SOME CANAANITE-PHOENICIAN SOURCES OF HEBREW WISDOM

BY W. F. ALBRIGHT Baltimore

In re cent years the importance of Canaanite and Phoenician civilization for proper understanding of the culture of has been increasingly recognized 1). Occasional denials may generally be credited to a reluctance to abandon cherished positions of the recent past. After all, it was not until 1932 that the flow of Ugaritic illus­ trations of biblical literat ure began, carrying with it completely new insights into the al ready known Canaanite and Phoenician data. Published and unpublished data are already so extensive as to dwarf the significance of most other cultures of the Near and l\fiddle East, in so far as direct service to biblical scholarship is concerned. Of course, nothing can change the overwhelming importance of Egypto­ logy and Assyriology (sensu stricto) for our general knowledge of ancient Eastern civilization, and I am the last to deny that these two subjects remain more important in the last analysis for biblical scholarship. There has been much misunderstanding of the nature of Canaanite­ Phoenician culture 2). It must be emphasized that this was a relatively homogeneous civilization from the MiddJe Bronze Age down to the beginning of the Achaemenian period, after which .it was swallowed

1) There is now a rieh literature on this subject. Since I am here concerned chiefly with biblical parallels, 1 shalllimit mysclf to a very fe\V references: my Archaeolog)' and the Religion 01 brael (third edition, Baltimore, 1953); "The Old Testament and Canaanite Language and Literature", CathoHc Biblical Quarter!;, (1945), p. 5-31; "The Psalm of Habakkuk", in Studiu in OM Testament Propheq (T. H. Robinson Festschrift, 1950), p. 1-18; "A Catalogue of Early Hebrew Lyrie Poems (Psalm LXVIII)", HUCA XXIII (1950/51), p. 1-39. 2) For a general historieal survey see my chapter in Hütoria MUlldi, H (1954), especially p. 340-348, 354-357, and 362-365. EDUARD MEYER's account of Phoenician history and culture (Geschichte du Altertllms, H, 2 (1931), p. 61-186) was by far the best that had appeared until then, but it has been thoroughly antiquated by Ugaritic and other discoveries since. My long paper "The Role of the Canaanites in the History of Civilization" (Waldo G. Leland Volume: StIldies in the His/olJ' 01 Culture (1942), p. 11-50) is now unobtainable. 2 w. F. ALBRIGHT

up in large part by much more extensive cultures. Chronologically speaking, it is certain that "Phoenician" is simply the Iron-Age equivalent of Bronze-Age "Canaanite" 1). Recent numismatic dis­ coveries prove that the Phoenician script and language were still used on coins as late as the reign of Gordian (A.D. 238-244) 2), a fact which indicates that Phoenician culture did not finally expire until the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century. From the geo­ graphical standpoint, there was a homogeneous civilization which extended in the Bronze Age from Mount Casius, north of , to the Negeb of Palestine, and in the Iron Age from north of Arvad (at least) to the extreme south of Palestine 3). This civilization shared a common material culture (including architecture, pottery, etc.) through the entire period, and we now know that language 4), literature 5), art, and religion 6) were substantially the same in the Bronze Age. From the twelfth century on we find increasing diver­ gence in higher culture, but material culture remained practically the same in all parts of the area. The differences (except in the ca se of

1) Cf. B. MAISLER (MAZAR), BASOR 102, p. 7-12. 2) Israel Exploration Journal, 4 (1954), p. 208. 3) How far some scholars are from appreciating this fact might be illustrated by many citations from centres of learning in both Europe and America. In 1951 an eminent American biblical scholar declared at a public meeting which I attended that there was no more relation between Ugaritic and Hebrew culture and litetature than there was between the cultures of the Plains Indians and the Aztecs! ') See especially R. DE LANG HE, De taal van Ras Sjamra-Ugarit (1948); W. F. AURIGHT, BASOR 89, p. 8, and CBQ (1945), p. 14 ff., 22 ff. The relation between Ugaritic, Amarna Canaanite, and early Hebrew has also been studied in three unpublished Johns Hopkins dissertations by G. E. MENDENHALL (1947), W. L. MORAN (1950), and HORACE D. HUMMEL (1955). 5) There can be little doubt any longer that the Ugaritic epics were all composed in proper and its hinterland, from which they were transmitted orally to all parts of the Canaanite continuum, including Ugarit in the north and Palestine in the south; for evidence see particularly my remarks in HUCA XXIII (1950/51), p. 3, n. 3, and BASOR 130, p. 26 f. Additional material for this loealization may be found in published and unpublished papers by various scholars ; e.g., M. H. POPE has shown that the horne of the god EI in the Baal Epic was primarily in the underworld near the famous sources of Afqa above . Any scholar who remains seeptieal has only to recall the sirnilar situation in the early Hellenic world, where the Homeric epies were diffused through areas oeeupied by speakers of many different dialects (and were sometimes modified dialectally in the proeess). 8) See especially ARI, eh. III. Note that there was atempie of Anath at Gaza (B. GRDSELOFF, Les dibuts du culte de Ruhef en Egvpte, Cairo, 1942, p. 35 ff., dealing with an ostracon from the end of the 13th century B.C.), temples of Dagon at Ashdod and Gaza, and atempie of I:Iaurön at Jamnia-all in the extreme south of the coastal region of Canaan, later occupied by the Philistines.