. Cross-examining the Assyrian Witnesses to Sennacherib’s Third Campaign: Assessing the Limits of Historical Reconstruction ........................................................................................... 51 Mordechai Cogan 4. Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah: The Archaeological Perspective with an Emphasis on Lachish and Jerusalem ........... 75 David Ussishkin 5. Beyond the Broken Reed: Kushite Intervention and the Limits of l’histoire événementielle ...................................................................... 105 Jeremy Pope PART TWO THE WEAPON OF AššUR 6. Family Matters: Psychohistorical Reflections on Sennacherib and His Times ..................................................................................................... 163 Eckart Frahm viii contents 7. The Road to Judah: 701 b.c.e. in the Context of Sennacherib’s Political-Military Strategy ...................................................................... 223 Frederick Mario Fales 8. Sennacherib’s Invasion of the Levant through the Eyes of Assyrian Intelligence Services .............................................................. 249 Peter Dubovský PART THREE AFTER LIFE 9. Memories of Sennacherib in Aramaic Tradition ........................... 295 Tawny L. Holm 10. Sennacherib’s Campaign and its Reception in the Time of the Second Temple ......................................................................................... 325 Gerbern S. Oegema 11. Sennacherib in Midrashic and Related Literature: Inscribing History in Midrash .............................................................. 347 Rivka Ulmer 12. The Devil in Person, the Devil in Disguise: Looking for King Sennacherib in Early Christian Literature ............................. 389 Joseph Verheyden 13. The First “World Event”: Sennacherib at Jerusalem ..................... 433 Seth Richardson Indices Index of Topics ........................................................................................... 507 Index of Key Terms ................................................................................... 534 Index of Sources and Compositions .................................................... 536 Index of Modern Authors ........................................................................ 546 THE CONTRIBUTORS Mordechai Cogan (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania) is Professor Emeritus of Biblical History in the Department of Jewish History, The Hebrew Uni- versity of Jerusalem. He has written widely on the relationship of Israel and Judah with the Mesopotamian empires during the first millennium b.c.e., and history-writing in the ancient Near East. Among his works are: Imperialism and Religion (1974); The Raging Torrent (2008); Bound for Exile (2013); and commentaries on 1 and 2 Kings (Anchor Bible) and Obadiah, Jonah and Nahum (Mikra le-Yisrael). Peter Dubovský (Ph.D., Harvard University), published his dissertation in 2006 in the series Biblica et Orientalia under the title Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies. Since 2008 he has been professor of Old Testament exegesis at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. He is the author of twenty-nine scholarly articles and has edited commentaries on Genesis, the Gospel of Mark, and Minor Prophets in Slovak, as well as a volume on inspiration, Ogni Scrittura è ispirata: Nuove prospettive sull’ispirazione biblica (2013). Mario Fales (Ph.D., University of Rome) is Full Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History at the University of Udine. His main scholarly interests concern the intellectual and political history of the Neo-Assyrian empire. He is on the editorial board of two international projects on Neo-Assyrian texts, the State Archives of Assyria (Helsinki) and Studien zu den Assur- Texten (Berlin), and co-directs several other journals. He is the editor of seven edited volumes, and the author of a dozen books (most recently, Guerre et paix en Assyrie: Religion et impérialisme [2010]) and over 150 articles. Fales has also co-directed several archaeological projects in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and northern Italy. Eckart Frahm (Ph.D. Göttingen, Habilitation Heidelberg) is Professor of Assyriology at Yale University, where he has been since 2002. His main research interests are Assyrian and Babylonian history and Mesopota- mian scholarly texts of the first millennium b.c.e. Frahm is the author of many articles and five books: Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften (1997); Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts, vol. 3: Historische und his- torisch-literarische Texte (2009); Neo-Babylonian Letters and Contracts x the contributors from the Eanna Archive (2011, co-authored with Michael Jursa); Babylo- nian and Assyrian Text Commentaries: Origins of Interpretation (2011); and Geschichte des alten Mesopotamien (2013). Tawny Holm (Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University) is Associate Profes- sor of Jewish Studies and Classics & Ancient Mediterranean Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. Her scholarship deals with the Hebrew Bible, Aramaic studies, and Early Judaism, as well as the cultures, litera- tures, and history of the ancient Near East. Her works include Of Court- iers and Kings: The Biblical Daniel Narratives and Ancient Story-Collections (2013), and a half-dozen scholarly articles. Her current research is particu- larly focused on the Jewish and Aramean presence in Egypt in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. Holm has two books forthcoming: a bilin- gual edition of early Aramaic literature from Syro-Palestine and Egypt for the Society for Biblical Literature series Writings from the Ancient World; and a monograph on ancient Aramaic literature. Isaac Kalimi (Ph.D., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is Gutenberg Research Professor in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israelite History, Semi- nar für Altes Testment und Biblische Archaeologie, Johannes Gutenberg- Universität Mainz, Germany, and Senior Research Associate with the University of Chicago. He published many articles in a variety of lead- ing professional journals, edited/co-edited a number of volumes, and authored numerous books, including: Das Chronikbuch und seine Chronik (FS 17; 2013); The Retelling of Chronicles in Jewish Tradition and Literature: A Historical Journey (2009); An Ancient Israelite Historian (SSN 46; 2005); Early Jewish Exegesis and Theological Controversy (JCH 2; 2002); Zur Geschichtsschreibung des Chronisten (BZAW 226; 1995). His monograph, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles