Vêtus Testamentum X X X V I , 3 (1986)

E G Y P T I A N O N O M A S T I C A A N D BIBLICAL W I S D O M

by

MICHAEL V. FOX Madison, Wisconsin

There is little doubt that Israelite didactic wisdom, known to us primarily from the book of Proverbs, derived in form and content from an international genre of didactic wisdom, well attested in Egypt and Mesopotamia. More disputable is whether other types of foreign literature left their impress on Israelite wisdom This study will look into the theory that Egyptian word lists were one such source of influence.

Starting from a recognition of the Egyptian antecedents of Israelite wisdom, Albrecht Alt1 sought a foreign origin for Solomon's wisdom concerning plants and animals, which is praised in 1 Kgs ν 10-14. Alt called this type of wisdom Naturweisheit and placed its origin in word-lists such as are known from Egypt and Mesopotamia He described the creation of such texts as Listen-wissenschafl, a "science of lists", whose purpose he said was "encyclopedic". Alt gave particular attention to the Onomasticon of Amenope, 2 which constituted, he said, a "Versuch einer Enzyklopädie alles Wissens".3 Alt hypothesized that Solomon's 3000 proverbs and 1005 songs4 were reformulations of items from "encyclopedic lists" of the sort found in Egypt and Mesopotamia

Before we consider parallels between the onomastica and biblical literature, we should understand clearly what the onomastica are

1 " D i e Weisheit Salomos" ThLZ 76 (1951), cols 139-44, E tr in James L Crenshaw (ed ), Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom (New York, 1976), pp 102-12

2 A H Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica (London, 1947) There are also more specialized lists—body parts, hieroglyphic signs, geographical lists, and more See the survey by H Grapow and W Westendorf in Handbuch der Orien­talistik I, I, 2 Ägyptologie/Literatur (Leiden, 1970), eh 37 For the Late Period see U Kaplony-Heckel, "Schuler und Schulwesen in der ägyptischen Spatzeit", Studien zur altagyptischen Kultur 2 (1974), pp 228-46

3 ρ 141, E tr , ρ 105 4 It should not be taken for granted that the subjects mentioned in 1 Kgs ν 14

were the subjects of the songs and proverbs mentioned m υ 13 Solomon's talk about them might be an additional example of his wisdom

EGYPTIAN ONOMASTICA AND BIBLICAL WISDOM 3 0 3

and (perhaps more importantly) what they are not They are not attempts to organize natural phenomena in

systematic encyclopedias, in which the order of the items represents a structure in reality Gardiner's understanding of the onomastica as the "first steps in the direction of an Encyclopaedia" (p 1) is open to doubt It is based first of all on the title of On Am , which Gardiner himself describes as ' 'wordy and pretentious" and "bom­bastic" (pp 1 and 35) The title reads

Beginning of the teaching for clearing the mind, for instruction of the ignorant and for learning all things that exist, what Ptah created, and what Thoth copied down, heaven with its affairs, earth and what is in it, what the mountains belch forth, what is watered by the flood, all things upon which Rec has shone, all that is grown on the back of earth, excogitated by the scribe of the sacred books in the House of Life, Amenopë, son of Amenopë (Gardiner's translation, ρ 2*)

However one understands the list, the claims in the title must be

taken with more than a grain of salt The title is certainly an exag­

geration, somewhat along the lines of a book blurb, rather than a

careful declaration of purpose At any rate, the title does not say

what the text teaches about things The label sboyet, " instruct ion",

may refer to any kind of instruction, including the training of

animals The other Egyptian onomastica make no such grandiose

claims But we can compare the similarly exaggerated claim in the

heading of the Rhind mathematical papyrus, which calls itself " t h e

guide for entering into knowledge of all that exists, all darkness

[and all] mysteries which are in things" 5

The breadth of the title's assertions, although exaggerated, may

claim some justification in the Egyptian concept of writing The

Egyptians invested their writing system with great significance

signs were considered to share in the qualities and powers of the

things they represented The inclusion of a large number of words

about many different types of things may help explain the claim in

the title to be a teaching about " a l l " things that exist But this

claim would be based on the quantity of the words and their

reference to many different realms of existence, not on the order

into which they were put

If the purpose of these lists were to reveal orders and hierarchies

5 A Eisenlohr, Em mathematisches Handbuch der alten Aegypter (Leipzig, 1877, repr Walluf bei Wiesbaden, 1972)

304 M I C H A E L V. FOX

in the nature of all phenomena, they would have to be judged com­plete failures. They do group phenomena in categories, but " the cohesion of the categories is often so questionable that the scribe [of the Golenischeff Papyrus of On. Am.] may have found difficulty in deciding upon a suitable course of action" (in placing the rubrics) (Gardiner, p. 36). The rubrics are often illogically and erratically placed. While there is some ordering in certain categories where an associative ordering is natural (e.g., in the categories of types of people and the south-north ordering of Egyptian towns), most of the categories show no internal structure or hierarchy; nor is there much attempt to show relations among the categories. Different kinds of cake are each given as much attention as the city Memphis or heaven itself, while some major towns and the earth itself are missing. Other items are repeated in different writings. It is unnecessarily condescending toward Egyptian learning to imagine that this was the best that could be achieved in the way of ordering natural phenomena, as if the gross distinction between beverages on the one hand and the towns of Egypt on the other was of such interest that it deserved to be written down, copied, and taught.

Far more likely, the primary purpose of the onomastica was the teaching of writing. This supposition can best explain the inclusion of orthographic variants (e.g., On. Am. no. 18 lidt and no. 19 3wdt) and the inclusion of the same word in synonymous phrases as separate entries (e.g.,¿3ty "vizier", no. 73) andtity imy-r niwt η T3 Mry " t h e vizier and overseer of the cities of Egypt", no. 86). If the scribe were categorizing things, he would have included Edfu only once rather than treating two of its names as two separate items (nos. 318, 319). And one entry would suffice for the /W-cake, which now appears three times in different writings in the Ramesseum Onomasticon (nos. 222, 227, 236). If the onomastica were primarily teaching-aids in the study of writing, it is doubtful that they would have been known in Israel, where the alphabet created quite different pedagogical needs. 6

6 H Brunner says that the lists were catalogues of things ("Sachverzeichnis") intended to give a overview of the things of the world, but at the same time to teach their names and the correct writing of the names H e regards this last purpose, even if it was not the author's main goal, to have been the primary one for the schools (Altagyptische Erziehung [Wiesbaden, 1957], pp 93-4) If that was indeed their primary purpose for the schools, that is the only concept of the lists that could have influenced scribes of later generations, for the original author's intention would not have been known or transmitted

EGYPTIAN ONOMASTICA AND BIBLICAL WISDOM 3 0 5

It is also possible that some lists served as aids in instruction

about realia, and that they were accompanied by elucidation on the

teacher's part. Several later lists add brief explanations in a way

that suggests such a practice; for example:

Further: mountains — Roshat, mountain of turquoise, Hahe, mountain of gold (cAmarne). Terrore, mountain of lapis-lazuli.7

The focus of interest here is not the order of the items but informa­

tion about them. The explanations look like glosses that earlier

might have been communicated orally. This type of list is apparent­

ly late (the above text comes from the Roman period). As is the case

for much Ptolemaic literature, this text may show an attempt to put

into writing a usage that was earlier taken for granted.

Numerous lists have been preserved from the late period, mostly

in Demotic. Many Demotic lists reveal their concern for writing or

grammar by their organization according to initial consonants,

determinatives, or ' boot s ' ' . Other lists are not organized by in­

disputably orthographic or linguistic features, but they too seem to

have been aids in the teaching of writing. One ostracon shows two

camels and adds, "these are two male camels" . Another ostracon

shows a man holding two dogs on leash and the legend gives the

dogs' names or breeds and adds " a man, who holds t h e m " . Such

legends suggest that the students wrote down an oral glossing

meant to identify the signs rather than the animals they represent.

The objects pictured were familiar and hardly needed explanation

in themselves.8

A hieroglyphic-hieratic sign-list from the second century C.E.

brings, in three columns, hieroglyphic signs, their hieratic

equivalents, and, apparently, the signs' names. The signs are

grouped in categories: men standing, women squatting, men

falling, animals, body parts, etc. But even here, where we do find

some organization by meaning-category, the purpose is to elucidate

the written signs rather than what they represent in the external

7 W J Tait, "The mountains of lapis-lazuli", Gottinger Miszellen 20 (1974), pp 49-54 Tait says that there are numerous fragments of this sort m the papyrus col­lection at the University of Copenhagen

8 For information on the lists discussed in this paragraph see Kaplony-Heckel, "Schuler und Schulwesen" (above, η 2) Kaplony-Heckel accepts the theory that the basic idea of the ' * Sachworterbucher" is contentual ordering (p 235)

306 M I C H A E L V. FOX

world. First of all, the list is organized by individual signs, not words, and signs are not in themselves specific enough to impart in­formation about things. Second, the third column identifies the signs rather than giving information about things in the world; for example: ' ' turning back", " a woman carrying", ' 'mouth of a human being". 9 In its type of organization and form of glossing, this list bears similarity to the sign-list in Gardiner's Grammar

I am not claiming that no lists seek to teach about orders in the world by means of schemata; schematic organization in accordance with an external reality is undoubtedly essential to the educational purpose of some lists—geographical lists, for example.10 I would not, however, view this quality as the basic feature of lists and deduce from it the existence of a "science of lists"

In the wake of Alt's article, it became widely taken for granted that Israelite wisdom included a "science of lists". Not long after­wards, G. von Rad published a study that derived the first half of God's answer to Job (chs xxxviii-xxxix) in part from this "science of lists".11 The theory presented in that article has been influential in the interpretation of Job in particular and wisdom literature in general. This theory is still a live issue and worthy of reassessment.

Von Rad sought the origin of the "spezifische Form" of God's speech first of all in Egyptian onomastica, giving particular atten­tion to the longest of the extant lists, the Onomasticon of Amenope, which von Rad too considered to be "ein wissenschaftlich enzyklo­pädisches Werk" (p. 293). He claimed that, although this onomasticon does not correspond exactly to Job xxxviii, there is a close resemblance in the enumeration of meteorological phenomena (snow, hail, wind) and the stars. He granted that we cannot suppose direct dependence of Job xxxviii upon this onomasticon—"trotzdem muss doch wohl eine Beziehung zwischen beiden Texten bestehen" (p. 294). Such lists may have found their way to Israel, where they were reworked into poetic compositions. Such lists, he said, also underlie the enumeration of phenomena in Ben Sira xliii, Ps. cxxxviii and Dan ni 52-90 L X X

9 F LI Griffith, " T h e Sign Payrus" , in Griffith and W M F Pétrie, Two Hieroglyphic Papyri from Tarns (London, 1899), discussed m Kaplony-Heckel (n 2, above), ρ 235

1 0 e g , The "Geographical P a p y r u s " in Griffith and Petne 1 1 " H i o b xxxviii und die altagyptische Weisheit", SVT 3 (1955), pp 293-301,

E tr in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays (Edinburgh and London, 1966), pp 281-91, and Crenshaw (n 1 above), pp 267-77

EGYPTIAN ONOMASTICA AND BIBLICAL WISDOM 3 0 7

In particular, Ps. cxlviii follows what he calls "dem herkömmlichen wissenschaftlichen Schema" (p. 296) by proceeding from the stars to meteorologial phenomena to the earth

In summary, von Rad says,

Wir sahen, dass lob xxxviii f hinsichtlich der Abfolge der kosmologi-schen und naturkundlichen Phänomene einem vorgegebenen Schema entlang geht, das letztlich der ägyptischen Wissenschaft entstammt, wie sie in den Onomastiken niedergelegt ist 12

The strongest argument against connecting Job xxxviii-xxxix with the onomastica is the list von Rad himself supplies as evidence

12 ρ 300 In that article von R a d also argued for an Egyptian parallel to the ' ' e igentümliche^) Stilform" of God's speech, which is composed mostly of rhetorical questions Von Rad found a parallel m Papyrus Anastasi I, known as " A Satirical Let ter" According to von Rad, m one section of the text (18,9-28,1) the scribe H o n (according to von Rad) sarcastically asks his opponent a series of rhetorical questions meant to prove the latter's ignorance of Asiatic geography But this suggested parallel too is irrelevant First of all, the (misnamed) "Satirical Let ter" is not composed almost entirely of rhetorical questions (See Gardiner 's remarks in Egyptian Hieratic Texts, series I Literary Texts of the New Kingdom I [Leip­zig, 1911], ρ 20*, η 1 1 ) Von Rad was led astray here by Erman ' s mistranslation of certain sentences, which makes many of the negative indicative sentences into questions (A Erman, Die Literatur der Ägypter [Leipzig, 1923], pp 286-7, E tr The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians [London, 1927], ρ 228, reprinted as The Ancient Egyptians a Sourcebook of their Writings [New York, 1966], ρ 228) Sentences Erman translates as rhetorical questions, e g "Bist du nicht zum Chattiland gegangen und hast du das land Upi nicht gesehen?", would require affirmative answers, while the speaker is asserting the opposite—the opponent's ignorance and inex­perience There is no grammatical indication of the interrogative m these statements They are to be translated, "You have not gone to the land of Khatti, and you have not seen the land of U p e " In fact, most of the section in question consists of indicative assertions of the addressee's ignorance There are several questions that challenge knowlege, but they do not predominate Since we do not have anything like a catechism m Ρ Anastasi I, it is hardly justifiable to use this work as evidence for the existence of school catechisms m Egypt—and then to derive the form-category of God's speeches in J o b xxxvm-xxxix from this hypothetical genre

In any case, there is a fundamental difference between H o n ' s questions and God' s H o n attempts to demonstrate his opponent's ignorance by asking him questions that he cannot answer, e g , " W h a t is the Djemer of Sese like? O n which side of it is the town of Cher ? What is its stream l ike?", etc (18,8-19,1) H o n ' s questions are difficult but not impossible for an educated scribe They are not essentially rhetorical, ι e , indicative statements in interrogative form H o n ' s ques­tions challenge his opponent by asking for information God's questions, in con­trast, are (with two exceptions) truly rhetorical They are actually declarations of God's power m creating and maintaining the world God is not attempting to con­found J o b so much as to remind him of what he already knows well—divine power and rule, see M V Fox, " J o b 38 and God's Rhetor ic" , Semeia 19 (1981), pp 53-61

308 M I C H A E L V. FOX

for a "scientific schema" common to both. Von Rad lists the first 50 items of On. Am. next to the 39 items mentioned in Job xxxviii 12 (the verse he takes as the starting point of the comparison) through xxxix 26. Of these 39, only nine have some correspondence in the onomasticon, and there is no similarity whatsoever in the sequence of items. The other works that von Rad compares to On. Am. proceed from the heaven, to the sun, moon and stars, to meteorological phenomena, as does On. Am. But this general order is so natural and predictable that its presence in different composi­tions does not prove genetic connection.

Certainly, we must hesitate to speak of a "scientific schema" represented in the onomastica. There is scarcely a schema in On. Am. itself. There is no schema common to the numerous Egyptian lists of various sorts, and there is certainly no schema common to On. Am. and Job xxxviii, as von Rad suggested.

Another scholar inspired by Alt to detect the "science of lists" in biblical literature was S. Herrmann,1 3 who suggested that the author of the first creation story used onomastica as the basis of his description of the creation of the human sphere of life, the third to sixth days of creation. But there is nothing in common between them other than the mention of things that are in the world.

On. Am. is so comprehensive that any mention of things of any sort is likely to have some items in common with it; it will certainly have some categories in common with it. We could justify a hypothesis of dependence only if we could find a fairly strict, specific schema maintained in both, preferably one whose order was not quite predictable.

As for Mesopotamian lists such as the harra-hubbulu series, it is significant that von Rad explicitly rejects a connection between them and Job xxxviii (p. 301). Those lists are apparently even farther removed from the assumed scientific schema. I expect that similar arguments could be brought against an attempt to draw a connection between them and the presumed nature wisdom in the Bible.

There is no evidence for a "science of lists" in ancient Israel. What is more, there is no science of lists in Egypt in any significant sense. There are only lists, lists of all sorts, with varied contents and principles of organization—medical, zoological, religious, geo-

13 "Die Naturlehre des Schopfunçsbenchtes", ThLZ 86 (1961), cols 413-24

EGYPTIAN ONOMASTICA AND BIBLICAL WISDOM 3 0 9

graphical, and more.14 There is nothing to suggest that the creation of lists was considered a single enterprise, as if geographical lists and lists of body parts were in some way intended to contribute to a common purpose of expanding and organizing the body of shared knowledge.

Alt's and von Rad 's articles suggested that biblical wisdom literature derives in part from observational sciences. Alt hypothesized that one link in this derivation was the Egyptian onomastica. Von Rad argued that one literary end product of the process was Job xxxviii-xxxix. This picture of the development of wisdom literature reinforces the common idea that it was a humanistic, fundamentally empirical, enterprise. This idea, which I consider doubtful, requires further discussion. Here, however, I wish only to consider the notion that God's answer to Job is depen­dent on the observations of science, whether or not these observa­tions were mediated by lists.15

There were, of course, natural sciences in Egypt, so far as obser­vations of nature were used in medicine, astrology, geography, and the like. There may well have been similar activities in Israel. Wisdom literature, however, shows no relation to any sort of scien­tific enterprise, even understanding "science" in the broad, non­technical sense that "Wissenschaft" can have. Wisdom literature shows no attempt to derive knowledge about human or divine behavior from observations of the natural world. Some proverbs, such as the one about the ant (Prov. vi 6-8), mention animals as examples reinforcing a teaching about human behavior, but the content of the teaching never originates in observation of animal life. Three passages in Proverbs—xxx 18-19, 24-8, 29-31—do show curiosity about the natural world, but this curiosity too is static admiration, implying no attempt to extend the range of knowledge by observation of the natural world. Rather, these proverbs seek to

14 See the survey by Grapow and Westendorf (above, n. 2). 15 As Von Rad described the process, Job xxxviii-xxxix (and Ben Sira xliii 1 ff.).

were not directly dependent on onomastica: yet: ... dies kann immerhin behauptet werden, dass solche enzyklopädischen Werke auch nach Israel gekommen sind und dass man es auch in Israel ge­lernt hat, die kosmischen und meteorologischen Phänomene, aber auch die Tierwelt derart wissenschaftlich aufzureihen. Die Weisen, wohlbewandert in aller gelehrten Literatur, standen dann vor der nicht allzuschweren Aufgabe, bei der Herstellung ihrer Lehrdichtungen diesem von der damaligen Wissen­schaft längst sanktionierten Schema entlang zu gehen und die nüchternen Reihen in Dichtungen umzusetzen (p. 296).

310 M I C H A E L V. FOX

arouse a sense of wonder in the commonplace. In general, descrip­tion of nature in the Bible is intended either to exemplify teachings about human nature and behavior or to testify to God's power and mystery.

The references to natural phenomena in Job xxxviii-xxxix do not derive from an intellectual activity analogous to science. After all, ''science" (and "Wissenschaft") minimally implies the under­taking of observations and the extension of knowledge beyond facts that everybody can readily see and know, whereas the point of Job xxxviii-xxxix is that God's power and providence are immediately manifest in the mysteries and wonders of nature. As for the facts Job does not know—such as where light dwells or when the rock-gazelle gives birth—the message of God's speech assumes that these are hidden from all people (and this would include "natural scien­tists"). If anything, the author assumes that human knowledge is, in its fundamentals, defined in advance. There is nothing that God says Job knows that anyone else could not know, and there is nothing that God says Job does not know that anyone else could know. In these chapters we get no sense that human intellect is capable of pushing back the frontiers of knowledge through its powers of observation. Human intellect is sufficient to comprehend what is most important: divine power and providence. And it is capable of realizing its own boundaries. True wisdom consists in recognizing in those boundaries evidence for divine power (Job xxxviii).

Clearly, we must be more restrained in explaining forms of biblical literature by presumption of foreign influence. At the very least, our comparisons should be restricted to exemplars of the same genre, except in the case of localized comparisons between specific motifs, concepts, or linguistic usages. The "comparative method"—undoubtedly legitimate when applied to wisdom literature—can work effectively only when the terms of comparison are well defined. Gattungsforschung must be allowed to work two ways, not only bringing literary exemplars together in order to disclose a Gattung, but also holding apart works of types that are not properly comparable.16

16 I wish to thank Professors J . L. Crenshaw and M. Tsevat for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this essay.

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