7. Networks of Scholars: The Transmission of Astronomical and Astrological Learning between Babylonians, Greeks and Jews
Mladen Popović
1. Introduction
[☞ p7.1] What do we know about what ancient Jewish scholars knew about what Babylonian scholars knew?1 In order to answer this question we can analyse the different scholarly texts at our disposal, Babylonian and Jewish, and look for similarities and differences. We can then explain which Babylonian elements were familiar to Jewish scholars and how they appropriated, used and reworked these. Such analyses usually work from specific Jewish texts and then look for Babylonian elements, retracing these in specific cuneiform texts.
[☞ p7.2] The issue of tracking influences and cultural encounters between Babylonia and Jewish Palestine has another side to it, one not often put to the fore. Previous research on tracing influences of Babylonian learning in ancient Jewish texts has reflected insufficiently on the specific nature of such cultural encounters and the means of transmission. It has been assumed, tacitly or explicitly, that Jewish scholars had direct access to Babylonian centres of learning.2 On the level of textual comparisons, it is evident that elements of Babylonian origin appear in ancient Jewish texts; this is not disputed at all. However, the occurrence of textual similarities alone does not constitute enough evidence to argue for a direct connection. We at least need to further qualify the nature of that connection. Considering the social context of knowledge transmission, we must ask how and through whom ancient Jewish scholars got to know about some of the things that Babylonian scholars knew.
[☞ p7.3] In this article I wish to focus mainly on two aspects of the social context of the transmission of astronomical learning in ancient Judaism. The first aspect is the differentiation between various levels of learning on the one hand and how this manifests itself in social relations between learned individuals on the other. The second aspect is that of ethnicity and cultural encounters with regard to learned knowledge.
[☞ p7.4] I shall argue that the level of learning that we encounter in early Jewish sources differs starkly from contemporary developments in Babylonian and Greek astronomical science and points to a different trajectory of transmission. The transmission of Babylonian learning to Jewish scholars in Palestine was not a direct one. Furthermore, it went through different channels from the transmission of Babylonian astronomical science to Greek scholars. We should not assume as fact that Jewish scholars had direct access to Babylonian schools. We have no evidence for this. Due to the nature of the evidence at our disposal we cannot be very specific about the exact ways in which Babylonian scholarship reached Jewish Palestine sometime during the second half of the first millennium BCE Yet from a methodological point of view a number of considerations discussed in this article should be taken into account in future research on this issue.3
2. Babylonian and Jewish Astral Sciences
[☞ p7.5] A brief survey of the Enochic astronomical material and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran with regard to the Babylonian elements that they contain4 provides some insight into the interests and level of knowledge of ancient Jewish scholars.5 The point is to discern some of the social and cultural aspects that may have determined the context of transmission of Babylonian elements of astral sciences in Jewish texts, and to consider this in comparison with the transmission of astral sciences within Babylonian culture and between Babylonia and the Greek world.
[☞ p7.6] On the one hand, the Jewish texts attest to knowledge of some elements from Babylonian astronomy from the first half of the first millennium BCE (Enūma Anu Enlil and Mul.Apin), of the concept of the zodiac that was introduced in the fifth century BCE and of the non-mathematical Lunar Three scheme that was developed sometime later. On the other hand, these texts show an apparent ignorance with regard to sophisticated forms of mathematical astronomy that were developed in Seleucid Babylonia and transmitted to the Greek world.
[☞ p7.7] The scholars behind the Jewish texts remain anonymous. In the Enochic corpus the authorial “I” was ascribed to Enoch, while the astronomical and astrological manuscripts from Qumran lack an authorial “I” altogether, as I emphasized elsewhere,6 as do the calendric texts.7 What Babylonian elements do we encounter in these texts? What changes and transformations did Babylonian elements go through as they were used in new Jewish-Palestinian texts and contexts?
2.1 Textual Comparisons
[☞ p7.8] The earliest Jewish astronomical work is the Enochic Astronomical Book (extant after extensive redaction and modifications in 1 Enoch 72–82). Composed in Aramaic in the third century BCE or even earlier, the most complete text is preserved in Ethiopic translation. Four Aramaic copies (4Q208–211), containing only the Astronomical Book, have turned up at Qumran. The oldest fragments date to the late third or early second century BCE (4Q208). Scholars have pointed to a Mesopotamian background for some of the astronomical aspects of the Enochic Astronomical Book.8 1 Enoch 72 records the annual variation in the length of day and night-time. This variation is measured on a scale of eighteen, reflecting an M:m ratio of 2:1,9 which results in a simple linear zigzag function rooted in Babylonian astronomy. Originally counting a 360-day year, as does Mul.Apin, for example, the Astronomical Book subsequently developed a 364-day year tradition.10 For the so-called synchronistic calendar in the Aramaic fragments from Qumran (4Q208–209), the most recent suggestion is that it mainly deals with the duration of lunar visibility during night and day in a fashion similar to Tablet 14 of Enūma Anu Enlil.11
[☞ p7.9] The astronomy in the Enochic Astronomical Book reaches back to older Mesopotamian examples from the first half of the first millennium BCE, such as Enūma Anu Enlil and Mul.Apin, but the Astronomical Book does not reflect developments that occurred in Mesopotamian astronomy from the middle of the first millennium onward. These developments comprised the formulation of mathematical models that enable the prediction of the recurrence of certain astronomical phenomena and the introduction of the zodiac as a schematic, symbolic division of the ecliptic for computing and recording the planetary positions more exactly. The composition of the Astronomical Book12 probably predates the even more advanced developments in Babylonian astronomy of the second century BCE, which were not incorporated into the text. The later copies of the Aramaic Astronomical Book from Qumran (4Q209–211 date to the second half and the end of the first century BCE) do not show evidence of such “updates.” Moreover, the importance attributed to the Enochic type of astronomy is illustrated by the fact that the Aramaic Astronomical Book influenced other texts of the Jewish-Palestinian astronomical tradition, such as 4Q317 and 4Q503 and possibly 4Q334, Hebrew manuscripts dating from the second half of the second century BCE (4Q317 and 4Q503) and from the turn of the era (4Q334).13
[☞ p7.10] There is also possible evidence for the use of more contemporary astronomical learning from Babylonia, although still in the form of non-mathematical astronomy. Scholars have interpreted some of the Qumran calendar texts in Hebrew (4Q320, 4Q321 and 4Q321a, which date to the end of the second century BCE until the second half of the first century BCE) to be based on elements of a Late-Babylonian lunar system (Persian-Hellenistic period), the Lunar Three scheme from non-mathematical astronomical texts, which were appropriated and modified by Jewish scholars to meet their own calendric needs.14
[☞ p7.11] In addition to the Aramaic Astronomical Book, the texts influenced by it and some of the calendar texts from Qumran, there are two astrological manuscripts from Qumran to take into account. Both texts attest to knowledge of the zodiac and thus illustrate that they had taken up one of the developments of Babylonian astronomy from the second half of the first millennium. However, whether this knowledge originated from Babylonia or from the Greek world is another matter.
[☞ p7.12] Alongside Babylonian elements, these two texts appear to display Hellenistic features as well. This should not surprise us. During the Hellenistic period knowledge of Babylonian astrology and mathematical astronomy reached the Greek world, and having been transformed into Hellenistic astronomy and astrology it was taken elsewhere again. The Aramaic manuscript 4Q318 (copied around the turn of the era) consists of two parts. The first part (selenodromion) describes the synodic movement of the moon through the zodiac during twelve months of thirty days each, counting a 360-day year, as in Babylonian tradition. The second part (brontologion) has predictions for when it will thunder. This sort of text appears both in the Babylonian and Graeco-Roman astrological traditions.15 The 360-day year scheme suggests a derivation from Babylonian tradition, but the zodiacal names in 4Q318 seem to point to Hellenistic origins.16 The Hebrew manuscript 4Q186 (copied around the turn of the era) is a physiognomic-astrological catalogue combining different forms of learning (physiognomics,17 astrology and possibly medicine and magic). The combination of different scientific disciplines within one text is probably already the case in Babylonian traditions predating the Hellenistic period.18 The text’s astrological framework, however, points decisively to a Hellenistic background, as the horoscope (מולד; molad) or ascendant (the point of the zodiac rising above the eastern horizon at the moment of birth) is of no importance at all in Babylonian horoscopy but is significant in Hellenistic horoscopy.19
[☞ p7.13] Three observations can be drawn from the previous survey. First, elements from older types of Mesopotamian astronomy and astrology such as Enūma Anu Enlil and Mul.Apin from the first half of the first millennium BCE resurfaced in Aramaic in the early Enochic corpus sometime in the third century BCE20 In this form, this type of astronomy continued to influence new compositions in Hebrew up until at least the second half of the second century BCE (4Q317 and 4Q503) and possibly later (4Q334). The evidence of new Hebrew compositions inspired by Enochic astronomy is important, as it demonstrates that the reception of older types of Babylonian astronomy was not limited to the early Enochic corpus. From a diachronic perspective we may observe that older types of Babylonian astronomy did not become obsolete after their initial reception in Jewish circles in the form of Enochic astronomy, but continued to be regarded relevant. This is demonstrated both by the later date of the Astronomical Book manuscripts from Qumran (4Q209–211) and by the new compositions in Hebrew that were inspired by it. This preservation of older types of material may argue against continuing contact with Babylonia or at least may suggest rare contact.
[☞ p7.14] Second, alongside the ongoing transmission of older elements of Babylonian astronomy from Enūma Anu Enlil and Mul.Apin, more recent features appear that post-date that type of astronomy but predate developments in the advanced Babylonian mathematical astronomy of the second century BCE. Calendric manuscripts from Qumran (4Q320, 4Q321 and 4Q321a) seem to be influenced by the Lunar Three scheme from Late-Babylonian non-mathematical astronomical texts. Astrological manuscripts from Qumran (4Q186 and 4Q318) demonstrate that knowledge of the zodiac, which was developed sometime in the fifth century BCE, found its way into Jewish society during this period as well. The manuscript copies are evidence of this development in the first century BCE at the latest. However, the mathematical type of astronomy is absent in all this.
[☞ p7.15] Third, these ancient Jewish sources show a level of astronomical competency that was far less sophisticated than the advanced methods of contemporary astronomers in Babylonian and Greek societies. Starting in the Persian period but especially in the Seleucid period, Babylonian scholars made new and great advances in mathematical astronomy.21 These advanced Babylonian astronomical methods were also transmitted to the Greek world. Due to the encounter with Babylonian astronomy and due to the work of Hipparchus and others such as Hypsicles, Hellenistic astronomy changed tremendously in this period.22 Knowledge of certain elements of Babylonian astronomy among Greek scholars already occurred before Hipparchus, between the fifth and third centuries (Eudoxus, for example), but it is in the second century, especially with Hipparchus it seems, “that we see a more complex and systematic exploitation of the resources of the Babylonian astronomers, including not only a whole array of period relations, but also extensive observations and, most notably, mathematical methods.”23
[☞ p7.16] The extant Jewish sources do not attest likewise to this influence from advanced mathematical astronomy from Babylonia. Aramaic Enochic astronomy remained non-mathematical. The earliest of the calendric manuscripts from Qumran (4Q320) dates to the end of the second century BCE and the youngest (4Q321) to the second half of the first century BCE While these manuscripts postdate the development of advanced astronomy in Babylonia and its transmission to the Greek world, they do not reflect those developments. The astrological manuscripts from Qumran attest knowledge of the zodiac, but this occurs in relatively straightforward lists. We do not find actual horoscopes, although even those need not presuppose the ability to execute complex observations and calculations. Such data may have been at hand in ephemerides and the like, but we have no evidence for this in Palestinian Judaism in this period. It appears that the concept of the zodiac found its way into Palestinian Jewish astral science as a finished product, so to say, without specialist knowledge of the mathematical-astronomical intricacies on which horoscopic astrology was based, and possibly also without access to supporting texts such as ephemerides—there is at least no need to suppose that these sorts of texts were available to Jewish scholars.24
2.2 Different Levels of Learning
[☞ p7.17] Should we think of Enochic astronomy and its offshoots as survivals of types of astronomy that were already out-dated in Babylonia itself? What does “out-dated” mean? More advanced mathematical methods had been developed in Babylonian astronomy whilst Enochic astronomy flourished in Palestinian Judaism, but perhaps as a rule of thumb that kind of astronomy may still have had its worth. In that respect we should not unnecessarily devalue it. Furthermore, there is some evidence for the continued transmission of Enūma Anu Enlil and Mul.Apin in Babylonia during the Seleucid period, but we do not know whether these were actually used.25 Even if there is some evidence for continued copying of Enūma Anu Enlil and Mul.Apin, it is evident that from a general perspective the character of astronomy differs strikingly between Babylonia and Jewish Palestine in the Hellenistic period. In Babylonia these texts were being copied alongside new and important astronomical advances, which are conspicuously absent from the extant Palestinian Jewish astronomical and astrological texts.
[☞ p7.18] The extant texts thus show different levels of astronomical learning. What ramifications does this conclusion have for understanding the channels of transmission through which ancient Jewish scholars learned about Babylonian astral sciences? How did Jewish scholars in Palestine relate to the current advanced astronomical developments in Seleucid Babylonia? Did Jewish scholars consciously ignore these developments for some reason? Was the more recent and advanced Babylonian mathematical astronomy too difficult for them to appropriate? Or were they completely unaware of these developments because they were not connected in the same way to the same networks as those that transmitted Babylonian learning to the Greek world?
[☞ p7.19] It is doubtful whether the apparent lack of knowledge of advanced Babylonian mathematical astronomy was due to a conscious decision motivated by certain theological considerations, as has been suggested.26 A scientific-religious worldview characterized by a specific emphasis on heptadic-based numbers might explain the calendar texts from Qumran and the Enochic astronomical material to support that, but it does not provide a satisfactory explanation for the astrological material from Qumran. The concept of the zodiac does not support such a worldview.27
[☞ p7.20] This begs the question: why were some concepts appropriated while others were not? There seems no reason to suppose that the authors or scribes behind the Enochic material and the Dead Sea Scrolls would have been intellectually less capable of dealing with complex mathematical-astronomical procedures from contemporary Babylonia. Instead, we should look for an explanation in terms of social relations and networks.
[☞ p7.21] With due regard for the caveat that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, in this case what is missing in the extant Jewish sources may provide us with a clue that, with regard to the astral sciences at that time, the channels of transmission between Babylonia and Jewish Palestine were probably different from the channels between Babylonia and the Greek world. When looking for Babylonian influences on ancient Jewish science it is not just a matter of listing the elements and looking for similarities and differences between texts. We cannot without further ado connect streams of traditions from Uruk, Sippar, Babylon and the like with Jerusalem, Qumran or any other place where Jewish scholars lived.
[☞ p7.22] The different levels of learning should make us cautious of simply viewing the learned elites from different localities as interacting with each other on the same level. Mindful of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, we can appreciate the scholarly learning in the early Enochic and Qumran texts as a prized piece of knowledge signalling and confirming the status of those having access to and possessing it.28 But the Jewish scholarly elite may not have been of the same standing as the Babylonian scholarly elite, or the Greek one for that matter. In their respective societies Babylonian and Jewish scholars may have been members of the elite, but although stories about Abraham teaching Phoenicians and Egyptians or Daniel at the Babylonian court suggest otherwise, this need not imply that in real life the one recognized the other as equal or that there was direct contact between them, as is often assumed. Especially important here is to balance the two elements of having or gaining access and giving or allowing access as these materialize in social relationships between individuals.
3. Cultural Encounters and the Transmission of Astronomical Learning
[☞ p7.23] Simplicius, the Late Antique commentator on Aristotle’s works, wrote that, according to Porphyry, Aristotle had asked Callisthenes, who was in Babylon with Alexander the Great, to send astronomical observations from Babylon to Greece.29 In De caelo Aristotle himself refers to observational data by the Egyptians and the Babylonians as the basis for much of their (i.e. the Greeks) evidence about particular luminaries.30
[☞ p7.24] Regardless of whether such a request was really made by Aristotle, the anecdote illustrates how some in Late Antiquity imagined such cultural encounters and the transmission of knowledge between Babylon and Greece: reports were simply sent from Babylon directly to Greece by a Greek visitor of certain status. Unfortunately, the anecdote does not really provide us with much concrete information. The nature of the reports is not specified, nor their number: what kind of sources and how many? Nor is it clear what language they were in (a Late Antique writer would probably not have thought of Akkadian anymore):31 did Simplicius imagine the reports were in Greek? Furthermore, there is no explanation of how exactly Callisthenes obtained these sources or from whom. It was not as if astronomical reports were just lying around to be picked up by anyone. How did he know where to go? Did Callisthenes walk into a temple in Babylon, the Esangila, for example? Did he know individual Babylonian astronomers?32 Such questions were probably not on Simplicius’ mind, but from a socio-historical perspective on science we need to address some of these questions as to possession, accessibility and mobility in order to better understand the transmission of scholarly knowledge, in this case astronomical learning.
[☞ p7.25] That Babylonian learning travelled far beyond its original geographic boundaries is undisputed. It is evident that Babylonian sciences such as astronomy and astrology were transmitted beyond the Mesopotamian cultural realm to the west, and to the east for that matter. We find Babylonian mathematical and astronomical formulas and calculations that turn up in roughly contemporary and later texts of other cultural realms. Modern scholars have shown that Babylonian astral sciences contributed to and influenced Greek astronomy and astrology.33 Ancient sources also acknowledge such Babylonian origins,34 and we have examples of Jewish texts that put Abraham on a par with scholars from Egypt, Phoenicia and Babylon.35
[☞ p7.26] The views of Simplicius and, for example, Pseudo-Eupolemus,36 are rather clear-cut: scientific data were transmitted to others in written form and scholarly knowledge was exchanged in direct interaction between learned men. In general, both aspects, written and oral communication, no doubt shaped ancient contexts of transmission, but in specific cases we probably have to differentiate: scientific data were not just sent around indiscriminately and not all learned men would, as a rule, have interacted with all learned men from other cultural realms, this being dependent on various factors.
[☞ p7.27] Insights from Social Network Analysis theory may help to conceptualize specific conditions for the transmission of astronomical and astrological knowledge.37 I will not provide a systematic consideration of all forms of connectivity that may have played a role, but will use Social Network Analysis theory as a heuristic tool to ask certain specific socio-cultural questions. The benefit of this approach is that it focuses our attention on the social context of the transmission of astronomical knowledge, as this is determined by social relationships, and with a special emphasis on networks. The question is what kinds of social networks were involved. People transmit information and knowledge via different mediums in specific contexts—defined by, for example, locality, social status, gender, age, kinship, nationality and ethnicity. In order to understand the context, i.e. the circumstances of these interactions and of the transmission of knowledge, we must focus on concrete localities, channels and agents.
[☞ p7.28] In this section I wish to address three issues regarding the transmission of Babylonian astronomy and astrology: the involvement of non-Babylonians in Babylonian science, the role of the Aramaic language and the transmission to the Greek world specifically.
3.1 The Involvement of Non-Babylonians in Babylonian Science
[☞ p7.29] With regard to ethno-linguistic and cultural distinctions, modern anthropological and cultural studies have called essentialist distinctions into doubt: what makes a certain type of learning “Egyptian” or “Babylonian,” and how does that relate to concrete people, be they Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek or Jewish?38 There is somewhat of a paradox in some recent analyses in that such terms are problematized as less useful heuristic concepts whereas our taxonomic interests call for their use. We wish to categorize and classify our data into neat and separate boxes, and at the same time wish to acknowledge that the boundaries between these conceptual boxes are often, in reality, fluid and fuzzy.
[☞ p7.30] Nonetheless, that boundaries are fluid, fuzzy or that they can be crossed does not imply they do not exist; boundaries are not completely ephemeral, and sometimes they are very real. While ethno-linguistic and cultural borders can be crossed, they also function to create a persistent sense of difference.39 Specific social and cultural contexts will have determined when and how boundaries would have been more fluid or stricter.
[☞ p7.31] We have evidence from the Neo-Assyrian period of non-Babylonians and non-Assyrians engaged in royal scholarly networks.40 The late Assyrian empire had become bilingual and bicultural, with Aramaic becoming the international vernacular.41 At the same time, there is evidence for adversarial reactions among the Assyrian ruling classes to the rising importance of Aramaic. For example, to a request by the scribe Sin-iddina of Ur to reply in Aramaic, the king answers that the scribe should rather write to him in Akkadian.42 This example works both ways. On the one hand, it shows that ethno-linguistic boundaries were not strict: letters to the Assyrian king could be written in Aramaic. On the other hand, it demonstrates that such boundaries were not completely ephemeral. The sender of the letter may have asked for too much by requesting the king’s answer also be in Aramaic. The king retorts by raising the boundary and emphasizing its importance: he creates an ethno-linguistic sense of difference between the scribe and himself. While ethno-linguistic and cultural boundaries can be crossed, they are also maintained. However, in the Neo-Assyrian period such boundaries do not seem to have prohibited the accessibility and dissemination of Babylonian science.
[☞ p7.32] If we look at evidence from the Neo- and Late-Babylonian periods, it seems that the Babylonian urban elite had stricter limitations for entry into the scholarly elite than the Assyrians.43 There is, however, some evidence for scribes bearing non-Akkadian names who copied literary, scholarly texts: Šemaa, son of Adirum is thus far the only example, the extant sources showing that all Babylonian scribes with non-Akkadian names wrote documentary, legal texts.44 Ethno-linguistic boundaries may not have been absolute, but some form of boundary maintenance with regard to literary and scholarly texts as distinct from documentary, legal texts did seem to be in effect.
[☞ p7.33] Through cuneiform culture the Babylonian urban elite is said to have expressed a high degree of self-consciousness. For example, a cuneiform text from Hellenistic Uruk shows that the Aramaeans were still considered a separate ethno-linguistic group by some Babylonians;45 the reference in the late Seleucid list from Uruk of kings and scholars to Esarhaddon’s counsellor Aba-Enlil-dari as the one “whom the Aramaeans call Aḫuqar” shows that the story of Aḫiqar was known but seen as part of “popular” Aramaic culture rather than cuneiform elite culture.46 The impression gained from cuneiform sources is of Late Babylonia as an imagined community of urban elites who retreated into the imaginary space provided by the temples and the schools, with cuneiform itself being the main distinguishing characteristic of this community. The Babylonian urban elites constructed a cultural identity for themselves, one that became more and more detached from the ethno-linguistic, cultural and political realities of Babylonia in the Hellenistic and Parthian periods.47 At the same time, evidence from Hellenistic Uruk seems to indicate that they cultivated strong ties with the Greek elite and the Seleucid rulers that ensured their small community thrived.48 This shows that despite a cultivated identity that seems detached from real life, Babylonian urban elites were also able to relate to changing ethno-linguistic, cultural and political realities and to do so to their own advantage.
[☞ p7.34] Changed historical circumstances between the late fifth and late fourth centuries and the second century BCE no doubt influenced the possibilities presented to and the choices made by those specialized in astronomy and astrology in the cities of Babylonia, determining also the mobility, accessibility and dissemination of that learned knowledge. For example, recent research on the collection owned by two separate families of mašmaššu’s in Uruk in the late fifth and late fourth centuries BCE suggests a tight social network of scholarly families.49 The colophons suggest that this scholarly network operated on a limited geographical scale: scholars, students and their writings seem to have rarely travelled beyond Uruk or across professional divides.50 If we consider these two families from the perspective of Social Network Analysis theory, such a limited network that consists of strong ties—kinship ties being the clearest example of strong ties—seems less conducive to bridge social boundaries and cross network distance between different ethno-linguistic groups.51
[☞ p7.35] From a diachronic perspective, there is also evidence for non-familial apprenticeship in second-century BCE Seleucid Uruk. Although the social network there was tight, as over six generations just four scholarly families collaborated in the training of their sons, patterns of non-familial apprenticeship can be identified.52 A limited network that consisted of strong ties (kinship) was thus able to bridge social boundaries and transmit learning to non-family. It is, however, not readily apparent whether these non-familial apprentices may be indicative as well for the crossing of ethno-linguistic and cultural boundaries, and if so, which ones exactly. Perhaps individual members from social networks such as these and others were able to cross much greater network distances: Uruk may have been one of the sources from which Babylonian astronomy made its way to the Greek world.53 One can think of a scenario in which individual scholars from Uruk moved away from the city, taking their scientific knowledge with them. Historical and modern analogies suggest that this would have been mostly young men.54 Perhaps such a move in the second century BCE, if it occurred at all, was due to economic reasons: private income generated by astronomical and astrological knowledge55 may not have been sufficient, and in response some scribes took their chances and left.
[☞ p7.36] In terms of ethno-linguistic and cultural boundaries the Neo- and Late-Babylonian evidence demonstrates complex and multi-layered contexts. On the one hand, ethno-linguistic distinctions were made and cuneiform culture was upheld to emphasize Babylonian identity. On the other hand, various sources show a multi-ethnic picture that seems to call into doubt the dominance of cuneiform culture in Late Babylonia. This picture highlights the difficulty of distinguishing neatly between what is Babylonian and what is non-Babylonian.56
[☞ p7.37] These two different aspects have direct bearing on the contexts of transmission of astronomical learning, and their complexity is well illustrated by the issue of Aramaic as a medium for the transmission of Babylonian astronomical and astrological learning.
3.2 Aramaic as a Medium for Transmission of Astronomical Learning
[☞ p7.38] There is no evidence for the translation of complex astronomical cuneiform texts into Aramaic.57 Aramaic Astronomical Enoch from Qumran does not even come remotely near to the advanced forms of cuneiform astronomy and it hardly can stand exemplary for a body of Babylonian Aramaic scholarship in the first millennium BCE
[☞ p7.39] Apparently, the Babylonian urban elites kept to traditional cuneiform learning as the sole official culture of Babylonia. At the same time, Aramaic became the dominant vernacular. Should we then assume that there must have been a Babylonian literature and science written in Aramaic, now lost because it was written on perishable material? Or should we assume that Aramaic did not become the dominant language to express Babylonian high culture but remained mostly a language of communication and administration, and, moreover, that it is questionable whether any significant corpus of cuneiform was ever translated into Aramaic?58
[☞ p7.40] The Neo- and Late-Babylonian evidence presents us with different scenarios from the Neo-Assyrian evidence. We do not have a significant body of sources in Aramaic from first-millennium Babylonia or a clear and significant body of references from first-millennium Babylonia to the use of Aramaic and to the involvement of non-Babylonians in Babylonian science, as we do have regarding the last aspect for Assyria in the Neo-Assyrian period. Were ethno-linguistic and cultural boundaries in Babylonia more strictly maintained with regard to scholarly learning and did this inhibit the accessibility and dissemination of Babylonian science, or is it just a matter of evidence gone missing?
[☞ p7.41] In addition to the Babylonian priests and scholars—the old urban notability—there was another group of scribes, the sepīru scribes. These did not belong to the old Babylonian nobility but were recognized as important persons who were well integrated in the temple organization.59 They appear to have been Aramaic speakers who had become assimilated into Babylonian culture.60 Although there is thus far no evidence that these scribes worked on literary or scholarly texts,61 the question is how strictly boundaries were maintained. The sepīru scribes seem to have been well integrated into the temple organization, and the temple was the place of learning in Babylonia. The exact relations, however, between the Babylonian scholarly elite and Aramaic sepīru scribes merit further investigation. It might be that in the future evidence will turn up that sepīru scribes had access to cuneiform sources or that astronomical principles were divulged to them.62
[☞ p7.42] We might also entertain the possibility that individual Jews, being part of a general Aramaic milieu, were among such Aramaic sepīru scribes—perhaps having taken up Babylonian names even, making it more difficult for us to identify them as Jewish and thus also calling into question the aptness of such neat taxonomic distinctions. Be that as it may, no concrete evidence has as of yet turned up for Jews being Aramaic sepīru scribes. In the wake of the Babylonian conquest of Judah and Jerusalem in 586 BCE a Jewish Diaspora formed in Babylonia. Jews were fully integrated in economic everyday life there, as “is evidenced by their participation in very ordinary economic transactions in which they are recorded as the creditors and debtors in a variety of loan documents and receipts.”63 There is also enough evidence for Babylonian Jewish villagers or merchants in Neo- and Late-Babylonian documents, but there is no evidence for Jews accessing scholarly tablet collections directly.64
[☞ p7.43] It is important to consider the role of the Aramaic language as a medium for the transmission of Babylonian astronomical and astrological material to the Jewish world. The westward transmission of this body of learned knowledge originating in cuneiform culture may have occurred through Aramaic sources, which is how Jewish scholars, being part of a general Aramaic milieu, may have encountered it.65 The astronomical Enoch manuscripts from Qumran, for example, may be evidence for this role of Aramaic. However, whether it was through direct access to cuneiform texts, direct contact with Babylonian scholars in Mesopotamia or elsewhere, or indirectly via access to a—more vague—continuous tradition is another matter.
[☞ p7.44] In order to better understand the possible role of Aramaic as a medium for the transmission of Babylonian astronomical material and also how some of this material made its way to Aramaic texts such as the astronomical Enoch manuscripts from Qumran, it is instructive to briefly consider evidence from Late Antiquity. In Late Antiquity, Aramaic was no longer only the vernacular of Babylonian culture but had also become the literary language of Mesopotamian Christianity, Babylonian Judaism and Mandaean Gnosticism.66
[☞ p7.45] Considering the elements of Babylonian learning in Late Antique sources one may observe that these differ from what one finds in earlier cuneiform learning: Late Antique scholarship is different in character from the advanced mathematical astronomical texts from the latter part of the first millennium BCE, being less technical and more divinatory.67 The textual similarities are of a more structural than of a specific nature (see section 4 below). What is important for our discussion is that these Late Antique traditions do not presuppose direct contact with cuneiform culture. The Late Antique texts do not derive from the “high culture” of cuneiform written tradition, but instead probably represent the transmission of elements of popular Babylonian traditions, although elite and popular culture should not be seen as two completely separate strands of tradition.68
[☞ p7.46] There is, of course, some evidence for literary Aramaic texts from the first millennium BCE, and the Aramaic manuscripts from Qumran add significantly to this,69 but this concerns literature (Aḫiqar)70 or liturgy,71 rather than Babylonian astronomy and astrology in its advanced forms. In our analysis of cultural encounters we need to distinguish between different kinds of texts and traditions and differentiate between various channels and agents of transmission.72 What applies to one need not explain the other. For example, knowledge of the Gilgamesh epic concerns certain motifs that need not presuppose acquaintance with the Standard Version (not even consciously being related anymore to the epic as such),73 but may have been part of popular oral traditions. Those who composed the Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242) or Daniel 4 may have gotten their knowledge about the Babylonian king Nabonidus through a chain of transmission that originated in the public reading of Nabonidus’ inscription.74 In both cases, there is no need to suppose direct access to Babylonian centres of higher learning.
[☞ p7.47] Another kind of tradition is that of law and legal formulas in documentary texts, the origins of which have been traced back to Babylonia, such as in the Wadi Daliyeh papyri from fourth-century BCE Samaria and also in second-century CE legal texts from Murabbaʿat and Naḥal Ḥever.75 The presence of empires as a political factor may account for the spread of legal traditions and formulary, and in this case the Aramaic sepīru scribes, taking care of all sorts of legal, administrative writings, may too have been agents conducive for the transmission of Babylonian legal formulas.
[☞ p7.48] A differentiated perspective on the use of Aramaic in the ancient Near East points to different means of transmission, via different channels and agents, for different kinds of traditions and texts. What may apply to the transmission of elements from narratives, may not apply likewise to scholarly literature. That some astronomical elements in the Astronomical Book have Babylonian origins is evident, as do other elements in 1 Enoch.76 This is not disputed. The issue is how these astronomical elements reached Jewish scholars and materialized in the extant manuscripts from Qumran. The suggestion put forward here is that in this respect these texts are analogous to Late Antique traditions in which Babylonian elements, and Greek ones, appear. For early Jewish astronomical and astrological traditions there is no reason to suppose direct contact with Babylonian scholars or direct access to cuneiform texts, as we must assume for the Greek evidence.
3.3 The Transmission of Babylonian Astronomical Material to the Greek World
[☞ p7.49] The exact routes by which Babylonian astronomical learning was transmitted to the Greek world are not known, but different suggestions have been put forward. We probably have to reckon with different channels of transmission that were in operation, sometimes perhaps simultaneously and sometimes not. What seems certain is that it must have involved, at one time at least, direct personal contact between individual Babylonian and Greek scholars, because of the technical and mathematical astronomical requirements, and even because of the visual aspects of the manuscripts such as their layout and structure. This may have happened when Greek astronomers visited Babylonia or when Babylonian scholars travelled to the Greek world. But we do not know exactly when, where and how this happened.77 Furthermore, once this contact was established, a continuous tradition ensured its transmission until the days of Ptolemy and later.78 Let us briefly consider these three channels of transmission: direct contact in Babylonia, direct contact elsewhere and a continuous tradition.
[☞ p7.50] The first two proposed channels of transmission operate on the basis of the conclusion that direct access to cuneiform sources through contact between Greek and Babylonian astronomers must have occurred. For example, if, as has been suggested, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in the second century BCE was the main channel through which important aspects of Babylonian astronomical science were transmitted to the Greeks, he must have had personal contact with one or more Babylonian experts. Hipparchus’ extensive knowledge of both the observational and theoretical parts of Babylonian astronomy, it appears, cannot be explained without him having had direct access to Babylonian sources, most notably the observational Diaries.79 If indeed Hipparchus personally accessed astronomical cuneiform sources with the help of one or more Babylonian scholars, we do not know whether he met them in Babylonia or elsewhere.
[☞ p7.51] Although we do not know exactly the numbers journeying, and wherefrom and whereto they did so, Babylonian scholars certainly did travel and took up residence elsewhere in the Greek world, transmitting knowledge about Babylonian astronomy and astrology along the way. Scribes who were on the move and took their professional and scientific knowledge elsewhere would have been a potent link in the diffusion of knowledge.80 For the Hellenistic period, the status that Babylonian astronomy and astrology enjoyed in the Greek world may have facilitated the reception of travelling scribes from Babylonia by local communities: knowledge of Babylonian astronomy crossed network distance and its effect on small-world networks was ensured by the status it already had. There is some intriguing documentary evidence for the diffusion of astronomical learning from Babylonia to the Greek world. An honorary inscription from second-century BCE Larissa in Thessaly refers to a certain Antipater from Hierapolis in Seleukia as a Chaldean astronomer who had lived for a long time in Larissa and had practised his mathematical profession there.81 We do not know what kind of astronomy or astrology this Antipater pursued, but the inscription presents concrete evidence for a “Chaldean” astronomer/astrologer who had travelled from his native city in the Near East to a Greek city sometime in the second century BCE82 If so, Antipater’s “biography” illustrates that he crossed a large network distance and established himself successfully within his new social network, as testified by the honorary inscription. How exactly he crossed this distance, through what channels and through what connecting localities, we do not know.83 There is in any case no reason to assume that this Antipater from Hierapolis was the only astronomer to have moved away from his original social network. There were, no doubt, others like him who travelled to the Greek world (for the suggestion that astronomers from Uruk were among them, see section 3.1 above).84
[☞ p7.52] In addition to these two channels of transmission of Babylonian astronomy to the Greek world via direct contact, a third one presupposes a continuous tradition once Babylonian science had been taken elsewhere. The use of Babylonian predictive schemes in the time of Ptolemy (second century CE) cannot be explained by direct contact with Babylonian scholars or direct access to cuneiform sources (Ptolemy received this information via Hipparchus).85 A second-century CE fragmentary papyrus from Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy 4139) has a reference to a lunar period scheme according to the Babylonian System A lunar theory and seems to refer to the Orchenoi (“people of Uruk”; line 8), indicating the diffusion of this Babylonian tradition.86
Considering the moment of “first contact,” elements of Babylonian mathematical astronomy will have been transmitted to the Greek world directly from cuneiform into Greek, via personal contact with Babylonian astronomers, either in Babylonia or elsewhere. The Jewish world, on the other hand, as argued above, encountered some elements of Babylonian non-mathematical astronomy indirectly via the medium of the Aramaic language. We thus need to differentiate between channels for the westward transmission of Babylonian astronomy and astrology in their varied forms: directly from cuneiform into Greek and indirectly via Aramaic.
4. The Transmission of Babylonian Astronomical and Astrological Learning to the Jewish World
[☞ p7.53] In order to explain the Babylonian origins of some astronomical and astrological elements in early Jewish texts, we need not envisage direct access to cuneiform sources in Babylonian centres of learning. The Jewish evidence differs markedly from the Greek evidence, where such direct contact must be presumed. In addition to the different levels of learning displayed by the Babylonian, Greek and Jewish evidence, we should again consider the textual similarities between Jewish and Babylonian texts.
[☞ p7.54] The Hebrew Qumran calendar texts (4Q320–321a) describe a consistent pattern of days between two phenomena from which it is clear that these phenomena are connected with the lunar cycle. This pattern has been explained by taking recourse to the Lunar Three scheme from Late Babylonian non-mathematical astronomical texts (see section 2.1 above), but this interpretation is not without difficulties.87 Even if it would be certain that some elements of the Late Babylonian Lunar Three scheme were behind the Qumran calendar texts, these have been reworked in such a manner that there is no direct connection with actual Lunar Three texts.
[☞ p7.55] Likewise, we need not suppose that the Aramaic Astronomical Book is a direct translation or rendering of cuneiform sources.88 First, the texts do not look the same: Enūma Anu Enlil is shorter and more formulaic.89 Second, similarities between the texts are of a structural rather than a specific nature.90 As soon as a few astronomical and arithmetic principles from Enūma Anu Enlil Tablet 14 were understood it would not have been difficult to transmit that knowledge further. One need not assume further direct access to the text of Enūma Anu Enlil itself. This also applies to the linear zigzag function that is rooted in the type of astronomy of Enūma Anu Enlil and Mul.Apin. The occurrence of such principles alone in texts from other periods and from other cultural realms need not assume direct access to the cuneiform sources in Babylonia. Once such learning was carried elsewhere by scribes trained in it, those principles may have become part of a continuous tradition through which other individuals gained access to it, either through contact with travelling scribes or further down the chain of transmission via other individuals who equally no longer had access to the cuneiform texts.
[☞ p7.56] The astrological texts from Qumran (4Q186 and 4Q318) also do not presuppose direct access to cuneiform sources or direct contact with Babylonian scholars. Moreover, the zodiac names in 4Q318 and the reference to the horoscope in 4Q186 point to Hellenistic traditions (see section 2.1 above). In this respect, these texts are analogous to Late Antique traditions in which Babylonian and Greek elements appear (see section 3.2 above). Knowledge of the zodiac did not therefore reach Jewish Palestine directly via access to cuneiform sources. If we take the evidence for the Hellenistic origin of the zodiac names in 4Q318 into account, perhaps the chain of transmission went via Aramaic to Greek and back again, or, after the zodiac was already appropriated by the Greeks, via Greek to Aramaic, through which Jews in Palestine may have encountered it in the second or first century BCE and also translated it into Hebrew.91
[☞ p7.57] The textual similarities between Jewish astronomical and astrological texts of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods and first millennium cuneiform sources from Babylonia are not of such a nature to suppose that the former are a direct translation or rendering of the latter. The similarities are ‘structural’ rather than specific. They concern general notions or motifs, rather than technical or specific data or visual layout and structure, as with evidence from the Greek world.92
[☞ p7.58] Whether we should see this Jewish tradition as popular or elite depends on the perspective taken. In their own society these Jewish scholars may have been part of the elite, but given the enormous difference between this learning and the advanced mathematical astronomy that was exchanged between Babylonian and Greek scholars at that time, the Jewish scholars probably were not part of that same scholarly network.
[☞ p7.59] Regarding the assumption that Jewish scholars had direct access to Babylonian learning, we cannot simply invoke the Babylonian “stream of tradition” as a fixed and stable entity available everywhere,93 into which Jewish individuals could simply have tapped, almost at will, at certain moments in history, such as during the Babylonian exile or thereafter. Recent research on a number of cuneiform scholarly collections indicate that the “stream of tradition” was not simply present everywhere and available to everyone. The production, transmission and dissemination of scholarly knowledge and texts was conditioned by specific circumstances, thus affecting the concrete manifestations of the Babylonian “stream of tradition” at certain places and times.94 In addition, prohibitions on tablet movement expressed through secrecy formulae, which appear as important topoi in the colophons of scholarly texts, may not have been absolute,95 but some form of boundary maintenance with regard to literary and scholarly texts did seem to have been in effect in Babylonia, limiting the accessibility and mobility of scientific knowledge.
[☞ p7.60] Furthermore, the impression gained from cuneiform texts from the second half of the first millennium BCE in Babylonia is one of Babylonian urban elites who seemed reluctant to acknowledge the role of Aramaic and instead kept to traditional cuneiform as the sole official culture of Babylonia. The evidence is skewed because the cuneiform texts serve the self-interests of the Babylonian elite, conjuring up a view of Babylonia as an entirely cuneiform culture (see sections 3.1 and 3.2 above). However, from such an assessment we cannot infer that despite the Babylonian elite’s self-interest and their preoccupation with their self-understanding amid a changing world there must have been a considerable body of Babylonian Aramaic literature and scholarship, all evidence of which subsequently was suppressed or must have vanished.
[☞ p7.61] While the prestige of Babylonian astronomy facilitated the reception of Babylonian astronomers in the Greek world (see section 3.3 above), there may perhaps have been a similar effect in some cases with regard to Greek culture in the Babylonian world.96 The Babylonian urban elite, with its thoroughly cuneiform culture and identity, seems to have positioned itself differently with regard to Greek culture and language than it did with regard to Aramaic culture and language. Some Babylonians learned Greek and participated in Greek scholarly networks.97 This is not only illustrated by evidence for the direct transmission of advanced Babylonian mathematical astronomy to the Greek world, but also by Berossus and the so-called Graeco-Babyloniaca. The Graeco-Babyloniaca tablets (Akkadian written in Greek characters) from around the turn of the Common Era demonstrate that native Babylonians, students in this case, knew Greek.98 Berossus represents a fascinating example of a native Babylonian who aimed to present his culture to the wider Hellenistic world beyond the community of traditional Babylonian learning and therefore wrote in Greek.99 That he wrote in Greek and not in Aramaic seems significant. Of course, this was motivated by his wish to address a Greek-speaking audience, but this is precisely why it seems significant that he wrote in Greek. When some members of the Babylonian urban elite opened up, so to say, it was to Greek culture and language, something they had apparently not done in a similar manner earlier in the context of the Persian Empire with regard to the Aramaic language in relation to astronomy and astrology, Aramaic being only the vernacular.100 Greek culture and language may have enhanced the self-esteem and identity of Babylonian elites, which Aramaic presumably did not in first-millennium BCE Babylonia.101 In the Hellenistic period, therefore, the available sources seem to indicate that some of the Babylonian elite had an active interest in disseminating elements of their culture to non-Babylonians—but not just to any non-Babylonians.
[☞ p7.62] While the evidence for the involvement of non-Babylonians in Babylonian science is meagre at best, the transmission of Babylonian astronomy to the Greek world and the cases of Berossus and the Graeco-Babyloniaca seem to suggest a different attitude among members of the Babylonian elite toward the Greeks. These considerations argue against the assumption that Babylonian elites would have been actively involved in transmitting some of their astronomical knowledge to Jews who were, relatively, only quite recently in their midst,102 as opposed to the Aramaeans who settled there earlier but against whom, it appears, it was possible to maintain a persistent sense of difference up until the Hellenistic period (even if we assume Jews to have been part of a general Aramaic milieu).103 It seems unlikely that in Babylonia, where impressive developments took place in mathematical astronomy from the mid-first-millennium BCE onward, Babylonian scholars would have engaged in the transmission of older forms of their astronomy to local Jews or more recent insights if the Lunar Three scheme should indeed be seen as having influenced Qumran calendar texts.
[☞ p7.63] Of course, we may posit all sorts of suppositions: that there must already have been a whole body of Babylonian literature and scholarship in Aramaic in the first millennium BCE; that Jews must have been active in administrative functions; that they knew cuneiform; and that they had access to Babylonian cuneiform literature and scholarship. But there is no evidence for this and also no reason to assume such conditions in order to explain the Jewish evidence for scholarly traditions. If we take the actual Babylonian elements into account, these amount to features that do not presuppose direct access to cuneiform sources. The connecting chains of early Jewish astronomical and astrological traditions were probably much more remote from the centres of Babylonian science than previously assumed. All this does not deny the Babylonian origins of elements in early Jewish astronomical and astrological traditions, but it does highlight that these were encountered via different channels and agents than the transmission of Babylonian astronomical science to the Greek world. The transmission of cuneiform culture in Aramaic in Late Antiquity may suggest one such different trajectory.
[☞ p7.64] So how did Jewish scholars become acquainted with some of the learning originating with Babylonian scholars? What network connections and channels of transmission can we suggest for Jewish scholars to have gained access to certain elements of Babylonian learning? Bearing in mind the three possible channels of transmission to the Greek world (see section 3.3 above), the one channel of transmission ruled out on the basis of the evidence available is that of direct contact in Babylonia between Jewish and Babylonian scholars. This leaves us with two possibilities, namely directly via contact with travelling scribes outside Babylonia or indirectly via a continuous tradition that had been transmitted to various localities through such travelling scholars. It is impossible to be specific as to the exact channels, localities and agents of transmission, as concrete evidence is lacking, but we might venture a hypothesis.
[☞ p7.65] Two possible historical contexts seem to present themselves for obvious—but different—reasons: the Neo-Assyrian period and the Neo- and Late-Babylonian periods. Once we realize that for the “how” we need not assume direct contact, it is unnecessary to limit the cultural transfer of Mul.Apin and Enūma Anu Enlil type of astronomy to the Neo-Babylonian period or later.104 Moreover, elements of Babylonian as well as Greek astronomical and astrological learning will have been transmitted at different moments in history, but there is no reason to think of these as clearly separate waves.105 Logical necessity and historical sequence are not always identical in the history of science.106 Thus, the older type of Enochic astronomy was used and slightly updated in Hebrew texts (4Q317, 4Q503 and possibly 4Q334) at a time when presumably other lunar schemes were also appropriated in the second century BCE (see section 2.1 above).
[☞ p7.66] Only in the Neo-Assyrian period do we find evidence, at least in correspondence between scholars and the king, for the use of Aramaic in scholarly settings. The Neo-Assyrian period may thus have been conducive for the transmission of elements of cuneiform astronomical learning into Aramaic, from whence Aramaic became the medium for further diffusion of this material. This may have happened at the centres of learning, or perhaps at more provincial or peripheral localities. In addition, international scholars at the Neo-Assyrian court may have taken such traditions with them on their travels and transmitted elements of them into Aramaic along the way. Via such an indirect trajectory and through various points in between it may have reached Jews in Palestine sometime in the Hellenistic period, or perhaps already in the Persian period. As with the Late Antique evidence, we need not assume direct contact to explain the early Jewish evidence and can thus allow for a certain amount of time for such a hypothesized continuous tradition and for some of its elements to have materialized in the Aramaic Astronomical Book and Enochic astronomy.
[☞ p7.67] If we posit the Neo- or Late-Babylonian periods as the historical context for this diffusion, the Aramaic Astronomical Book from Qumran is evidence for the transmission of Babylonian learning via the medium of Aramaic in first-millennium BCE Babylonia. This transmission probably did not happen in a direct manner such that Jews learned this type of astronomy through personal interaction with Babylonian or Assyrian scholars in their centres of learning. There being no reason to see the origin of the Aramaic Astronomical Book in the eastern Diaspora, it should be considered a Jewish Palestinian text. It is, therefore, not necessary to posit Babylonia as the place where the actual transmission to Jewish individuals must have occurred.107
[☞ p7.68] The astrological texts from Qumran seem to point to a different channel of transmission because of the Hellenistic astrological elements alongside a Babylonian one in the case of 4Q318 and probably 4Q186. These texts do not presuppose direct contact with cuneiform sources or Babylonian scholars, but may point to a more vague, continuous tradition of astronomical and astrological lore, analogous to Late Antique traditions (see above in this section). As for the Qumran calendar texts, if indeed these did have elements of the Late-Babylonian Lunar Three scheme as their model of inspiration, it seems significant that we find them rendered directly in Hebrew rather than Aramaic.108 This argues against direct access to cuneiform sources and contact with Babylonian scholars.
5. Conclusion
[☞ p7.69] Contrary to what is often assumed,109 there is no evidence to suggest that during the first millennium BCE Jewish scholars had direct access to Babylonian centres of higher learning, such as the temples in Neo- and Late-Babylonian times, where they interacted with Babylonian astronomers and were able to read with their help cuneiform astronomical texts and appropriate such learning.
[☞ p7.70] We should no longer think of a disembodied Babylonian “stream of tradition” that was simply out there and available and which individual representatives of Jewish tradition could have accessed effortlessly. Considering cultural encounters between Jews and Babylonians, there would have been different aspects involved and different levels of interaction to reckon with. Explanations for the appropriation of motifs from Gilgamesh, for acquaintance with Nabonidus traditions, for the reception of legal formulas or for the transmission of astronomical and astrological traditions should not be lumped together indiscriminately as being the result of direct access to elite Babylonian learning. In our approach we need to distinguish between different kinds of texts and traditions and differentiate between various channels and agents of transmission.
[☞ p7.71] Regarding the transmission of Babylonian astronomical and astrological material to the Jewish world, we have considered the transmission of advanced Babylonian mathematical astronomy into Greek sources, which suggests high-level contact between Greek and Babylonian scholars, either in Babylonia or elsewhere, or, at a later date when direct contact would not have been possible anymore, through a continuous tradition. Jewish scholars, at least as far as our sources are concerned (setting aside indirect testimonies, such as Abraham being an astronomical teacher, or the Daniel narratives presenting a Jewish sage at the Babylonian court), were not part of that same high-level network: the Jewish sources testify to a different level of scholarship. Future research should therefore look for network connections at other places than the centres of Babylonian learning, as has often been the case. Nor should we perceive of the transmission of Babylonian astronomical and astrological material to Second Temple period Palestine as having taken place in a direct manner but rather through various intermediaries, Aramaic and other channels, as well as via a—more vague—continuous tradition.
[☞ p7.72] Via such indirect channels, elements of Babylonian and Greek astronomical and astrological learning reached certain people and certain places in Jewish Palestine, at least those at Qumran and the movement behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. Regarding these people, one might suggest that they formed a rather closed network, which was not particularly interested in current developments in the outside world. However, the scientific material shows otherwise, indicating a degree of openness to scholarly learning from other traditions. The different level of learning in comparison with contemporary Babylonian and Hellenistic astronomy suggests that although “Qumran” was connected, it was not as well connected to those scholarly networks that participated in the transmission of knowledge between Babylonia and Greek culture in Greece, Egypt and elsewhere in the Hellenistic world.
[☞ p7.73] In the centuries after the turn of the era things may have been different in terms of “high-level” contact between Jewish and Babylonian elites,110 but these data cannot be anachronistically projected backward into the first millennium BCE Jewish participation in society may simply have been different in those changed historical contexts.111 The times of Medieval and especially early Modern Europe were still far away.112
[☞ endnote-chapter7-1] 1 In this article I develop further some of the arguments in my “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts: Transmission and Translation of Alien Wisdom,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Transmission of Traditions and Production of Texts (ed. S. Metso, H. Najman, and E. Schuller; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 81–114.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-2] 2 This relates to primarily indirect evidence in ancient sources that has been adduced to support such inferences; one can think of the portrayal of Daniel’s position at the Neo-Babylonian court. See, for example, the discussion and references in Jonathan Ben-Dov, Head of All Years: Astronomy and Calendars at Qumran in their Ancient Context (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 266, 270-275. See also Henryk Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran: Text, Commentary, and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 51, 53, 70, 301, 304, and the contribution by James VanderKam in this volume.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-3] 3 Regarding the concept of science in Antiquity, I am not interested in any normative evaluations about whether the ancient learning we encounter in these texts should properly be called “science.” Science is not detached from social reality. It is to a degree a historically defined activity conducted by people in different contexts. What counts as scientific knowledge may differ over time and place depending on context; see, e.g., David N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003); Mladen Popović, Reading the Human Body: Physiognomics and Astrology in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic-Early Roman Period Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 211-213; Eleanor Robson, “Empirical Scholarship in the Neo-Assyrian Court,” in The Empirical Dimension of Ancient Near Eastern Studies / Die empirische Dimension altorientalischer Forschungen (ed. G.J. Selz and K. Wagensonner; Vienna: Lit, 2011), 603-629.If need be, working definitions for ancient science can be given; see, e.g., Philip S. Alexander, “Enoch and the Beginnings of Jewish Interest in Natural Science,” in this volume; Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Ben-Dov, Head of All Years; Rita Watson and Wayne Horowitz, Writing Science before the Greeks: A Naturalistic Analysis of the Babylonian Astronomical Treatise Mul.Apin (Leiden: Brill, 2011).The choice of what count as scientific texts here has been made pragmatically and is determined by specific Jewish texts and their Babylonian “counterparts.” To a certain extent, the demarcation between various kinds of texts is, of course, arbitrary. In this article I do not include, for example, magical texts, although elements that we might denote as magical also play a role in some of the texts under consideration here; see Popović, Reading the Human Body, 51–54, 234-237; idem, “Astrologische und magische Traditionen im antiken Judentum und die Texte vom Toten Meer,” in Qumran aktuell: Texte und Themen der Schriften vom Toten Meer (ed. S. Beyerle and J. Frey; Biblisch-Theologische Studien 120; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2011), 111-136 (112-113, 127-131).Furthermore, if we take into account the people that worked with these texts, demarcations are also to a certain extent arbitrary: there is evidence that different specialists in Mesopotamia worked on diverse and distinct disciplines, but there is also evidence that learned disciplines were not always nicely divided between different types of specialists. We need to look at specific historical contexts to determine whether demarcations were upheld and to what extent, and ask what this means for the dissemination and transmission of learned knowledge in that particular context. With regard to Jewish scholars or scientists in Hellenistic and early Roman Palestine, we have no comparative evidence about different kinds of scholars being responsible for different types of learning, although some such distinctions may be hypothesized; see the discussion and references in Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 106–8.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-4] 4 For the possibility that the numbers and fractions used in the Aramaic Levi Document reflect a Babylonian-type sexagesimal numeral system, see Henryk Drawnel, An Aramaic Wisdom Text from Qumran: A New Interpretation of the Levi Document (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 280-293. See also Ben-Dov, Head of All Years, 254; Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 106–7.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-5] 5 It is a moot point whether the scientific manuscripts from Qumran are representative for Jewish scholarship in general at the time or more typical for the movement behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. We know all ancient Jewish scientific literature, except the Enochic, only via the Qumran corpus. I assume that Jews outside this specific movement were also acquainted with this type of knowledge. The dates for some of the Aramaic Astronomical Enoch manuscripts predate the settlement at Qumran and indicate scholarly activity elsewhere and outside of that specific movement. Some of the other scholarly texts may likewise have circulated also outside of that movement; see Popović, Reading the Human Body, 8-11.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-6] 6 See Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 87–93, 97, 99, 110 n. 72.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-7] 7 The temporal horizon of the Jewish texts is determined by the dates of the manuscripts from Qumran; these range broadly from the third century BCE to the first century CE.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-8] 8 See, e.g. Otto Neugebauer, “The ‘Astronomical’ Chapters of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch (72 to 82)”, in: The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch: A New English Edition (M. Black; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 386–414 (387, 394-395); Matthias Albani, Astronomie und Schöpfungsglaube: Untersuchungen zum astronomischen Henochbuch (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1994), 155-172; Henryk Drawnel, “Moon Computation in the Aramaic Astronomical Book,” RQ 23/89 (2007): 3–41; Ben-Dov, Head of All Years; Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran. For the Mesopotamian background of other features as well, see, e.g., James C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984); Helge S. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and the Son of Man (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1988); idem, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical and Enochic (JSJSup 149; Leiden: Brill, 2011).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-9] 9 ‘M’ stands for the maximum limit, while ‘m’ stands for the minimum limit. On the incorrectness of this ratio for Mesopotamia’s latitude, see, e.g., Hermann Hunger and David Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 47.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-10] 10 Ben-Dov, Head of All Years, 161-167, 182-183, 245-246 suggests that the Jewish 364-day year tradition actually goes back to an intercalation passage in Mul.Apin that implies the same number, but was never implemented in the actual astronomical models and soon after the seventh century BCE yielded to more accurate numbers. In Jewish astral science as we find it in the Qumran texts, however, the 364-day year model became the cornerstone of Enochic cosmological learning.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-11] 11 Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, 237–311.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-12] 12 On the distinctions between the different manuscripts and their relation to the identification and date of the Astronomical Book as a composition, see the discussion and references in Ben-Dov, Head of All Years, 69-118; Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, 28-30, 39-53.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-13] 13 See the discussion of these texts in Ben-Dov, Head of All Years.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-14] 14 See Jonathan Ben-Dov and Wayne Horowitz, “The Babylonian Lunar Three in Calendrical Scrolls from Qumran,” ZA 95 (2005): 104-120; Ben-Dov, Head of All Years, 197–244.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-15] 15 Popović, Reading the Human Body, 128.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-16] 16 See, e.g., Jonas C. Greenfield et al., “4QZodiology and Brontology ar,” in Qumran Cave 4.XXVI: Cryptic Texts and Miscellanea, Part 1 (ed. P. Alexander et al.; DJD 36; Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 259-274; Reimund Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden (TSMK 21; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 23–24. See also Helen R. Jacobus, “4Q318: A Jewish Zodiac Calendar at Qumran?,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context (ed. C. Hempel; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 365-395.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-17] 17 There is no evidence for astrology in the Aramaic text 4Q561; see Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 102. 4Q561 (copied in either the first or the second half of the first century BCE) is a physiognomic catalogue that listed the physical descriptions of different types of people. There is some evidence that the text originally listed prognostics for each physiognomic type. Generally speaking, the physiognomic traditions of Babylonia and Greece are different. Babylonian physiognomics was principally a divinatory art that predicted people’s future on the basis of their physical characteristics. Graeco-Roman physiognomics was by and large concerned with the discernment of people’s characters, whereas the predictive function was minimal. The evidence for predictions in 4Q561 seems, therefore, to suggest Babylonian influence. But matters are not as clear-cut, because Babylonian physiognomics also seems to have been partially concerned with the discernment of character, and the case of Polemo of Laodicea (second century CE) demonstrates that Graeco-Roman traditions were also familiar with the predictive possibilities of physiognomics. See Popović, Reading the Human Body, 69–71, 111-112; Simon Swain (ed.), Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-18] 18 See, for example, the Esoteric Babylonian Commentary and LBAT 1593; Popović, Reading the Human Body, 112-114, 213-215.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-19] 19 Popović, Reading the Human Body, 123-125.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-20] 20 Maybe the composition should be dated to the fourth century already, although I see insufficient reason to assume a date for the Astronomical Book that much earlier than the manuscript evidence of 4Q208, especially since it is debatable whether the Aramaic Enoch manuscripts from Qumran should be equated with the Astronomical Book from Ethiopic Enoch; see the references in n. 12 above for a discussion of these issues.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-21] 21 For an excellent overview of the developments in Babylonian astronomy and astrology, see Hunger and Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-22] 22 See, e.g., Vittorio de Falco, Max Krause, and Otto Neugebauer, Hypsikles: Die Aufgangszeiten der Gestirne (AAWGPHK 3/62; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966); Gerald J. Toomer, “Hipparchus and Babylonian Astronomy,” in A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs (ed. E. Leichty, M. deJong Ellis, and P. Gerardi; Philadelphia: The University Museum, 1988), 353-362; Alexander Jones, “The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods in Greek Numerical Astronomy,” Isis 82 (1991): 441–453; idem, “Evidence for Babylonian Arithmetical Schemes in Greek Astronomy,” in Die Rolle der Astronomie in den Kulturen Mesopotamiens (ed. H.D. Galter; Graz: GrazKult, 1993), 77–94; Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 237-244.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-23] 23 Toomer, “Hipparchus and Babylonian Astronomy,” 353-354 (quote from p. 354).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-24] 24 Popović, Reading the Human Body, 160-163. Previously I assumed that this absence of evidence does not imply evidence for the lack of ephemerides and almanacs, but I also emphasized that complex mathematical-astronomical knowledge was not a prerequisite for practising astrology. Now I also tend to emphasize that the absence of evidence should caution us not to tacitly assume that Jewish scholars would have had access to resources such as ephemerides and almanacs.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-25] 25 See Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology: An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1995), 162; Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 78. For text references, see Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, 48 nn. 154-155. See also Petra D. Gesche, Schulunterricht in Babylonien im ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Münster: Ugarit, 2001), 216.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-26] 26 Cf. Ben-Dov, Head of All Years, 196. Cf. also Michael O. Wise, “Observations on New Calendrical Texts from Qumran,” in Thunder in Gemini and Other Essays on the History, Language and Literature of Second Temple Palestine (Sheffield; Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 222-239 (229).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-27] 27 The astrological texts from Qumran represent learning that is different with regard to the heptadic-based model from Enochic astronomy and its offshoots and the calendric texts from Qumran. The notion of the zodiac is another crucial difference. The zodiac is absent in early Enochic astronomy.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-28] 28 Mladen Popović, “Physiognomic Knowledge in Qumran and Babylonia: Form, Interdisciplinarity, and Secrecy,” DSD 13 (2006): 150–176 (166-176); idem, Reading the Human Body, 81–83, 227-231.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-29] 29 FGrH 124 T 3.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-30] 30 292a. See Albert B. Bosworth, “Aristotle and Callisthenes,” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 19 (1970): 407-413 (410-411). There is no reason to think that Aristotle made any such request to Callisthenes. More likely, Aristotle’s reference in De caelo to observational data from the Babylonians set commentators thinking how the information could have been obtained, and one obvious hypothesis, it seems, was that Callisthenes supplied it, although this ignores the reference to the Egyptians.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-31] 31 Cf., however, Markham J. Geller, “The Last Wedge,” ZA 87 (1997): 43–95 (50). For an argument about the Greeks’ lack of interest in learning others’ languages, see Aage Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again,” ZA 97 (2007): 262–313 (275-278). See also Arnaldo Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); idem, “The Fault of the Greeks,” Daedalus 104/2 (1975): 9–19 (15).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-32] 32 Strabo, Geogr. 16.1.6, refers to the Orchenoi and the Borsippenoi as classes of Chaldean astronomers. In the same passage, Strabo also refers to individual Chaldean astronomers: Kidenas, Naburianus, Sudines and Seleucus of Seleuceia. For a brief discussion of individual astronomers known by name to Graeco-Roman authors as Chaldean astronomers, see Jones, “Evidence for Babylonian Arithmetical Schemes,” 88–89; Geller, “The Last Wedge,” 49; Tom Boiy, Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 297 n. 24. See also below in section 3.3 for an inscription from Larissa in Thessaly that refers to a certain Antipater from Hierapolis as a Chaldean astronomer. Of course, there are numerous references to the “Chaldeans” and their skills in Greek and Latin sources, but they function more often than not as stock characters for authors to talk about astrologers or their skills. Not much specific information as to the transmission of their learning or in what respect it was of Babylonian origin can be gleaned from these sources. The references to the expulsion of “Chaldeans” from Rome indicate that they were regarded as undesirable for various reasons at various times, but these references hardly give us specific data as to the concrete people and circumstances involved.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-33] 33 See, for example, Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy (Berlin: Springer, 1975); Jones, “The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods”; idem, “Evidence for Babylonian Arithmetical Schemes”; idem, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus (P. Oxy. 4133-4300a) (2 vols.; Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999); David Pingree, From Astral Omens to Astrology: From Babylon to Bīkāner (Rome: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 1997); idem, “Legacies in Astronomy and Celestial Omens,” in The Legacy of Mesopotamia (ed. S. Dalley et al.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 125-137; Rochberg, Heavenly Writing; eadem, In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy (Leiden: Brill, 2010); John M. Steele, “Visual Aspects of the Transmission of Babylonian Astronomy and its Reception into Greek Astronomy,” Annals of Science 68 (2011): 453-465.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-34] 34 For example, Ptolemy of Alexandria, Almagest 3.7, refers to records of ancient observations from the beginning of the reign of the Babylonian king Nabonassar (747–734 BCE) that had been preserved down to his own time, and to which Ptolemy claimed to have had access, although no further information about them is provided, nor how Ptolemy accessed them and in what language. For a discussion of these issues, see, e.g., Jones, “The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods,” 442-443; John M. Steele, “Applied Historical Astronomy: An Historical Perspective,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 35 (2004): 337-355 (338-346). See also Christopher B.F. Walker, “Achaemenid Chronology and the Babylonian Sources,” in Mesopotamia and Iran in the Persian Period: Conquest and Imperialism 539-331 BC (ed. J. Curtis; London: British Museum, 1997), 17–25; Steele, “Visual Aspects.”
[☞ endnote-chapter7-35] 35 Pseudo-Eupolemus tells of how Abraham taught astronomy and other sciences to the Egyptians when he dwelt with the Egyptian priests in Heliopolis (apud Eusebius, Praep. ev. 9.17.2–9). Presenting astral learning also as revealed knowledge (Methuselah learned everything through the angels of God), Pseudo-Eupolemus shares a topos with Babylonian sources. See, e.g., Wilfred G. Lambert, “A Catalogue of Texts and Authors,” JCS 16 (1962): 59–77; Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien: Formen der Kommunikation zwischen Gott und König im 2. und 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1999), 293-295; Rochberg, Heavenly Writing, 181-185, 215. The Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran Cave 1 also emphasizes Abraham’s wisdom and learning, pointing out that the pharaoh’s officials visited him to seek out his wisdom, as well as his wife. The Genesis Apocryphon possibly also refers more specifically to Abraham’s astronomical wisdom, as he is said to have read to the Egyptian officials from the book of the words of Enoch (1QapGen ar 19:24–25). Josephus remarks that astronomical learning derived from the Chaldeans (Ant. 1.168). Philo admits as much, but explains Abraham’s emigration from Ur allegorically as a rejection of astrology (Abraham 68–84; Migration 176–187; cf. also Heir 96–99; Josephus, Ant. 1.155–157). Likewise, Jub 12:16–18 has Abraham observing the stars before leaving Ur and his astrological interests behind. Some of these passages reflect an ancient discourse on the origins of astronomy/astrology, putting Abraham, via Enoch, forward as a Jewish culture hero. See brief discussion and references in Popović, Reading the Human Body, 225-226. The discourse on the origins of astronomy/astrology was in itself part of the wider debate about the priority of cultures and about which culture was dependent on which. See, e.g., Geert De Breucker, “Berossos between Tradition and Innovation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture (ed. K. Radner and E. Robson; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 637-657 (650).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-36] 36 See n. 35 above.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-37] 37 The literature on Social Network Analysis theory is enormous, and it mostly concentrates on the study of the present, using statistical data. However, Social Network Analysis theory has also begun to be used for earlier periods of history. See, e.g., Peter S. Bearman, Relations into Rhetorics: Local Elite Social Structure in Norfolk 1540–1640 (Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993); John F. Padgett and Christopher K. Ansell, “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici 1400–1434,” American Journal of Sociology 98/6 (1993): 1259–1319; Charles Wetherell, Andrejs Plakans, and Barry Wellman, “Social Networks, Kinship and Community in Eastern Europe,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24/4 (1994): 639-663; Barry Wellman and Charles Wetherell, “Social Network Analysis of Historical Communities: Some Questions from the Present for the Past,” History of the Family 1 (1996): 97–121; B.H. Erickson, “Social Networks and History: A Review Essay,” Historical Methods 30/3 (1997): 149-157; Paul D. McLean, The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). In 2007 a special issue of Mediterranean Historical Review was devoted to Social Network Analysis. For more on Social Network Analysis theory and its application to the transmission of religious ideas and cults, see Anna Collar, “Network Theory and Religious Innovation,” MHR 22 (2007): 149-162, and John Ma, “Peer Polity Interaction in the Hellenistic Age,” Past and Present 180 (2003): 9–39. Although less on Social Network Analysis theory as such, see also Claudia Moatti, “Translation, Migration, and Communication in the Roman Empire: Three Aspects of Movement in History,” Classical Antiquity 25 (2006): 109-140.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-38] 38 See, e.g., Annette Y. Reed, “Was there Science in Ancient Judaism? Historical and Cross-Cultural Reflections on ‘Religion’ and ‘Science,’” SR 36 (2007): 461-495 (467), as well as her contribution in this volume.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-39] 39 There is an enormous amount of scholarly discussion on these issues. For interesting insights in this discussion, from a different field of study than Jewish or cuneiform, see, e.g., David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-40] 40 See, e.g., Karen Radner, “The Assyrian King and his Scholars: The Syro-Anatolian and the Egyptian Schools,” in Of God(s), Trees, Kings, and Scholars: Neo-Assyrian and Related Studies in Honour of Simo Parpola (ed. M. Luukko, S. Svärd, and R. Mattila; Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 2009), 221-238.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-41] 41 See, e.g., Paul-Alain Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages: The Shifting Sands of Imperial and Cultural Identities in First-Millennium B.C. Mesopotamia,” in Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures (2nd ed.; ed. S.L. Sanders; Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2007), 191–220 (192-196).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-42] 42 See the references in Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 193. See also Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again,” 293.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-43] 43 Ran Zadok, “The Representation of Foreigners in Neo- and Late-Babylonian Legal Documents (Eighth through Second Centuries B.C.E.)”, in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and J. Blenkinsopp; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 471–589 (483-484); Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 212-213.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-44] 44 Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 110-114.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-45] 45 Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 194-195.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-46] 46 Cf. Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again,” 308. See also Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 194-195.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-47] 47 Cf. Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 197, 213; De Breucker, “Berossos between Tradition and Innovation,” 638-639; Philippe Clancier, “Cuneiform Culture’s Last Guardians: The Old Urban Notability of Hellenistic Uruk,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, 752-773 (756). See also David Brown, “Increasingly Redundant: The Growing Obsolescence of the Cuneiform Script in Babylonia from 539 BC,” in The Disappearance of Writing Systems: Perspectives on Literacy and Communication (ed. J. Baines, J. Bennet, and S. Houston; London: Equinox, 2008), 73–101, who emphasizes the connection between the production and transmission of astronomical and astrological texts and the survival of cuneiform until around the turn of the common era, and Jerrold S. Cooper, “Redundancy Reconsidered: Reflections on David Brown’s Thesis,” in The Disappearance of Writing Systems, 103–108.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-48] 48 Clancier, “Cuneiform Culture’s Last Guardians,” 756-762.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-49] 49 See Eleanor Robson, “The Production and Dissemination of Scholarly Knowledge,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, 557-576; eadem, “Tracing Networks of Cuneiform Scholarship with Oracc, GKAB and Google Earth,” in Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology and Ethics (ed. M. Rutz and M. Kersel; Oxford: Oxbow, forthcoming).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-50] 50 The impression from the Neo-Assyrian period is that a lot of movement of both tablets and scholars went on. See e.g. Lorenzo Verderame, “La formazione dell’esperto (ummânu) nel periodo neo-assiro,” Historiae 5 (2008): 51–67. The colophons on the cuneiform tablets from the late fifth- and late fourth-centuries BCE collection from Uruk often testify to being copies of originals that came from elsewhere, but we do not know how far back these originals were in the chain of transmission, see Robson, “The Production and Dissemination of Scholarly Knowledge,” 566.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-51] 51 Cf. Collar, “Network Theory and Religious Innovation,” 151.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-52] 52 Robson, “The Production and Dissemination of Scholarly Knowledge,” 565. See also Mathieu Ossendrijver, “Exzellente Netzwerke: Die Astronomen von Uruk,” in The Empirical Dimension of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, 631-644.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-53] 53 Cf. Jones, “Evidence for Babylonian Arithmetical Schemes,” 88. See also below in section 3.3.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-54] 54 See also Collar, “Network Theory and Religious Innovation,” 156.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-55] 55 Brown, “Increasingly Redundant,” 89; Cooper, “Redundancy Reconsidered,” 104; Eleanor Robson, “Reading the Libraries of Assyria and Babylonia,” in Ancient Libraries (ed. J. Köning, K. Oikonomopoulou, and G. Woolf; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-56] 56 See, e.g., Amélie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White (eds.), Hellenism in the East: The Interaction of Greek and Non-Greek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander (London: Duckworth, 1987); Ernie Haerinck, “Babylonia under Achaemenid Rule,” in Mesopotamia and Iran, 26–34 (27); Robartus J. van der Spek, “Multi-Ethnicity and Ethnic Segregation in Hellenistic Babylon,” in Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power and Tradition (ed. T. Derks and N. Roymans; Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 101-115.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-57] 57 Contra Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, 301, 304; see section 4 below.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-58] 58 For the different positions in this debate, see, e.g., Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 198, 201, 212; De Breucker, “Berossos between Tradition and Innovation,” 638; Clancier, “Cuneiform Culture’s Last Guardians,” 756. See also Sheldon Pollock, “Power and Culture Beyond Ideology and Identity,” in Margins of Writing, 283-293 (esp. 285-286). For traces of first-millennium BCE Aramaic literature, see also Tawny L. Holm, “The Sheikh Faḍl Inscription in Its Literary and Historical Context,” Aramaic Studies 5 (2007): 193–224 (220-224).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-59] 59 Philippe Clancier, “Les scribes sur parchmin du temple d’Anu,” RA 99 (2005): 85–104 (93–98); idem, “Cuneiform Culture’s Last Guardians,” 764-765.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-60] 60 Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 198.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-61] 61 See the discussion in Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 110-114.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-62] 62 Interestingly, there are a couple of references to texts having been copied from scrolls—typically the material with which sepīru scribes are associated—but it is debated whether these references are to writings in Aramaic script. See, e.g., Clancier, “Les scribes sur parchmin,” 90 n. 23; Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again,” 278-280; Cooper, “Redundancy Reconsidered,” 106 n. 5.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-63] 63 Laurie Pearce, “New Evidence for Judeans in Babylonia,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 399–411 (402). See also F. Rachel Magdalene and Cornelia Wunsch, “Slavery between Judah and Babylon: The Exilic Experience,” in Slaves and Households in the Near East (ed. L. Culbertson; Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2011), 113-134.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-64] 64 In general, the Babylonian temple archives indicate only a very small percentage of foreigners. See Zadok, “The Representation of Foreigners,” 482-484.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-65] 65 See discussion and references in Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 100-106.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-66] 66 Cf. Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages”; Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again,” 307-308.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-67] 67 This assessment may distract rather than explain. It is not meant as a normative observation but rather to indicate that Late Antique Babylonian sources do not transmit advanced mathematical astronomy but instead the divinatory astrological traditions. It is readily admitted that one goes with the other, as it did in first millennium BCE Babylonia and in Hellenistic astronomy and astrology, as in the case of Ptolemy. At the same time, when we find the divinatory side of the coin, we need not always presuppose knowledge of the technical and mathematical astronomical requirements. A telling example from the modern world comes from present-day India, which vividly shows how traditional horoscopy is practiced without mathematical astronomical knowledge; see Popović, Reading the Human Body, 162-163.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-68] 68 See Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again,” 308. The situation of Late Antique Babylonian astrological literature is actually somewhat more complex, as some of the sources of these texts are not just Babylonian, but also Greek; see Popović, Reading the Human Body, 37, 111. Aage Westenholz’s remark is directed at the medical, astrological and magical traditions reflected in the Talmud and the Mandaic texts from Late Antiquity, arguing that these do not derive “directly” from scholarly cuneiform tablets. The case with the texts from Qumran is different in that those texts are not examples of “popular” culture but of a different level of scholarly culture than that of cuneiform culture at the time. The point, however, is the same: neither derives directly from cuneiform sources. For the early Jewish evidence we likewise need to posit indirect channels of diffusion (see below).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-69] 69 See, e.g., Katell Berthelot and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (eds.), Aramaica Qumranica (STDJ 94; Leiden: Brill, 2010). See also Pollock, “Power and Culture Beyond Ideology and Identity,” 285-286.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-70] 70 See n. 58 above.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-71] 71 See Richard C. Steiner, “The Aramaic Texts in Demotic Script: The Liturgy of a New Year’s Festival Imported from Bethel to Syene by Exiles from Rash,” JAOS 111 (1991): 362-363; idem, “Papyrus Amherst 63: A New Source for the Language, Literature, Religion, and History of the Arameans,” in Studia Aramaica: New Sources and New Approaches (ed. M.J. Geller, J.C. Greenfield, and M.P. Weitzman; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 199–207.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-72] 72 Cf. also Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 109-110. On different cuneiform sources from ancient Israel, see Wayne Horowitz, Takayoshi Oshima, and Seth L. Sanders, Cuneiform in Canaan: Cuneiform Source from the Land of Israel in Ancient Times (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2006).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-73] 73 In addition to the references in n. 8 above, see Matthew Goff, “Gilgamesh the Giant: The Qumran Book of Giants’ Appropriation of Gilgamesh Motifs,” DSD 16 (2009): 221-253; André Lemaire, “Nabonide et Gilgamesh: L’araméen en Mésopotamie et à Qoumrân,” in Aramaica Qumranica, 125-144; Ida Fröhlich, “Enmeduranki and Gilgamesh: Mesopotamian Figures in Aramaic Enoch Traditions,” in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 637-653.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-74] 74 Carol A. Newsom, “Why Nabonidus? Excavating Traditions from Qumran, the Hebrew Bible, and Neo-Babylonian Sources,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. S. Metso, H. Najman, and E. Schuller), 57–79. See also Lemaire, “Nabonide et Gilgamesh.”
[☞ endnote-chapter7-75] 75 See Douglas M. Gropp, “Wadi ed-Daliyeh: Written Material,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. L.H. Schiffman and J.C. VanderKam; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 162-165 (163-164); D.M. Gropp et al., Wadi Daliyeh II: The Samaria Papyri from Wadi Daliyeh and Qumran Cave 4.XXVIII: Miscellanea, Part 2 (DJD 28; Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 5, 19–32. For these texts, see also recently Jan Dušek, Les manuscrits araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450–332 av. J.-C. (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Jacobine C. Oudshoorn, The Relationship between Roman and Local Law in the Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives: General Analysis and Three Case Studies on the Law of Succession, Guardianship and Marriage (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Bernard S. Jackson and Daniela Piattelli, “A Recent Study of the Babatha and Salome Archives,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 13 (2010): 88–125.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-76] 76 For example, familiarity in 1 Enoch with elements from the Enmeduranki tradition does not imply direct access to cuneiform sources. Such elements of cultural transmission are more diffuse, and therefore more difficult to pinpoint. This also applies to certain cosmographic and geographic elements in 1 Enoch with parallels in Babylonian and Greek traditions; see George W.E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36; 81-108 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 61–62, 279-289; Kelley Coblentz Bautch, A Study of the Geography of 1 Enoch 17-19: “No One Has Seen What I Have Seen” (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 231-257.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-77] 77 Jones, “The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods,” 443; Steele, “Applied Historical Astronomy,” 338-346; idem, “Visual Aspects,” 454.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-78] 78 Jones, “The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods,” 443-444.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-79] 79 See Toomer, “Hipparchus and Babylonian Astronomy,” 357-360.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-80] 80 It has been argued for the Middle Babylonian period and the diffusion of scribal learning to Hittite Anatolia that the connections of travelling scribes to their target networks may have been superficially tenuous but that their effects on those target groups were often out of any proportion to the character of those connections. See Mark Weeden, “Adapting to New Contexts: Cuneiform in Anatolia,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, 597–617 (603).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-81] 81 SEG 31.576; C.J. Gallis, “New Inscriptions from Larissa,” Athens Annals of Archaeology 13/2 (1980): 246-261 (250-251) (in Greek; English summary on pp. 261-262); Glenn W. Bowersock, “Antipater Chaldaeus,” CQ 33 (1983): 491. I am grateful to Alexander Jones for the reference to this inscription and the two articles.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-82] 82 The reference to Antipater having spent many years in Larissa (lines 11–12) may perhaps suggest that he came there as a young man.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-83] 83 Did he come via the Greek island of Cos? See Vitruvius, On architecture 9.6.2 and Bowersock, “Antipater Chaldaeus.”
[☞ endnote-chapter7-84] 84 Despite Berossus’ reputation (founding a Chaldean school on the Greek island of Cos; Vitruvius, On architecture 9.6.2) scarcely anything connected with him is really astronomical. See Popović, Reading the Human Body, 217 n. 25. But see Amélie Kuhrt, “Berossus’ Babyloniaka and Seleucid Rule in Babylonia,” in Hellenism in the East, 32–56 (36–44).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-85] 85 Jones, “The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods,” 443-444.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-86] 86 Jones, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus, 1:97–99; 2:22–23.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-87] 87 Cf. Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, 52 n. 170.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-88] 88 See, however, Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, 301, 304.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-89] 89 See Farouq N.H. Al-Rawi and Andrew R. George, “Enūma Anu Enlil XIV and Other Early Astronomical Tables,” AfO 38/39 (1991–1992): 52–69.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-90] 90 Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, 304-305 notes that both texts (1) present the numerical data in short formulaic sentences (although the cuneiform is much more terse than the Aramaic); (2) deal with visibility of the moon, presenting this in the scheme of one month; (3) compute the same time intervals of the night, although the Aramaic Astronomical Book inverts the order of the presentation in Enūma Anu Enlil; (4) divide night-time into two parts.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-91] 91 On this ‘translation,’ see Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 104.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-92] 92 Cf. Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again,” 308, and see section 3.2 above.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-93] 93 A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (rev. ed. by E. Reiner; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 13, conceived of this “stream of tradition” as a stable corpus of scholarly writings that was relatively accessible to all learned men; it represented a cultural continuum that was maintained effectively by the scribal tradition.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-94] 94 See Robson, “Empirical Scholarship”; eadem, “The Production and Dissemination of Scholarly Knowledge”; eadem, “Reading the Libraries”; eadem, “Tracing Networks of Cuneiform Scholarship.” I am grateful to Eleanor Robson for providing me with copies of her articles before publication.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-95] 95 It has long been debated in Assyriological studies how such secrecy and curse formulae should be understood. Recently, the pendulum seems to have swung back in the direction of the secrecy formulae being taken more or less at face value, implying that the scholarly corpora of astrologers, diviners and others were considered to be secret in principle. How this principle will have worked out in specific contexts, however, is a different matter. The notion of secrecy and especially its social functions should be further specified in its socio-cultural contexts. See, e.g., Popović, Reading the Human Body, 81–83, 100, 227-231; Alan Lenzi, Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2008); Niek Veldhuis, “The Theory of Knowledge and the Practice of Celestial Divination,” in Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World (ed. A. Annus; Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2010), 77–91 (79–80).
[☞ endnote-chapter7-96] 96 See van der Spek, “Multi-Ethnicity and Ethnic Segregation,” 111 for examples of non-peaceful coexistence.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-97] 97 Cf. Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 210-211.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-98] 98 For a recent discussion of these texts and references to other scholars and previous discussions, see Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again.”
[☞ endnote-chapter7-99] 99 See most recently De Breucker, “Berossos between Tradition and Innovation.”
[☞ endnote-chapter7-100] 100 This changed attitude may perhaps have been caused by the extensive colonization programme started by the Hellenistic empires; see van der Spek, “Multi-Ethnicity and Ethnic Segregation,” 106.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-101] 101 Cf. Beaulieu, “Official and Vernacular Languages,” 211. On the languages spoken by the Babylonian elites in the latter part of the first millennium BCE, see also, e.g., Geller, “The Last Wedge”; idem, “Graeco-Babyloniaca in Babylon,” in Babylon: Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne (ed. J. Renger; Saarbrücken: SDV, 1999), 377-383; Westenholz, “The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again.”
[☞ endnote-chapter7-102] 102 Cf. also Boiy, Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon, 187, 295.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-103] 103 See n. 45 above.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-104] 104 Ben-Dov, Head of All Years, 245-247.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-105] 105 Ben-Dov, Head of All Years, 245-250.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-106] 106 Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 303.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-107] 107 See, however, Drawnel, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208-4Q211) from Qumran, 53.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-108] 108 Or should we assume Aramaic intermediaries, as with 4Q186 and 4Q561 (although not in a strict sense)? Cf. Popović, “The Emergence of Aramaic and Hebrew Scholarly Texts,” 103–6. Jonathan Ben-Dov, “Scientific Writings in Aramaic and Hebrew at Qumran: Translation and Concealment,” in Aramaica Qumranica, 379–402 does not seem to reflect on this aspect.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-109] 109 See the references in n. 2 above.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-110] 110 See, e.g., Shai Secunda, “Talmudic Text and Iranian Context: On the Development of Two Talmudic Narratives,” AJS Review 33 (2009): 45–69; idem, “Reading the Bavli in Iran,” JQR 100 (2010): 310-342.
[☞ endnote-chapter7-111] 111 The difference in evidence, both quantitatively and qualitatively, for Jewish magic and astrology between the Second Temple period and Late Antiquity and the early Medieval period may perhaps also be indicative for such different involvement; see Popović, “Astrologische und magische Traditionen.”
[☞ endnote-chapter7-112] 112 See David B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). For their suggestions and comments I thank the editors, the two anonymous reviewers, Jan Bremmer and Florentino García Martínez.
