Memories of Balaam

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by British Columbia's network of post-secondary digital repositories MEMORIES OF BALAAM: TRANSLATABILITY OF A RELIGIOUS SPECIALIST IN ANCIENT ISRAEL by RYAN D. SCHROEDER A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Master of Arts in Biblical Studies We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard .......................................................................................... Dr. Craig C. Broyles, Ph.D.; Thesis Supervisor .......................................................................................... Dr. Dirk L. Büchner, D.Litt.; Second Reader TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY August 2015 © Ryan D. Schroeder ii ABSTRACT Scholars have employed the biblical Balaam traditions both in the defense of and in opposition to Jan Assmann’s assertion that early Israel rejected cross-cultural religious translatability. The Hebrew Bible’s diverse portrayals of Balaam have long stimulated scholarly, literary-critical analysis. Also, the Deir ʿAlla inscription provides an intriguing extra-biblical glimpse of this enigmatic character. In this study, I discern how these early depictions of Balaam reflect socially shaped and shared memories of Balaam as a foreign religious specialist who participated in Israel’s past. I argue that early memories of Balaam suggest his warm reception among Yhwh worshipping Israelites in spite of his foreign status. However, later guardians of Israel’s written traditions came to remember and write about Balaam as a diviner whose role in Israel’s past primarily served to demonstrate the dangers of non-Israelites and their abominable religious practices. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I offer my appreciation to the faculty of the Religious Studies Department at Trinity Western University. Martin Abegg introduced me to the MA in Biblical Studies program, both informally and formally. An impromptu meeting with Prof. Abegg in the Fall of 2013 turned out to be a crucial factor in my decision to pursue biblical studies rather than linguistics and Bible translation, for which I had originally come to the TWU campus. Also, Prof. Abegg introduced me to the Scrolls, the importance of which–for understanding ancient scribal culture and the Second Temple period–I am only beginning to comprehend. My thesis supervisor, Craig Broyles, has opened up for me new approaches to the Hebrew Bible; he taught me to view it as the product of real people who were trying to make sense of their diverse experiences in history–specifically, in the history of the ancient Near East. I thank Prof. Broyles for that, and for his interest in and input into my work; he also gave up much of his summers to guide me both into the Ugaritic language (2014) and through the production of this thesis (2015). In addition to his comments on my work, my second reader, Dirk Büchner, has shared his time reading Hebrew with me and others. As it turns out, he is a terrific travel companion as well!–I am grateful for his conversation and friendship. I presented components of my thesis this year at the Pacific Northwest Region SBL meeting and the annual CSBS meeting; I thank those present who gave feedback regarding my work in its early stages. To my wife, Kerry, I owe the deepest gratitude. Her companionship and tolerance (and cooking!) made it possible for me to put in the hours necessarily for the completion not only of this project, but of the MA program itself. I dedicate this thesis–such as it is–to her. iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...............................................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................iii CONTENTS ..............................................................................................................................iv ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................................................vi INTRODUCTION: FRAMING THE QUESTION ................................................................................1 Religious Conflict and Counter-Religion ...........................................................................3 Translatability and Ancient Israel......................................................................................5 CHAPTER 1: THE BALAAM TRADITIONS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE AND AT TELL DEIR ʿALLA .....11 The Inscription from Tell Deir ʿAlla...............................................................................11 I. Literary Content ........................................................................................................13 II. Authorship................................................................................................................17 The Balaam Pericope: Numbers 22-24 ..........................................................................21 I. Text-Critical Issues....................................................................................................22 II. Literary-Critical Issues............................................................................................23 II.I Source-Critical Approaches................................................................................25 II.II Alternative Approaches .....................................................................................31 The Rest of the Hebrew Bible: Tradition and Literary History.....................................48 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................59 CHAPTER 2: BALAAM AS A RELIGIOUS SPECIALIST IN THE HEBREW BIBLE .............................61 Balaam as a Religious Specialist ....................................................................................61 I. Lester Grabbe and The Classification of Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel ....64 II. Max Weber’s Religious Specialists and Balaam the “Roeh” ..................................67 III. Emic Approaches ....................................................................................................72 IV. Michael S. Moore’s The Balaam Traditions............................................................74 V. Scribal Constructs of Religious Specialists..............................................................78 What Kind of Religious Speicalist is Balaam?...............................................................80 I. A Diviner? .................................................................................................................80 I.I Curse Practitioner?..............................................................................................83 I.II A Baru?...............................................................................................................87 II. An Ecstatic? .............................................................................................................91 II.I A Seer/Dreamer?.................................................................................................94 II.II An Ā pilum? ........................................................................................................96 III. A Prophet? ..............................................................................................................98 IV. Summary................................................................................................................101 The Need to Recognize the Amalgam ...........................................................................102 I. Mutual Exclusivity and Prophecy as Divination.....................................................102 II. Balaam’s “Conversion” and Balaam the Yahweh Devotee ...................................105 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................108 CHAPTER 3: SCRIBAL MEMORY AND WRITTEN TRADITION ..................................................110 I. Social Memory, Scribal Memory.............................................................................110 II. Communicative Memory, Cultural Memory, and Written Commemoration ..........112 III. Scribal Memory and Text Revision .......................................................................115 IV. Tradition Invention and Transmission and Mnemonic Drift .................................119 CHAPTER 4: BALAAM REMEMBERED IN ANCIENT ISRAEL .....................................................128 I. Balaam’s Abode.......................................................................................................129 II. Yhwh or El et al? Religious Conversion................................................................137 II.I El.......................................................................................................................138 v II.II Elyon................................................................................................................142 II.III Shadday..........................................................................................................144 III. Temporal Relocation and Narrative Transposition ..............................................149 Summary........................................................................................................................152 Balaam and the Deuteronomistic

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