Before Genesis: What the Old Testament Borrowed from Mesopotamian Stories

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman

Episode: Before Genesis: What the Old Testament Borrowed from Mesopotamian Stories

Release Date: May 26, 2026
Hosts: Bart Ehrman (B) and Megan Lewis (A)

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the cultural and historical milieu that shaped the Old Testament, focusing especially on the literary, mythological, and legal influences from ancient Mesopotamia. Megan Lewis, an expert in Assyriology, joins Bart Ehrman for a deep discussion on how stories and concepts from Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria found their way—often in adapted and transformed forms—into the biblical texts. The conversation explores the differences between these ancient stories and their reinterpretations in the Hebrew Bible, highlighting both similarities and distinctions. The episode concludes with a Q&A segment about Mesopotamian history and its relation to the biblical world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Backgrounds and Approaches to Biblical History

• Bart Ehrman [01:07]:
  Shares his early church experience, viewing the Bible as literal and the sole source of ancient history.

  "We didn't really have this sense that there was a history going on outside of the history of Israel..."

• Megan Lewis [02:38]:
  Grew up with the Bible seen as myth rather than history; fascination with world history and early civilizations led her to study Assyriology.

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2. Chronological Context: Mesopotamia vs. Israel

• Lewis [07:07]:
  Explains Uruk, considered the world’s first city, dates to the mid-4th millennium BCE, long before the earliest mentions of Israel, which appear around 1200 BCE. There's a gap of "a couple of thousand years" filled with rich literature and mythology.
• Ehrman [08:28]:
  Illustrates the time depth:

  "The distance between Jesus and Abraham about 1700 years is the same distance between Abraham and Uruk...twice as early."

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3. The Development of Writing and Record-Keeping

• Lewis [08:57 - 11:29]:
  Describes how writing evolved from clay tokens for accounting, through impressed marks on clay, to full-blown cuneiform script.
  • Writing began as a practical tool for storage, ownership, and trade before being used for literature.
  • Archaeological dating relies on associated organic layers and, eventually, written "year names" tied to kings' reigns and events, corroborated with astronomical data.

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4. Influence of Mesopotamian Myths on the Old Testament

• Lewis [15:58]:
  Outlines how Genesis stories, particularly the flood narrative, are reworkings—not mere copies—of earlier Mesopotamian tales like the Atrahasis and Gilgamesh epics.

  • Mesopotamian Flood: Sent due to human noisiness and overpopulation; resolution involves limiting growth through infertility, not destruction.
  • Biblical Flood: Humanity destroyed for wickedness; Yahweh both judge and savior, emphasizing divine righteousness and mercy.

  "Please don't call it copying...they take this story and they rework it to show their own theological, religious priorities..." [16:20]

• Ehrman [19:10]:
  Compares to contrasting media perspectives:

  "It's kind of like if you have both Fox News and MSNBC reporting on a single event..."

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5. Legal Traditions and Shared Cultural Norms

• Lewis [20:10]:
  Points out "eye for an eye" legal codes pre-date the Bible, with examples in texts like the Code of Hammurabi. These legal forms are regional conventions, not direct borrowings.

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6. The "Great Powers Club" and Israel’s Place

• Lewis [21:36]:
  Between the 15th and 11th centuries BCE, Egypt, Mitanni, Hittites, Assyria, and Babylonia dominated the Near East. Israel emerged as a minor player and frequent victim or vassal in this volatile scene.
  • "Israel is solidifying as a state in this absolutely fascinating political landscape...with many other city states all being like vied over and conquered by one group of people and then conquered by another..."
• Describes the region as a 'diplomatic cauldron' with "pen pal" relationships between kings.

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7. National Narratives and Archeological Realities

• Lewis [30:16]:
  Contradicts the biblical portrayal of Israelites as uniquely ethical or monotheistic, noting scholarship points to similarities between Israelites and their neighbors. Cultural identity in the Old Testament is constructed to distinguish Israel from others.

  "That's a case of history being written by the winners...the Israelites are probably mostly the same cultural background as the surrounding cities..." [30:16]

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8. Monotheism and Polytheism

• Lewis [31:47]:
  Argues that Israelite religion was likely polytheistic for a long time, with worship of Yahweh, Asherah, and other deities common. Monotheism, as presented in the Old Testament, is a later idealization.

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9. Discrepancies Between Bible and External Records

• Lewis [33:15]:
  On historical mismatches, especially regarding late kings (e.g., Belshazzar), the real history often diverges from the biblical accounts.
  • On the Exodus:

    “Egyptologists...say that there wasn't this mass exodus of people...there weren't that many slaves in Egypt. It's...not historical.” [34:30]

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10. Summary of the New Course: "Before the Bible"

• Lewis & Ehrman [13:00, 35:33]:
  Megan Lewis has created a course exploring these ancient civilizations' impact on Israel and the Old Testament, available at barterhman.com.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On borrowed stories:

  "They take this story and they rework it to show their own theological religious priorities." — Megan Lewis [16:20]

• On cultural proximity:

  “If you go to an Israelite town, it seemed pretty much like any of these other Canaanite towns.” — Bart Ehrman [31:47]

• On ancient writing development:

  "It starts out as really a method of keeping track of possessions...All of this happens before the establishment of Israel as a state." — Megan Lewis [09:47]

• On why context matters:

  "The Bible is the foundational document for most of Western civilization...to better understand the Bible as a foundational document, you really need to look at the context in which it was written." — Megan Lewis [14:09]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:07] – Ehrman’s childhood perspective on the Bible and history
• [02:38] – Lewis’s background and interest in ancient history
• [07:07] – Early cities and writing predating Israel
• [11:56] – How archaeologists date ancient Mesopotamian artifacts
• [15:58] – Flood narratives: Mesopotamian vs. biblical
• [20:10] – Mesopotamian legal codes and their echoes in the Bible
• [21:36] – Great Powers Club and Israel’s minor role
• [30:16] – Israelite culture compared to surrounding peoples
• [31:47] – Polytheism vs. monotheism in early Israel
• [33:15] – Contradictions between biblical and external historical records
• [35:33] – Course contents: society, religion, literature, international politics
• [37:31] – Lightning Q&A: Hammurabi’s date, early writing, oldest Gilgamesh fragments

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Overall Tone & Style

The conversation is accessible, often playful, and deeply informative. Bart provides the perspective of a biblical scholar with broad curiosity, while Megan’s explanations are clear, enthusiastic, and laced with specialist insight. The episode balances scholarly discussion with practical analogies and humor, making complex subjects approachable.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a broad and insightful survey of how Mesopotamian cultures set the stage for the Old Testament’s formation. Listeners will come away with a strong sense of the deep interconnectedness of ancient civilizations and a new lens on the familiar biblical stories—anchored in real, ancient contexts rather than in cultural isolation.

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Transcript

[A]

Hello. Sequentra las marcas quelos pros prefieren a precious que te combienen ahora di esporciento en madera Compuesta palaterrasa send stock trikes naturals, Parentradas interiores y contra tormentas y 10 tregamos todo directo la obra paraquetos

[B]

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[A]

baria. The Old Testament wasn't written in a cultural vacuum, but who and what influenced its writers? Today we're talking about the cultural background of the Old Testament and how the literature and societies of the surrounding cultures impacted its creation. We also have our bonus segment at the end, which this week is Listeners questions. Welcome to the Misquoting Jesus podcast with Bart Ehrman. But I would like to ask you, when you were growing up in the church, what picture did you have in your head of where characters in the Bible like Adam and Eve or the nation of Israel fit into the timeline of world history?

[B]

Well, Adam and Eve was easy. They were the first two. It did create problems because then they have their, you know, they have their two sons, Cain and Abel, and Cain goes out and establishes a city. It's like, huh. So, but, you know, we didn't think about things like that. We just, we thought history began with God creating the world in, in six days, and that began with Adam and Eve and that the history recounted in the Bible is the actual history of the earth and that Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, and then they had, they had their other son Seth, and then he, you know, the, the nation, the, the people propagated up until the time of the Tower of Babel where the nations that had to disperse, speaking different languages and everything, everything came from that. And so we didn't really have this sense that there was a history going on outside of the history of Israel, you know, or outside of what's narrated in the Bible. And I think at this point, Megan, I'm going to reverse things and start asking you questions because you're actually the one who knows about these things. And so, but, so, like, we didn't, you know, we didn't think, like, I don't know, we knew there were Assyrians and stuff hundreds of years later and things. We kind of thought, you know, that's how the thing began. But you're an expert in the stuff that's going on, not, I mean, before the Bible was written, right? I mean, you study these other cultures and things, right?

[A]

Yeah. So my, my master's degrees are in assyriology, which is the study of Mesopotamia, the languages, the culture or cultures because there are several of them. And when I was growing up, it was weird. The Bible was never presented as history. My mum was always very much of the, the opinion that it's their stories, it's mythology, it's, it's an interesting way to explain how people used to think the world was created. So I didn't have like going into university or even, not even university. I did classics in high school. Like, one of my earliest memories of being fascinated with history is reading. My mum had a, an exhibition catalog of a Tutankhamun exhibit that was going around when she was younger. So I just remember looking, flipping through this catalog and looking at all the amazing artifacts and reading the articles. And I was a very, I was a bookworm, I'm still a bookworm. But when I was a child I was very much nose in book. So I didn't kind of have this idea of the Bible as history and everything else as irrelevant. It was more. The Bible is an interesting set of stories and everything else is, is history. But I didn't really start to think about how the, the creation of the Old Testament fit into any historical time period until I got to university and started doing assyriology and having like classes in Syropalestinian history. And all of a sudden we do actually have like the state of Israel and it's a thing and, but also it's, it's very late in like Mesopotamian history. Generally it's not very late, but my preference is on the earlier side of things. And then once you get to like the Neo Assyrian period and the Middle Assyrians, which are the, some of the ones that you see in, in the Old Testament, I'm, I've tuned out a little bit. Not massively because it's still really interesting. But.

[B]

Okay, so I'm, I'm interested in this book. You, when you had. So this is King Tut you're talking about. Okay, so you're a kid and you're seeing all these glorious pictures of King Tut and you know, they find this, they find this tomb and it's. And if anybody's ever, you know, visited, you know, the Valley of the Kings, they see these, these tombs of these pharaohs and it's really quite astonishing. But at that, when you were young, like that, did, did it seem to have like any bearing on chronology with respect to the B Bible or didn't really. The Bible was just kind of fables or something and, and this Was real history.

[A]

Yeah, kind of. I mean, it. There was not the whole Bible. There was a sense that, like, Israel is a. As a place and a thing and there are people living there and some of this stuff happened, but it wasn't. I didn't understand it as like this, this history book. And I didn't. I mean, when I was a kid, I didn't even really have a solid conception of how old it was anyway. So I don't think I'd have been able to place it in a chronology of world history. I just, I knew that the, the Tutankhamun stuff was. Was old and it was beautiful and amazing. And I read this series of books called Horrible Histories that I've now got my son engrossed in as well, which is, you know, wonderful parenting. And there was an Egyptian book and a Roman book and a Greek book, and they're just. They were fantastic. They were hilarious and interesting and just really kind of fed this interest. But I didn't even. Yeah. Had no idea that like, Israel or what role Israel and like the united monarchy and then divided monarchy and all this stuff kind of played in the world stage in Mesopotamia. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. So, I mean, when. I guess today, when people. When scholars date the Hebrew Bible or they try. And when they try and figure out when the events allegedly happened, you know, Abraham is usually, I think by scholars put somewhere in the 18th century BCE something like that. And so. And you know, the Exodus maybe in the 13th century BCE and so the thing you ended up getting interested in are actually a lot earlier than that. Right. And so that. Because I think most people read the Bible, they kind of think this is, you know, that's pretty. That's about as early as we get. And so how. How early. How early is the stuff you do?

[A]

So the. What's usually called the world's first city, which is the city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, is large enough to be called a city by like the middle of the fourth millennium bce. And we have writing around that time as well, starting to be used to keep track of possessions and. And ownership. So quite. Quite a lot earlier than I think the first mention of Israel in an historical record is the Manepter stele that you don't get that until like 1200. So there's a couple of thousand years in between the world's first city and what we know, Israel is existing. And there is an awful lot of history and textual information and literature that develops in that period. And it's absolutely fascinating. You've got all of this mythology in Sumerian that then kind of is influencing and impacting Akkadian literature and mythology, and then that eventually will go on to impact what is written in the Old Testament. But there's this, like, so much development before that.

[B]

So when you say fourth century, fourth millennium BCE, you're talking about the mid-30s, 3000s, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So just doing quick math in my head here, that means that the distance between Jesus and Abraham about 1700 years is the same distance between Abraham and Urik, this city. Yeah. It's like. So he's twice as. It's twice as early. Twice. Twice as many years. Wow. Okay, so. But there's a city with civilization, and we know this. Do we have written records at this point, or are they just doing this on archaeological discoveries?

[A]

Most of the really earliest stuff is archaeological. And it's actually really interesting because there's this phenomenon called the Uruk expansion, which archaeologists aren't really sure if it's like colonialism or trading colonies. There's a bit of a debate. But you see the same material culture, so the same style of physical objects. People might be familiar with something called a beveled rimmed bowl, which is like a clay bowl that's almost like an inverted V, and that's found at Uruk. But then throughout other Mesopotamian sites as well, along with other key kinds of artifacts that tell people or tell archaeologists that there's some kind of cultural contact. So either people are trading extensively or they are actually putting out, like, sending out settlers to colonize other areas. So you've got not like the beginnings of an empire, but substantial expansion from this really, really early city. And then you get the creation of writing shortly after that. And it's. It starts out as really a method of keeping track of possessions. So it. There's a. There's a whole, whole sequence of events. You start with little clay tokens that you kind of hand over to someone. So if you have a clay token that represents a sheep, you have five sheep and five tokens. When you give them to the temple official that you've been looking after the sheep for, you give them the tokens. A bit further down the line, these tokens get wrapped in clay envelopes called clay buller, so that you can't accidentally lose a token and then keep a sheep secretly. And eventually people start impressing these tokens onto wet clay. And that eventually kind of morphs into using a reed stylus to draw out the shape of the token. And then there's a transition from drawing the shape of a Token to mean an object. So one sheep sign is the same as one sheep to. Well, this sign now has the phonetic value meaning sheep. So then you can use it to reproduce the spoken word. That takes a long time. It's not, it's not a fast process. But all of this happens before the establishment of Israel as a state. And you have, like I said, like the development of fascinating literature and royal propaganda and so many tax records and receipts, it's ridiculous.

[B]

So what? So, so this isn't meant to stump you. If it stumps, you will edit it out. But, but how do they date, how do they date things before there's like writing and like, how do you date, how do you date a clay tablet? It's not like it doesn't have organic material in it, I assume. So you can't do like a carbon 14 dating. So is there a way to, to date things? You say the city's like in the middle 3500. Okay. How do you know why 3500?

[A]

So you can't carbon date the clay itself. But if it's, if the tablet is found in a specific archeological layer with organic materials, you can use those organic materials to date that layer. And when you get further forward in history, you do get people starting to write dates on things they're not like the 2nd of May, 2026. It's the year that a specific king carried out a specific event. And we've got enough records that for a lot of these time periods, we've been able to reconstruct the year names and link them to probable absolute dates. It's a little fuzzy in some places. There's a lot of astronomical data that goes into it as well, but you can get quite specific with it.

[B]

Okay, so. So Megan, I think this would be a good time for me to announce a new course.

[A]

I think you're right. Yeah, go for it.

[B]

Okay, so we're gonna go to an announcement real quick because it involves a course dealing with this, this kind of thing. And it's going to be presented by Megan Lewis. And so. Yes, so this is good. This is going to be called. The course is going to be called before the Bible, Ancient Civilizations that Shaped Israel and the Bible. And it'll be four, four lessons. So four, four lectures, I assume with a Q A, Megan?

[A]

No, because these are pre recorded.

[B]

Pre recorded. Okay, Right.

[A]

Which means that people can go and watch them right now. They can if they feel like it.

[B]

Oh, so they're available now. You've done these courses. Okay, You've done This course. Whoa. Okay, so, all right, so you've recorded these courses. No Q and A. They can get these. So I guess if they go to my site, barturman.com before the Bible, which is one word, they can. They can get the course and there'll be. There'll be special pricing on it. I think you get special pricing before June 20th or something. So why should people care about this? So why should people, like, interest in the Bible or interested in history or interested in religion? Why should anybody care?

[A]

Well, I think, as you say, every time I ask you this question, the Bible is the foundational document for most of Western civilization. Like it or not, it is just how things are. And I think to better understand the Bible as a foundational document, you really need to look at the context in which it was written. Like we were talking about last week, looking at the context of specific passages within the Bible, you need to look at the cultures and the history surrounding the composition of the Old Testament in order to understand where these ideas came from, what they are kind of reacting against and being in conversation with to get the fullest understanding that you can. And honestly, as a history nerd, it's just really interesting stuff. These are some of the oldest stories that we have. You know, the Epic of Gilgamesh is taught in most US Middle schools. I never got the Epic of Gilgamesh, which makes me very sad. But that in itself is a much later version of a set of very early Sumerian stories. And it's just so interesting. I love it and I'm very excited about it.

[B]

Well, okay, I am, too, because this is not my field, and I'm going to be eager to listen to them. So if people want to get them again, they go to barterman.com before the Bible. And if they. As usual, if you put MJ podcast as a. As the code at checkout, then you get a special discount on them. So. Okay. How exciting. So, congratulations. You're done with them. So in your. So in your view, what are the kind of most important ways that this kind of material that you look at might affect somebody who's interested in biblical studies, especially Hebrew Bible?

[A]

In a couple of different ways, I think I mentioned the. Like, the. The mythology and the literature, they're very, very closely interwoven. And a lot of what you see, especially in the book of Genesis, is either based on Mesopotamian precursors or is kind of reacting against them. So you've. You've got the flood narrative, obviously, with Noah and all of the animals. We have, like, Two or three Mesopotamian flood stories that are earlier than the, when we think the Old Testament was put together. But the, it's, it's not just, oh, they, they copied, they copied someone else. I hate that. Please don't call it copying. It's not copying. They, what they do is they take it, they take this story and they rework it to show their own theological, religious priorities really. So in Mesopotamian flood narratives, the, the premise is that humanity is just too numerous and too noisy and the God Enlil can't sleep, so he sends a flood. We have the flood. The God Enki who's like the crafty deity, saves his favorite human and right at the end they agree that okay, we're not going to flood the world, but instead will put in other, put in place other mechanisms to limit the growth of humanity. So you've got infertility, celibate priestesses, all that kind of thing. So it's really a story about why humans in some cases are unable to reproduce. So it's like, it's called an etiological myth. It's an origin, it's why something occurs. And in the biblical account in the Old Testament, it's not that at all. All humanity is not only wicked and deserving of destruction. Yahweh is the like the righteous ruler who is entirely justified in his decision to wipe out humanity. And at the same time he's the savior, right? So he's the instigator of this description, destruction and the savior of humanity because it's him who saves Noah. So he's playing these two in Mesopotamian myths, diametrically opposed roles. So the story becomes something about the might and power of Yahweh instead of this, this etiological myth. So they've taken something that is pre existing that has this history and this weight behind it, which is such an important thing in Mesopotamian culture. There's, there's a huge understanding of the, the antiquity of their traditions. Creating something new is, is not, is not all it's cracked up to be in Mesopotamian thought. It's what can you do with, with what is existing already. So they're following, the Israelites are following this, this kind of set path of interacting with your history, but they're changing it and altering it to make it their own to give a completely different message. And you miss all of that if you don't know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You don't know what you don't know. Really.

[B]

Yeah. So, okay, so you know, when you, when people read the flood stories you know, in the Gilgamesh epic, for example, they are struck. It's like boom, boom. Like, like the flood story in many ways, many of the kind of the same features to it, but. But the slant is so radically different. And so I'm just trying to think of an analogy. It's kind of like if you have both Fox News and MSNBC reporting on a single that you can see, you know, it's not necessarily that Fox News has read the MSNBC account or something, but they're both reporting it. And if, if you, you kind of get the point of each one just by reading, but if you really want to see what each one's emphasizing, you compare the two, Right. And. And then you say, whoa, that is really different from this. And that shows that they're trying to emphasize that. And so. Okay, so that's interesting. And so. And there's more than just a flood story, right? There's creation stories.

[A]

Yeah, there's. There's a lot. And it's not just the mythology as well. It's when you get into things like Deuteronomy and some of the legal codes, you. Everyone knows this eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, tooth thing that's in Mesopotamian legal texts as well, in the earliest legal texts that we have. And again, it's not, it's not copying. This is just how these civilizations recorded this kind of information. So it. You don't, you don't get the full picture if all you're doing is just looking at the Old Testament.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, so I guess like the code of. Hammer of. Yeah. Hammurabi. And that your thing is named after digital Hammurabi. And because that's also interesting, right. Because you can see similarities and differences and, and it's in. And it tells you a lot about each one when you see the similarities and differences.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

If you're dating these things back to going back as far, you know, the fourth millennium, fourth millennium B.C.E. what. I mean, I suppose you don't start getting. You don't actually start getting Israel per se until the conquest of the Promised Land, I guess, which would be usually, I think scholars think of, you know, if there was a conquest of some kind to be in the middle of the 13th century. And so there's been a. There's been like, you know, thousands of years before this, of culture.

[A]

Right, Absolutely. And, and this is, this is happening like Israel is, is solidifying as a state in this absolutely fascinating political landscape that people don't just. You just don't. You don't get it from the Old Testament because it's so understandably concerned with this, the activities of this one people group. But during like the 15th to the 11th centuries BCE, what we have is something called the Great Powers Club, which is the Egyptians, the Mitanni, the Hittites, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. And they kind of are like, they rise and fall in power at various different times, but for a lot of it, most of them are kind of there in the same rough geographical area, really butting heads. So you have Israel kind of this small city state in the middle of all of this, with many other city states all being like vied over and conquered by one group of people and then conquered by another group of people. And how on earth they work to keep themselves safe and which kingdom they align themselves with must have been absolutely terrifying. And I think a lot of that kind of comes through in how the Old Testament presents foreign nations, especially the Assyrians. And I mean, we have some quite graphic wall reliefs from the Neo Assyrian Empire, which is slightly later that show that. Actually I would have been pretty, pretty scared of them as well. But these great powers end up essentially becoming very long distance pen pals and they form this, this brotherhood of kings and they write letters to each other and they send gifts to each other and all of the other kind of smaller kingdoms are caught up in this diplomatic cauldron really. And seeing how all of that plays out and how these different empires relate to one another and where all the little guys fit in is, is just absolutely fascinating.

[B]

So the Great Powers Club, is that what you call it?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So I didn't, I didn't hear the name Israel in there.

[A]

No, no, you weren't. It's. Israel is really, for a lot of, of the history that the Old Testament is presenting, Israel is a very minor player in the Levant. And for a lot of that time it's kind of doing its best to stay safe against the Egyptians and the Assyrians and all these different people invading their territory. And ultimately, of course, you get the Babylonian exile when they're all carted off to Mesopotamia, or at least the elites are carted off to Mesopotamia. And that that particular area is not something I have a lot of expertise in, but there's been some fascinating work done on the generational trauma that must have caused for the people who were deported and how you can read that into the Old Testament.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I guess Israel is especially susceptible to these attacks from these, the powers, because where they're located. Right. I mean, it's A lot had to do with the land masses. So explain that. What? Because Israel, even when you're the. The Hebrew Bible, right, it is Assyria, then Babylon, you get. You end up getting Persia, and, you know, then after you get the Greeks and you get the, you know, Syrians, the Egyptians, the Romans is like. So why.

[A]

A lot of it has to do with the fact that it's located so close to the Mediterranean coast. You have a lot of trade going on in this time period we've got in Egypt, you can find evidence for trade from, like, Cyprus and other areas in Greece and in Turkey. So there are very wealthy traders going up and down the coast. So people, these great powers, want access to that coastal region. And you've got kind of Egypt on one side, you've got the Mitanni up in the north, the Assyrians in the east, and they're all kind of converging on this very small, narrow strip of land which is surrounded by mountains. So it's not as if there's a ton of places that people can. Can go, and you really just see Israel kind of getting buffered from, like, one. One power to another. And I. I have no idea how people found any sense of stability in that period. You read a political history of the area, and it's like the Egyptians invaded, and then the Mitanni invaded, and then the Egyptians invaded again, and then the Assyrians came, and it was just a whole mess.

[B]

Yeah. Because, you know, if you. If your history comes entirely from the Bible, the prophets continually say it's because the people of Israel have disobeyed God, and so that's. This is how he's punishing them. But if you're reading political history, you get a very different kind of perspective that.

[A]

Well, you.

[B]

You do.

[A]

And the interesting thing is that when you go to Mesopotamian texts, the religious and the political histories are. They're melded together. They are one thing. If you, as a king, for example, if you experience bad luck in the battlefield, it's because you offended a God. Right. If you get good luck on a battlefield, it's because you prayed to the right deity and they're on your side. So having the Old Testament writers and the prophets understand this political turmoil and this military threat as being sent from God actually makes a lot of sense, because the religious view of. I think. I don't want to say all because dealing in absolutes is not wise. But the vast majority of cultures in the area, that's just how the world was understood to be. The gods controlled everything. And if you wanted something to go well, then you had to make sure that what you wanted aligned with what the gods wanted.

[B]

Did these other peoples have the kind of idea that, you know, Israel thinks it's the chosen ones. Right. Of God? Is the idea of being the chosen people. Is that something you find elsewhere too?

[A]

Kind of, but not to the extent that you maybe see in the Old Testament there wasn't an under because these other cultures were polytheistic. You don't get the idea that oh, there's one God and we are his special chosen people. You can kind of a kingdom can fall in and out of favor with various deities. You tend to see the elevation of the city God. So for the Assyrians, the city God of the city of Asshor is Assur. So he is their like supreme deity. But there's no requirements for people to only worship him. And it was very, very normal for kings to pray to multiple deities on the like when they're, they're recording battles, they'll give a whole list of deities either that chose them as king or that gave them victory. And Asura is always in there, but so is, so is Ishtar because she's the goddess of, of warfare and battle. And you don't necessarily see this elevation of one people group because of their religious affiliation or religious beliefs. Yeah, I think that maybe the closest you'd get to that would be the Egyptians who were quite convinced that they were superior to everyone, but not, I don't think because of any specific religious belief, just because they were inherently better.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So speaking of inherently better, I mean, I think when, when people read the Hebrew Bible and especially the conquest narrative of Josh, Joshua and what goes on through Judges and such, they get the sense that there are these surrounding peoples. You know, they're Canaanites and Moabites, Midianites and so forth. But, but the general sent you get from the Hebrew Bible, these are not good people. Right. And they, they deserve to be wiped out. And they're. And you know, I think people tend to think of them, they're probably unethical, they don't really have many morals or anything. Do we know much about that?

[A]

We know enough or I know enough to say that that is not true. That's a case of history being written by the winners. And I've spoken to Old Testament experts who are of the opinion that actually the Israelites are probably mostly the same cultural background as the surrounding cities, that they're railing against probably engaging in almost identical religious practices, identical cultural practices. And that what the Old Testament is doing is creating a cultural identity to more thoroughly separate out the people of Israel from these other cultures that at the time were very, very similar to them.

[B]

So let me make sure I understand what you're saying is that, in fact, you're saying that in the opinion of these people or their judgment based on their scholarship is not just like they came up with some crazy idea, but based on their scholarship, they're saying that the idea that Israelites primarily worshiped the one God all along, this was the one. Every now and then, they'd mess up and start worshiping baal, but basically they're worshiping the one God. They've got this moral code. They got this law of Moses. They keep it. They're observant, and they are highly concerned about morality and that the other peoples are different from that. These, these scholars are saying that, in fact, actually, if you're to visit, if you go to an Israelite town, it seemed pretty much like any of these other Canaanite towns.

[A]

Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. And I actually just. I spoke to John Collins about his. The course that he's teaching about specifically Israelite polytheism. And what he said and what everything else I've read says is that the monotheism you see in the Old Testament is not how religion was practiced during this time period. There probably was a group of people who favored Yahweh over other deities, but people probably have heard about the goddess Asherah. The Israelites were most likely worshiping the same gods as the Canaanites, and that's been erased from. From the Old Testament.

[B]

So these Old Testament authors, in this view, are really. They're trying to paint a kind of ideal Israel in their view, what would have been an idea. And they're putting that down as if really was that way. But when you actually look at, like, archeological evidence or other materials. Yeah, maybe not.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Are there, Are there things that you've run across in your research that would. That somebody would point out is, like, actually a contradiction to what you find in the Hebrew Bible? You know, like something like. I don't know what it would be, but, like, where people just read the Bible just get it wrong because the evidence actually goes some other direction?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, when you. When you get to. When it starts talking about Nabonidis and Belshazzar, I never remember which actual king that is. You can. You can kind of tell which king they're talking about, but it doesn't actually. What they're saying does not match with what we know from Mesopotamian records. And when you get this late in history, the records are very, very well, they're numerous. We have a lot of records selling us, like, who moved armies, where. And we've got so many royal inscriptions telling us what was going on in, in the military, but also just generally with, with kings during this time period. And it just, it doesn't match up. And it's, it's, it's pretty clear that what's happening is that the Israelite writers are demonizing the, the people that were attacking them and trying to, to conquer their, their territory.

[B]

Yeah. The Book of Daniel, is it. Belshazzar, I think is there. It wasn't really the west of the king and. But also like the Exodus event. Right. It must have, I think everybody agrees, almost everybody, it must have been Ramses II who would have been the pharaoh. Am I right about that?

[A]

Yes, I think that's right. Now, I talked to an Egyptologist about this a while ago, but generally speaking, Egyptologists, unless they have theological commitments to the exodus happening as written, the vast majority of Egyptologists say that there wasn't this mass exodus of people. I mean, for starters, there weren't that many people in the whole of Egypt at this time. There weren't that many slaves in Egypt. It's, it's. Yeah. Not, not historical.

[B]

And you know, in the, and in the Exodus thing, the whole army of Egypt gets destroyed and, and the pharaoh. But we have, we actually, I mean, I've seen Ramses ii. He was, you can still see what he, you know, because he, you know, he lived for a long time. So. Yeah. Okay. So. All right, well, so this is, look, this is really helpful. And this is. So in the course, can you just say what, you know, just remind us what kinds of things do you. What kinds of things briefly, do you, do you do in the course?

[A]

Yeah, so we'll be going through the, like, the very basics of Mesopotamian religion and society. It's only four lectures, so we don't go into tons of detail, but the basics of religion and society so how society was set up, what kings were expected to do. We will be looking at more specific points of contact between the literature of Mesopotamia and of the Old Testament. And we'll also be looking a little bit more at this Great Powers Club that I mentioned, and then looking at how Mesopotamian lamentational liturgies can be related to some of the city laments in the Hebrew Bible as well, because we didn't touch on that. But it's really really interesting.

[B]

Okay, so, so the. To get this course, it'[e-mail] before the Bible. And you know, it's as you're saying at the beginning. Anybody who wants to really understand the Bible just has to put it in its context. I mean, you could not understand. You couldn't understand a modern newspaper. Like, if you just get the front page of this morning's newspaper, it would have made nonsense 100 years ago and people didn't know what's going on. And it'll probably seem like nonsense in about 200 years unless they know the context. Right. And so the significance of it. And, and so. Well, okay, so I'm really glad you did this course. It sounds like it was fun.

[A]

It was fun and I really hope people enjoy it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, we should, we should go to listeners questions.

[B]

Are they for me or for you? Why don't I ask you? Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

No, I think I shouldn't ask you questions. No, I gave us Mr. Samian listeners questions.

[B]

No, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give. Okay, y'. All, I'm giving. I'm going to ask Megan some questions and let's just say, why not? This is all improv, as you all know. So. Okay, I think I will ask this. Okay, let's see. We, we've, we talked about the Hammurabi code. When, when did Hammurabi live?

[A]

He was like 1700. Yeah, seven. Like 1792. I think his, his reign started.

[B]

Okay, that was after the Revolutionary War. 1792.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Oh, the other 1792. Okay. Some people say that Moses would not have been able to write yet because writing had not been invented. But I believe the Sumerians had invented writing. Moses would have lived in the, maybe the 13th century B.C. how far back does Sumerian writing go?

[A]

Like the end of the fourth millennium.

[B]

The end of the fourth millennium. Okay, so before 3000. Yes, 3000 BCE.

[A]

Yeah, it's properly like Sumerian. Like it's actual spoken Sumerian. Like third millennium.

[B]

Okay, what is our. My third and last question. What is our oldest text from in the language of Akkadian?

[A]

Oh, an Acadian. I don't know, but it's got to be some kind of tax receipt.

[B]

Yeah, I'm sure it's tax receipt. So since you didn't know that one, let me give you another one. What? How old is the oldest form of the Epic of Gilgamesh?

[A]

I think the oldest fragment that we have is going to be from the second millennium sometime probably the Old Babylonian period. But there's good reason to think that it's much older than that.

[B]

Okay. That there was. The tail was around, you mean. But the. The.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Our oldest written form of it. Okay, good. Great. Okay. So. So. Okay. So thanks, Megan, for that. And next time we'll actually get. Maybe we'll get some readers questions, listeners, questions on stump.

[A]

Megan, it's not difficult.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

All right. But you've tortured me enough. Actually, it's not being torture. It's been really fun. Thank you for that.

[B]

It hasn't. Fun. Yeah.

[A]

But we should tell everyone what we are going to be talking about next week.

[B]

Yeah. Well, we're moving significantly chronologically and thematically. So, you know, I'm an atheist. I do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but I very much take the story seriously. And we're going to be as stories and trying to understand them. We're going to talk about what actually somebody as a historian can say about the accounts of Jesus resurrection. What can a historian actually say about the resurrection of Jesus?

[A]

Make sure you join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel, so you don't miss out From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.