It’s not enough to simply translate some ancient tongue into a modern written language; you still have to deal with how language itself was used.
During those years I spent reading both the ANE and Western classics of literature, I was a bit confused that ANE mythology in translation sounds a lot like the Western kind. It was some years later I recognized the subtle difference. ANE languages tend to share one trait almost completely absent in every Western language: symbolic logic. Rather than drag out another discussion of how this is different in terms of thought, let’s look at how it impacts the means of communication.
Aristotle didn’t dream up a unitary universe. It was implied by the mythology and how the Greek language communicates. Greek, as with most other Western tongues, is nominative, descriptive and rather literal — it uses language as a direct label on reality. The underlying logic is descriptive. You are supposed to take the language itself rather literally. That doesn’t mean there are no artistic uses, no symbolism and metaphors. It means the standard use of language as a means of transmission arises fundamentally from a very worldly set of concerns. It assumes concrete observable reality is the whole point.
Aristotle and his friends built up their assumptions about reality from the same collection of Greek myths, all of which assumed directly that, whether or not we are able to see everything in the universe, there is no other possible realm of existence out there. It is excluded by fundamental assumptions. I don’t recall whether Aristotle pointedly excluded it so much as his teaching makes no sense otherwise.
On the other hand, I believe the case can be made that ANE languages arose from a wholly different consciousness about reality. Hebrew itself went through a few heavy transitions. It began as Abraham’s use of Chaldean/Aramaic. By long exposure, it accommodated the Canaanite version of that language and became distinctly “Hebrew” as opposed to Aramaic. During the Exile, it was pulled back toward Aramaic, so that classical Hebrew was a different language that scholars could detect. It meant the writings of Moses were hard to follow by folks returning from Exile.
What did not change is how Hebrew as a language operates as a means of communication. The people were themselves fundamentally mystics. They assumed language arose from a frankly religious purpose. Giving it a written form was a convenience, but language itself had a moral function. Thus, a Hebrew noun was not so much a label as a symbol. The word for “snake” — nakawsh — as a spoken word was a moral comment about Satan first and foremost, and descriptive of snakes secondarily. It was not that Hebrew people detested any scaly serpent, but they detested Satan and his works. The natural behavior of a serpent reminded them of the moral image of how Satan did his job. So while they didn’t hesitate to kill predatory serpents, from what we an tell, they didn’t blanch at handling harmless crawlers. We note in passing didn’t encounter that many of the latter in their environment.
For ANE people, language itself was about symbolism, a way to transmit something of moral importance. It’s not that Hebrew writing doesn’t have a literal use. Abraham’s use of numbers in pleading with God about the numerical limits of wrath and justice in Sodom and Gomorrah can be taken literally in terms of the numbers. However, typical of Hebrew writing, the episode itself was more important for what it symbolized and revealed about God. Nor should we attempt to read too much symbolism in the Exodus account where the Elim oasis was described as having twelve springs and seventy date palms. Twelve is pretty precise (“two and ten”), but the palm trees are approximate (the Hebrew was “seventy;” the KJV elaborates unnecessarily), as it would be in most cases in English. Again, the point was to show there was nothing at Elim to complain about as with Marah. Whether the words are used literally or with broad symbolism, the purpose of telling a story was to impart a moral statement.
Rarely would you have a cold factual statement in Hebrew. Even when that is the apparent purpose, such use itself makes a moral statement. That’s true of most ANE languages to varying degrees. With some languages we simply can’t tell what’s going on with it because written samples are scant. I note in passing Egypt is included in the term “Ancient Near East” (ANE) and their language is similarly bathed in symbolism. It was originally written in pictographs. One of the biggest mistakes made by scholars today is reading a Western intellectual bias back into Egyptian studies.
How language is handled, how it is used and what it was supposed to accomplish in the hearer and reader, is often ignored in the study of antiquities. It is an obsession peculiar to Westerners that precise wording is important. Take a look at the Gilgamesh Epic. There are a great many variations on the basic tale, and we can be certain the original bears only some faint resemblance to the final version published. An ANE reader wouldn’t give it a second thought. That’s because the bottom line is not the story but the fundamental reason for the myth in the first place. It was moral symbolism. That is what was transmitted, the mythology of the Mesopotamian intellectual background. It’s contextual. Changing the fundamental facts of the story is fine, so long as the symbolic moral message is retained. Nothing in the original story was meant to convey some narrative anyone actually believed in terms of historical facts. Getting the story straight would have been a silly concern in their eyes.
On the contrary, we have broad evidence Western peoples tended to believe literally the myths of their culture. That didn’t prevent hyperbole and exaggeration, but people tended to repeat the basic narrative as somehow sacred, bearing a demand that you buy into the facts. There was no such intellectual orthodoxy in the ANE. Yet we encounter a wide range of scholarship that assumes just that; folks assert with a straight face ancient Hebrews would memorize long passages word-for-word. That may be true of Judaism after it was Hellenized, but that’s a mythology in itself. I find no credible evidence any ANE culture engaged in such a concern.
No, I don’t pretend to be an expert in Antiquities; I’m simply reporting what I found and how it helped form my current beliefs, which will certainly affect this project.
