Reading akkadian PRayeRs & Hymns An Introduction

INTRODUCTION
„Gebetsbeschwörungen“ (1976), 268 was only published after the majority of Biblicists
had lost interest. Mayer closely follows Kunstmann’s study and meticulously
collects the phrases and their combinations in every part of the prayers he
analyzes. This book was cited and studied among biblical scholars, but it could
not trigger a new initiative for comparing Akkadian and Hebrew prayers, even
though many of the former drawbacks in such work would now have been much
easier to overcome. Still, the Akkadian prayers continued to be read and studied
by some biblical scholars.
Gerstenberger’s monograph, Der bittende Mensch: Bittritual und Klagelied des
Einzelnen im Alten Testament (1980), 269 investigates the Sitz im Leben of the
individual laments in the book of Psalms. He reconstructs this partly by using
shuilla-prayers and namburbi-rituals as analogies and postulates on the basis of
this analogy the existence of ritual specialists in Israel. These reconstructions are
quite plausible, though rather optimistic, as there is very little biblical evidence
with which to work.
A new approach is taken by Albertz in his Persönliche Frömmigkeit und offizielle
Religion: Religionsinterner Pluralismus in Israel und Babylon (1978). 270 In this
work Albertz first established the plurality within the religion of ancient Israel.
He distinguishes between different social strata of religion and tries to reconstruct
elements of private piety, which must be differentiated from the official
religion. Within this socially-differentiated framework, he classifies the biblical
psalms of individual lament as deriving from the domain of pre-exilic private
piety, whereas the Mesopotamian incantation-prayers originated in another social
stratum of religion because of their complicated ritual contexts and their
developed hymnic introductions. Albertz also discusses the concept of a “personal
god” for both Mesopotamia and Israel, which was first analyzed by Vorländer.
271
In the last third of the twentieth century, Akkadian prayers were used in
Hebrew Bible scholarship in a variety of approaches. For example, the enemies
in the Biblical laments were explained as sorcerers in analogy to Mesopotamian
ritual texts. 272 The several biblical laments of the individual that lament Yah-
268 Werner Mayer, Untersuchungen zur Formensprache der babylonischen „Gebetsbeschwörungen“
(Studia Pohl: Series maior 5; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1976), abbreviated Mayer, UFBG
in this volume.
269 Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Der bittende Mensch: Bittritual und Klagelied des Einzelnen im Alten
Testament (WMANT 51; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1980).
270 Rainer Albertz, Persönliche Frömmigkeit und offizielle Religion: Religionsinterner Pluralismus in
Israel und Babylon (CThM 9; Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1978).
271 Hermann Vorländer, Mein Gott. Die Vorstellung vom persönlichen Gott im Alten Orient und Alten
Testament (AOAT 23; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker / Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1975).
272 Vorländer, Mein Gott, 250–65; Lothar Ruppert, “Klagelieder in Israel und Babylonien –
verschiedene Deutungen der Gewalt,” in Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit im Alten Testament (ed.
Norbert Lohfink; QD 96; Freiburg: Herder, 1983), 111–58; Hermann Schulz, “Zur Fluchsymbolik
in der altisraelitischen Gebetsbeschwörung,” Symb n. f. 8 (1986), 35–59. In fact, they are follow-
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