Above: One of the tablets

Major New Archive From Jewish Babylonian Exile Released

Cornell University



ITHACA, NY – In a major contribution to Biblical and Mesopotamian studies, the first extra-biblical archive from the exiled Judean community in Babylonia in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE has been published, announced David I. Owen, Editor-in-Chief of Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology (CUSAS).



Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer (CUSAS 28: Bethesda: CDL Press, 2014) by Laurie E. Pearce (Berkeley) and Cornelia Wunsch (London) provides complete editions, translations, copies and outstanding photographs of 103 cuneiform texts from the David Sofer Collection, together with an extensive commentary on the hundreds of new Judean personal names with Yahwistic elements.



“These names add substantially to our understanding of Judean religious beliefs during this formative period in the development of exilic Judaism,” says Owen, Director of the Jonathan and Jeannette Rosen Ancient Near Eastern Studies Seminar and the Bernard and Jane Schapiro Professor of Ancient Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Emeritus in Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences. The documents provide new insights into the social and economic life of the Judeans (along with others groups forcibly settled in Mesopotamia by Nebuchadnezzar II, ca. 634-562 BCE) in their own community of Al Yahudu (Jewtown) and their interrelationships with and assimilation to their West Semitic and Babylonian neighbors.



The volume also provides a comprehensive analysis and discussion of the new data. “It offers many important additions and interesting insights into the hitherto limited knowledge of this community, the naming practices of immigrant groups over several generations, and, by implication, how other exiles in Babylonia might have been influenced by similar experiences after being forcibly resettled in a foreign environment,” says Owen. “This is an essential resource not only for Assyriologists, archaeologists and historians but also for biblical scholars interested in the history of Judaism in its Mesopotamian context.”



A two-day, international symposium, “Jerusalem In Babylonia,” celebrating the publication of this volume, will be held February 2-3, 2015, at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, Israel.



Since 2007, no less that 27 major volumes in the CUSAS series have appeared under Owen’s direction as editor-in-chief. These volumes contain editions of thousands of cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia starting from the earliest written sources, ca. 3200 BCE to to the Persian period 450 BCE.



“The publications have added greatly to our knowledge of the Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform languages, history, literature, religion, economics and society of ancient Mesopotamia,” says Owen, “and the series has produced an unprecedented number of cuneiform publications unmatched by any university.”



Owen formed an international team of scholars from the United States, Italy, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Israel and France to produce the series, widely acknowledged as the major source of information on ancient Iraq to appear since the cessation of work in that country as a result of the two Iraq wars.



Cornell University, one of the first two universities in America to introduce the study of Babylonian in the late nineteenth century, has now joined its peer universities - Penn, Yale, and Chicago - as a major contributor to Assyriological studies, says Owen. Its CUSAS series continues as perhaps the only current American series regularly producing publications of original cuneiform records from Mesopotamia.

Ha'aretz adds: