The Georgian Nimrod

Stephen H. Rapp, Jr.

Having weathered the escalating perils of the first eight circles, Dante stood on the verge of descending into the very center of Hell.1 There, along the rim of the icy pit leading to the imprisoned Satan, the author-turned-fictional- adventurer glimpsed several “towers,” the primordial giants of the Hebrew Bible and the titans of Classical literature. Among them was Nimrod, whom Genesis 10 famously depicts as “the first on Earth to become a mighty warrior. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. . . .”2 The Inferno’s Nimrod, however, was a rather different figure: he was incapable of intelligible speech, and from his “savage mouth”—la fiera bocca—poured the incomprehensible syllables “Raphèl maì amècche zabì almi.” This Nimrod was nothing more than anima confusa. Dante’s guide Virgil explained:

Elli stessi s’accusa; questi è Nembrotto per lo cui mal coto pur un linguag- gio nel mondo non s’usa. Lasciànlo stare e non parliamo a vòto; ché così è a lui ciascun linguaggio come ’l suo ad altrui, ch’a nullo è noto.

He is his own accuser. This is Nimrod, because of whose vile plan the whole world no longer speaks a single tongue. Let us leave him and waste not our speech, for every language is to him as his to others, and his is understood by none.3

Nimrod’s spectacular transformation from a “mighty hunter before the Lord” to a babbling and sinful primeval giant requires explanation.4 His impos- ing physical stature stands in marked contrast to his fleeting appearance in the Hebrew Bible. Including Genesis 10 Nimrod surfaces just three times

1 Georgian transliterations observe a slightly modified version of the system used by the Library of Congress, USA, and adjusted to match more closely the Armenian Hübschmann- Meillet-Benveniste scheme. For Georgian transcription, see Rapp 2003, 45–6. 2 Gen 10:9. Biblical translations are based on Bible 2001. 3 Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, “The Inferno,” XXXI.67–81. I have followed the text and trans- lation of the Princeton Dante Project (http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html), last accessed 10 February 2014. See also Stolova 1998–1999, 51–62. 4 Here I have relied upon van der Horst 1990, 220–32.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004270268_009 the georgian nimrod 189 in canonical texts: 1 Chronicles 1:10 identifies Nimrod as the son of Cush and “the first to be a mighty one on the Earth,” and Micah 5:6 alludes to “the land of Nimrod,” Mesopotamia, in connection with a prophecy about the defeat of the Assyrian Empire. As we should expect, Nimrod is entirely absent from the New Testament. Nimrod is a figure of great antiquity. But how the ancient Hebrews imag- ined him is poorly understood. The picture sharpens in the late Hellenistic Age, when Jewish exegesis increasingly took up his memory. One of the earli- est such exegetes was Philo of Alexandria who, in his pursuit to comprehend monotheism in a multi- and cross-cultural world, creatively combined Judaic, Greek, and Hellenistic thought. Philo substituted Genesis’s ambiguous depic- tion of Nimrod with one that was categorically negative. His Nimrod was an enemy of God and he proposed a false etymology for the giant’s name, deriv- ing it from Hebrew marad, “rebellion” or “desertion.”5 Further, Philo explicitly associated Nimrod with the antediluvian giants of Genesis 6 and the fabled tower—the Tower of Babel—of Genesis 11.6 In the same century, the historian Josephus similarly depicted Nimrod in his Jewish Antiquities:

Ἐξῆρέ τε αὐτοὺς πρός τε ὕβριν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ καταφρόνησιν Νεβρώδης, ὃς υἱωνὸς μὲν ἦν Χάμου τοῦ Νώχου, τολμηρὸς δὲ καὶ κατὰ χεῖρα γενναῖος: ἔπειθεν οὖν αὐτοὺς μὴ τῷ θεῷ διδόναι τὸ δι᾽ἐκεῖνον εὐδαιμονεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἰδίαν ἀρετὴν ταῦτα παρέχειν αὐτοῖς ἡγεῖσθαι, καὶ περιίστα δὲ κατ᾽ ὀλίγον εἰς τυραννίδα τὰ πράγματα μόνως οὕτως νομίζων ἀποστήσειν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τοῦ φόβου τοῦ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ, εἰ χρώμενοι τῇ αὐτοῦ δυνάμει διατελοῖεν, ἀμυνεῖσθαί τε τὸν θεὸν πάλιν ἠπείλει τὴν γῆν ἐπικλύσαι θελήσαντα: πύργον γὰρ οἰκοδομήσειν ὑψηλότερον ἢ τὸ ὓδωρ ἀναβῆναι δυνηθείη, μετελεύσεσθαι δὲ καὶ τῆς τῶν προγόνων ἀπωλείας.

They were incited to this insolent contempt of God by Nebrodes, grand- son of Ham the son of Noah, an audacious man of doughty vigour. He persuaded them to attribute their prosperity not to God but to their own valour, and little by little transformed the state of affairs into a tyranny, holding that the only way to detach men from the fear of God was by making them continuously dependent upon his own power. He threat- ened to have his revenge on God if He wished to inundate the earth again;

5 De gigantibus, cap. 15 (Philo 1981, 70–1). 6 van der Horst 1990, 221–2.