Jeff Cooley | Boston College (original) (raw)

Books by Jeff Cooley

"Modern science historians have typically treated the sciences of the ancient Near East as separa... more "Modern science historians have typically treated the sciences of the ancient Near East as separate from historical and cultural considerations. At the same time, biblical scholars, dominated by theological concerns, have historically understood the Israelite god as separate from the natural world. Cooley’s study, bringing to bear contemporary models of science history on the one hand and biblical studies on the other hand, seeks to bridge a gap created by 20th-century scholarship in our understanding of ancient Near Eastern cultures by investigating the ways in which ancient authors incorporated their cultures’ celestial speculation in narrative.

In the literature of ancient Iraq, celestial divination is displayed quite prominently in important works such as Enuma Eliš and Erra and Išum. In ancient Ugarit as well, the sky was observed for devotional reasons, and astral deities play important roles in stories such as the Baal Cycle and Shahar and Shalim. Even though the veneration of astral deities was rejected by biblical authors, in the literature of ancient Israel the Sun, Moon, and stars are often depicted as active, conscious agents. In texts such as Genesis 1, Joshua 10, Judges 5, and Job 38, these celestial characters, these “sons of God,” are living, dynamic members of Yahweh’s royal entourage, willfully performing courtly, martial, and calendrical roles for their sovereign.

The synthesis offered by this book, the first of its kind since the demise of the pan-Babylonianist school more than a century ago, is about ancient science in ancient Near Eastern literature."

Papers by Jeff Cooley

Orientalia, 2022

In this study I offer an interpretation of the so-called Name Book, a multilingual name list like... more In this study I offer an interpretation of the so-called Name Book, a multilingual name list likely originating in the Middle Babylonian period and preserved primarily in a Neo-Assyrian copy, VR 44 (K 4426 + Rm 617). This work features the sophisticated kind of translational hermeneutics that are well-demonstrated in the commentaries and other scholarly texts as well as the organizational aspects of knowledge-making and transmission that are characteristic of the list genre. I maintain that the scribe who created the Name Book (as well his Neo-Assyrian successor) employed these scholarly modes of analysis and synthesis to produce a distinctive image of the Land’s past, one that exegeted the linguistically/grammatologically interesting names of royals, important scribes, and political elites and organized them in such a way so as to emphasize the scribes’ crucial intermediary-administrative position among society’s highest echelons.

Hebrew Union College Annual 91: 1-14, 2022

Scholars have long recognized that the proper names in the Book of Ruth are narratively relevant,... more Scholars have long recognized that the proper names in the Book of Ruth are narratively relevant, signaling characters’ and places’ natures, fates, and so on. Nonetheless, the various historical and modern explanations of the name of the book’s protagonist, the Moabite Ruth, are of relatively weak philological and narrative merit and, as such, are in stark contrast to the vivid explanations of many of the other names in the story. This study posits a novel etymology and maintains that the name רות is ultimately derived from the important term תורה . This derivation is grounded in the stylistics practice and the kinds of etymological speculation otherwise evinced by the scribes who composed the Hebrew Bible. Ultimately, the transparent relationship between רות on the one hand and תורה on the other has the potential to impact how the character is to be understood vis-à-vis the issue of the integration of non-Judean wives into the Judean community at the time of the biblical book’s composition.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2012

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2021

Enoch, introduced in the book of Genesis and extensively characterized in Jewish texts of the Sec... more Enoch, introduced in the book of Genesis and extensively characterized in Jewish texts of the Second Temple Period, has long been a focus of scholarship on the Judean reception of Mesopotamian traditions. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Zimmern (1903) first proposed that the character could be traced back to Enmeduranki from the Babylonian seven sages tradition. This perspective was largely assumed thereafter, and was most thoroughly sustained in VanderKam’s (1995) important monograph. Most recently, however, Sanders (2017) has called this identification into question. In his astute study, Sanders notes that the figure of Enmeduranki was hardly noteworthy among Mesopotamian scribes of the first millennium and offers in his place the figure of Adapa (best known to modern readers from the story Adapa and the South Wind) as the primary source of Enoch’s inspiration. Like Enoch, Adapa went up into the sky and was closely associated with revealed knowledge via his relationship to the god Enki. Most importantly for Sanders, unlike Enmeduranki, Adapa was a figure that was featured in scribes’ self-understanding and self-presentation and was actually well-known and admired amongst the intellectual elite of the mid-to-late first millennium Babylonia.
Beginning with Sanders’ scribal reorientation of the question, in this paper I will address the roots of the biblical figure as well. Focusing primarily on the Yahwist’s presentation in Gen 4:17-18, I argue that Enoch’s most proximate Mesopotamian forerunner is neither Enmeduranki, Adapa, nor any famous human sage/scribe, but is the god Enki himself. While this suggestion is admittedly not novel (already finding brief expression in Greenberg 2002), I make its case based on demonstrable scribal praxis, specifically the Yahwist’s use of scholarly onomastic hermeneutics (e.g., Nimrod and Ashur in Gen 10:8-12, and Babel in Gen 11:1-9) by which he reconfigures Babylonian history for his own people’s self-understanding.

Biblica, 2020

This article reexamines the growth of Isa 7,10-17 and shows that the pericope features a number o... more This article reexamines the growth of Isa 7,10-17 and shows that the pericope features a number of interpretive techniques that are also on display in the contemporaneous letters from Babylonian and Assyrian diviner-scholars to the Assyrian monarch Esarhaddon concerning the meaning of a certain lunar eclipse. These techniques include: 1) the reorientation of the omen’s character; 2) the contemporizing/reinterpretation of terms; and 3) the specific identification of contemporary sovereigns/polities. Ultimately, the author argues that the textual growth of Isa 7,10-17 is best explained not through historical-literary reflection, as has been traditionally maintained, but rather as the result of active divinatory consultation.

Harvard Theological Review, 2019

The term Volksetymologie has frequently been applied to the etiological passages of the Hebrew Bi... more The term Volksetymologie has frequently been applied to the etiological passages of the Hebrew Bible and occasionally to such passages in Mesopotamian literature that explain the origin of the name of a person, place, or thing. Originating in mid- nineteenth century German Sprachwissenschaft, the term generally assumes that the authors of such passages were possessed of a considerable philological ignorance and naïveté. These etymological narratives are thus regularly brushed aside as childish though charming. Alternatively, they are often understood as interesting aesthetic devices, related to paronomasia and punning.

It is becoming increasingly evident, however, that the activity of parsing a name is linked to broader interpretive methods employed by scribes in the ancient Near East. Indeed, our developing understanding of intellectual practices in Mesopotamia and among the Bible’s tradents has demonstrated that Babylonian and Judean scribes could employ rather sophisticated hermeneutics. This fact has significance for our evaluation of biblical etymological passages in many ways including, for example, the methods employed by ancient authors to interpret names within narratives and their motivation for doing so.

Finding, Inheriting or Borrowing? The Construction and Transfer of Knowledge in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Edited by ochen Althoff, Dominik Berrens, and Tanja Pommerening, 2019

“The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts”: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Science in Honor of Francesca Rochberg, 2018

Pages 207-252 in “The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts”: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Scie... more Pages 207-252 in “The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts”: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Science in Honor of Francesca Rochberg. Ancient Magic and Divination 13. Edited by C. Jay Crisostomo, Eduardo A. Escobar, Terri Tanaka, and Niek Veldhuis. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Laws of Heaven – Laws of Nature. Legal Interpretations of Cosmic Phenomena in the Ancient World. Edited by Konrad Schmid and Christoph Uehlinger., 2016

Read in the light of Babylonian mantics, Isa 2:1–4 is an oracle that provides a counter-narrative... more Read in the light of Babylonian mantics, Isa 2:1–4 is an oracle that provides a counter-narrative to the effectiveness and antiquity of the Mesopotamian divination tradition.

Journal of the American Oriental Society 135 (2015): 131-147.

The goal of this essay is to begin the study of the handful of references to celestial divination... more The goal of this essay is to begin the study of the handful of references to celestial divination found in the Assyrian royal inscriptions from the perspective of propaganda analysis by approaching one text in particular, Esarhaddon’s Aššur A inscription. This inquiry helps to solve some of the outstanding problems in regard to the celestial phenomena recorded in these inscriptions and their mantic implications.

Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires. Ancient Near East Monographs/Monografias sobre el Antiguo Cercano Oriente 7. Pages 7-32., 2014

The author of Psalm 19 consciously reflects on the cosmology in Genesis 1 and associated traditio... more The author of Psalm 19 consciously reflects on the cosmology in Genesis 1 and associated traditions. This reflection involves how the psalmist conceives of the sun, including the celestial feature’s personal nature, responsibility in the cosmic order in terms of calendrical regulation, and its deliberate obedience in the fulfillment of its cultic task. The sun’s obedience serves as a model for sacerdotal devotion, and, just as importantly, allows for the human priest to fulfill his own obligations vis-à-vis properly-timed observance of cultic activities. Of primary importance in all of this, whether at the celestial level or the human level, is the centrality of septenary Sabbath observance, which the sun is charged to mark and the righteous Yahweh devotee is charged to observe. Its importance is implicitly signaled by the psalmist, as it is in Genesis 1: by seven-fold repetition (of Yahweh’s name), and by cryptic allusion (the אות in שׁגיאות).

Since F. Al-Rawi and J. Black published the second tablet of the first-millennium myth Erra and I... more Since F. Al-Rawi and J. Black published the second tablet of the first-millennium myth Erra and Išum (Iraq 51: 111-122) it has been generally recognized that the story includes fairly specific references to celestial features known from the Mesopotamian tradition of celestial divination. Moreover, D. Brown (Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology) has made passing reference to his belief that Erra and Išum contains significant astronomically related material. Nevertheless, to date no systematic study of the myth has been undertaken which explores this possibility in any depth.

In this paper, I demonstrate that the author of the myth did, in fact, employ significant astronomical technical terminology in his composition, terminology that is also found in the contemporary works of celestial divination (Enūma Anu Enlil, mulAPIN, as well as the astronomical reports and letters to the Neo-Assyrian monarchs). Such terminology includes: bibbu, manzāzu, šarūru maqātu, šarūru našû, ba’ālu, umullu, and adannu etēqu.

Moreover, I show that the author’s knowledge of celestial divination goes beyond the mere use of technical terminology. Indeed, the author also exhibits his familiarity with the association of certain celestial features with specific divine characters and mundane phenomena. This includes the constellations mulKA5.A/ šēlebu (“the Fox”), the Sebitti and the planet Mars with the god Erra. He also associates Mars/Erra with destruction and plague, the Sebitti with the well-being of livestock, and Marduk with the stability of the land in general and Babylon in particular. Finally, I show that the author demonstrates a knowledge and acceptance of specific divinatory theoretical concepts including the general principle that the phenomena of the sky portend divine action.

"Modern science historians have typically treated the sciences of the ancient Near East as separa... more "Modern science historians have typically treated the sciences of the ancient Near East as separate from historical and cultural considerations. At the same time, biblical scholars, dominated by theological concerns, have historically understood the Israelite god as separate from the natural world. Cooley’s study, bringing to bear contemporary models of science history on the one hand and biblical studies on the other hand, seeks to bridge a gap created by 20th-century scholarship in our understanding of ancient Near Eastern cultures by investigating the ways in which ancient authors incorporated their cultures’ celestial speculation in narrative.

In the literature of ancient Iraq, celestial divination is displayed quite prominently in important works such as Enuma Eliš and Erra and Išum. In ancient Ugarit as well, the sky was observed for devotional reasons, and astral deities play important roles in stories such as the Baal Cycle and Shahar and Shalim. Even though the veneration of astral deities was rejected by biblical authors, in the literature of ancient Israel the Sun, Moon, and stars are often depicted as active, conscious agents. In texts such as Genesis 1, Joshua 10, Judges 5, and Job 38, these celestial characters, these “sons of God,” are living, dynamic members of Yahweh’s royal entourage, willfully performing courtly, martial, and calendrical roles for their sovereign.

The synthesis offered by this book, the first of its kind since the demise of the pan-Babylonianist school more than a century ago, is about ancient science in ancient Near Eastern literature."

Orientalia, 2022

In this study I offer an interpretation of the so-called Name Book, a multilingual name list like... more In this study I offer an interpretation of the so-called Name Book, a multilingual name list likely originating in the Middle Babylonian period and preserved primarily in a Neo-Assyrian copy, VR 44 (K 4426 + Rm 617). This work features the sophisticated kind of translational hermeneutics that are well-demonstrated in the commentaries and other scholarly texts as well as the organizational aspects of knowledge-making and transmission that are characteristic of the list genre. I maintain that the scribe who created the Name Book (as well his Neo-Assyrian successor) employed these scholarly modes of analysis and synthesis to produce a distinctive image of the Land’s past, one that exegeted the linguistically/grammatologically interesting names of royals, important scribes, and political elites and organized them in such a way so as to emphasize the scribes’ crucial intermediary-administrative position among society’s highest echelons.

Hebrew Union College Annual 91: 1-14, 2022

Scholars have long recognized that the proper names in the Book of Ruth are narratively relevant,... more Scholars have long recognized that the proper names in the Book of Ruth are narratively relevant, signaling characters’ and places’ natures, fates, and so on. Nonetheless, the various historical and modern explanations of the name of the book’s protagonist, the Moabite Ruth, are of relatively weak philological and narrative merit and, as such, are in stark contrast to the vivid explanations of many of the other names in the story. This study posits a novel etymology and maintains that the name רות is ultimately derived from the important term תורה . This derivation is grounded in the stylistics practice and the kinds of etymological speculation otherwise evinced by the scribes who composed the Hebrew Bible. Ultimately, the transparent relationship between רות on the one hand and תורה on the other has the potential to impact how the character is to be understood vis-à-vis the issue of the integration of non-Judean wives into the Judean community at the time of the biblical book’s composition.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2012

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2021

Enoch, introduced in the book of Genesis and extensively characterized in Jewish texts of the Sec... more Enoch, introduced in the book of Genesis and extensively characterized in Jewish texts of the Second Temple Period, has long been a focus of scholarship on the Judean reception of Mesopotamian traditions. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Zimmern (1903) first proposed that the character could be traced back to Enmeduranki from the Babylonian seven sages tradition. This perspective was largely assumed thereafter, and was most thoroughly sustained in VanderKam’s (1995) important monograph. Most recently, however, Sanders (2017) has called this identification into question. In his astute study, Sanders notes that the figure of Enmeduranki was hardly noteworthy among Mesopotamian scribes of the first millennium and offers in his place the figure of Adapa (best known to modern readers from the story Adapa and the South Wind) as the primary source of Enoch’s inspiration. Like Enoch, Adapa went up into the sky and was closely associated with revealed knowledge via his relationship to the god Enki. Most importantly for Sanders, unlike Enmeduranki, Adapa was a figure that was featured in scribes’ self-understanding and self-presentation and was actually well-known and admired amongst the intellectual elite of the mid-to-late first millennium Babylonia.
Beginning with Sanders’ scribal reorientation of the question, in this paper I will address the roots of the biblical figure as well. Focusing primarily on the Yahwist’s presentation in Gen 4:17-18, I argue that Enoch’s most proximate Mesopotamian forerunner is neither Enmeduranki, Adapa, nor any famous human sage/scribe, but is the god Enki himself. While this suggestion is admittedly not novel (already finding brief expression in Greenberg 2002), I make its case based on demonstrable scribal praxis, specifically the Yahwist’s use of scholarly onomastic hermeneutics (e.g., Nimrod and Ashur in Gen 10:8-12, and Babel in Gen 11:1-9) by which he reconfigures Babylonian history for his own people’s self-understanding.

Biblica, 2020

This article reexamines the growth of Isa 7,10-17 and shows that the pericope features a number o... more This article reexamines the growth of Isa 7,10-17 and shows that the pericope features a number of interpretive techniques that are also on display in the contemporaneous letters from Babylonian and Assyrian diviner-scholars to the Assyrian monarch Esarhaddon concerning the meaning of a certain lunar eclipse. These techniques include: 1) the reorientation of the omen’s character; 2) the contemporizing/reinterpretation of terms; and 3) the specific identification of contemporary sovereigns/polities. Ultimately, the author argues that the textual growth of Isa 7,10-17 is best explained not through historical-literary reflection, as has been traditionally maintained, but rather as the result of active divinatory consultation.

Harvard Theological Review, 2019

The term Volksetymologie has frequently been applied to the etiological passages of the Hebrew Bi... more The term Volksetymologie has frequently been applied to the etiological passages of the Hebrew Bible and occasionally to such passages in Mesopotamian literature that explain the origin of the name of a person, place, or thing. Originating in mid- nineteenth century German Sprachwissenschaft, the term generally assumes that the authors of such passages were possessed of a considerable philological ignorance and naïveté. These etymological narratives are thus regularly brushed aside as childish though charming. Alternatively, they are often understood as interesting aesthetic devices, related to paronomasia and punning.

It is becoming increasingly evident, however, that the activity of parsing a name is linked to broader interpretive methods employed by scribes in the ancient Near East. Indeed, our developing understanding of intellectual practices in Mesopotamia and among the Bible’s tradents has demonstrated that Babylonian and Judean scribes could employ rather sophisticated hermeneutics. This fact has significance for our evaluation of biblical etymological passages in many ways including, for example, the methods employed by ancient authors to interpret names within narratives and their motivation for doing so.

Finding, Inheriting or Borrowing? The Construction and Transfer of Knowledge in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Edited by ochen Althoff, Dominik Berrens, and Tanja Pommerening, 2019

“The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts”: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Science in Honor of Francesca Rochberg, 2018

Pages 207-252 in “The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts”: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Scie... more Pages 207-252 in “The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts”: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Science in Honor of Francesca Rochberg. Ancient Magic and Divination 13. Edited by C. Jay Crisostomo, Eduardo A. Escobar, Terri Tanaka, and Niek Veldhuis. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

Laws of Heaven – Laws of Nature. Legal Interpretations of Cosmic Phenomena in the Ancient World. Edited by Konrad Schmid and Christoph Uehlinger., 2016

Read in the light of Babylonian mantics, Isa 2:1–4 is an oracle that provides a counter-narrative... more Read in the light of Babylonian mantics, Isa 2:1–4 is an oracle that provides a counter-narrative to the effectiveness and antiquity of the Mesopotamian divination tradition.

Journal of the American Oriental Society 135 (2015): 131-147.

The goal of this essay is to begin the study of the handful of references to celestial divination... more The goal of this essay is to begin the study of the handful of references to celestial divination found in the Assyrian royal inscriptions from the perspective of propaganda analysis by approaching one text in particular, Esarhaddon’s Aššur A inscription. This inquiry helps to solve some of the outstanding problems in regard to the celestial phenomena recorded in these inscriptions and their mantic implications.

Divination, Politics, and Ancient Near Eastern Empires. Ancient Near East Monographs/Monografias sobre el Antiguo Cercano Oriente 7. Pages 7-32., 2014

The author of Psalm 19 consciously reflects on the cosmology in Genesis 1 and associated traditio... more The author of Psalm 19 consciously reflects on the cosmology in Genesis 1 and associated traditions. This reflection involves how the psalmist conceives of the sun, including the celestial feature’s personal nature, responsibility in the cosmic order in terms of calendrical regulation, and its deliberate obedience in the fulfillment of its cultic task. The sun’s obedience serves as a model for sacerdotal devotion, and, just as importantly, allows for the human priest to fulfill his own obligations vis-à-vis properly-timed observance of cultic activities. Of primary importance in all of this, whether at the celestial level or the human level, is the centrality of septenary Sabbath observance, which the sun is charged to mark and the righteous Yahweh devotee is charged to observe. Its importance is implicitly signaled by the psalmist, as it is in Genesis 1: by seven-fold repetition (of Yahweh’s name), and by cryptic allusion (the אות in שׁגיאות).

Since F. Al-Rawi and J. Black published the second tablet of the first-millennium myth Erra and I... more Since F. Al-Rawi and J. Black published the second tablet of the first-millennium myth Erra and Išum (Iraq 51: 111-122) it has been generally recognized that the story includes fairly specific references to celestial features known from the Mesopotamian tradition of celestial divination. Moreover, D. Brown (Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology) has made passing reference to his belief that Erra and Išum contains significant astronomically related material. Nevertheless, to date no systematic study of the myth has been undertaken which explores this possibility in any depth.

In this paper, I demonstrate that the author of the myth did, in fact, employ significant astronomical technical terminology in his composition, terminology that is also found in the contemporary works of celestial divination (Enūma Anu Enlil, mulAPIN, as well as the astronomical reports and letters to the Neo-Assyrian monarchs). Such terminology includes: bibbu, manzāzu, šarūru maqātu, šarūru našû, ba’ālu, umullu, and adannu etēqu.

Moreover, I show that the author’s knowledge of celestial divination goes beyond the mere use of technical terminology. Indeed, the author also exhibits his familiarity with the association of certain celestial features with specific divine characters and mundane phenomena. This includes the constellations mulKA5.A/ šēlebu (“the Fox”), the Sebitti and the planet Mars with the god Erra. He also associates Mars/Erra with destruction and plague, the Sebitti with the well-being of livestock, and Marduk with the stability of the land in general and Babylon in particular. Finally, I show that the author demonstrates a knowledge and acceptance of specific divinatory theoretical concepts including the general principle that the phenomena of the sky portend divine action.

HUCA, 2021

We are pleased to announce the publication of HUCA volume 92. We are also excited to inform autho... more We are pleased to announce the publication of HUCA volume 92. We are also excited to inform authors and readers that with this volume all of the HUCA archive including this most recent publication is available to institutional subscribers to the Atla serials database. Individual digital subscriptions to HUCA are no longer required as all material will be open to Atla subscribers without any firewall. We are excited to expand our availability though this partnership. Please search Atla through your respective institution's access to view the most recent and all previous HUCA articles or check the stacks for the print-edition. HUCA also continues to be accessible through the JSTOR archive with a one-year firewall.

• 1. The תורה in רות – Notes on Judean Literary Onomastics
By: Cooley, Jeffrey L. Source: Hebrew Union College Annual, 92, p 1-13.
DOI: 10.15650/hebruniocollannu.92.1

• 2.
Trumpets and Shofarot in the War Scroll (1QM): Musical and Terminological Insights
By: Piamenta, Moshe. Source: Hebrew Union College Annual, 92, p 15-45.
DOI: 10.15650/hebruniocollannu.92.2

• 3.
Reckoning the End of Days: A Study in Yefet ben ʻEli's Biblical Exegesis
By: Nadler-Akirav, Meirav. Source: Hebrew Union College Annual, 92, p 47-69.
DOI: 10.15650/hebruniocollannu.92.3

• 4.
The Two Different Endings of Sefer haMiddot
By: Kadish, Seth. Source: Hebrew Union College Annual, 92, p 71-203.
DOI: 10.15650/hebruniocollannu.92.4

• 5.
The Influence of Mendelssohn's Commentary on Qohelet on Nineteenth-Century Orthodox Jewish Commentators in Eastern and Western Europe
By: Ganzel, Tova. Source: Hebrew Union College Annual, 92, p 205-223.
DOI: 10.15650/hebruniocollannu.92.5

• 6.
On the Edge
By: Minkoff, N B; Finkin, Jordan D (Translator, "Author of introduction, etc. "). Source: Hebrew Union College Annual, 92, p 225, 227, 229-281.
DOI: 10.15650/hebruniocollannu.92.6