Papers by Abraham Winitzer
Stairways to Heaven and Related Matters: New Light on Nergal and Ereshkigal
Iraq, 2024
The paper posits a link between the Standard Babylonian Version of Nergal and Ereškigal and the J... more The paper posits a link between the Standard Babylonian Version of Nergal and Ereškigal and the Jacob Cycle in Genesis (Gen 25-35), one anchored by the former story’s cosmic stairway and the stairway with its top in heaven appearing to Jacob in his famous dream. It is argued that the proper understanding of the motive for that specific parallel opens the door to a considerably broader one, which offers important insight on the two traditions. This broader parallel informs on different aspects of Nergal and Ereškigal, including theological and historical issues that appear to stand behind that story. Such contact, it is suggested, challenges established Assyriological thinking about the place of comparative perspectives in the study of Mesopotamian literature.
Mesopotamian Mythology and Genesis 1–11
Peter Machinist
Penn State University Press eBooks, Nov 22, 2013
Towards a History of Assyriology Workshop Organized at the 64th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Innsbruck 2018 Edited by Sebastian Fink and Hans Neumann, 2025
„Semitische Wissenschaften“? Ägyptologie und Altorientalistik im „Dritten Reich“, ed. H. Behlmer et al. , 2025
Messages and Messengers of Gods and Kings
Peeters Publishers eBooks, May 26, 2023
Encyclopedia of Ancient History
ABRAHAM WINITZER Among the most significant scholars in ancient Near East studies in the twentiet... more ABRAHAM WINITZER Among the most significant scholars in ancient Near East studies in the twentieth century was William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971), whose astonishing scholarly range and output helped in shaping several of that field's modern-day subdisciplines and venues, in particular those relating to the Bible. Born to American Protestant missionaries and raised into his second decade in Chile, Albright returned permanently with his family to their roots in the American Midwest. His higher education, which began at Upper Iowa University, culminated at Johns Hopkins in a PhD in 1916 with a thesis in Assyriology. Albright accepted a fellowship at the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem beginning in 1919, shortly thereafter becoming its director (1920-1; 1921-9, 1933-6). In that time, Albright gained considerable knowledge of the Holy Land, most meaningfully via a commitment to an archaeology heavily informed by biblical history. He participated in or conducted excavations at several sites, including at Tells el-Ful and Beit Mirsim, believing that he had matched both to biblical toponyms. By 1929, he was back at Johns Hopkins, from 1930 until 1958 as W. W. Spence Professor of Semitic Languages. During this time, he supervised many students working in areas even more varied than his own, a number of these becoming authorities in their respective disciplines. Albright's work, which came to center on ancient ISRAEL, appealed to broader disciplinesincluding philology and linguistics, history and archaeology, even theology and philosophyto chart a course for the historical study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament on the basis of the masses of extra-biblical data unearthed from the mid-nineteenth century on. This material, both philological and archaeological, REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS Albright, W. F. (1957) From the Stone Age to Christianity: monotheism and the historical process, 2nd ed. Garden City. Albright, W. F. (1964) History, archaeology and Christian humanism. New York. Albright, W. F. (1968) Yahweh and the gods of Canaan. London.
Leo Oppenheim
Tomorrow Never Knows, 2021
Mesopotamian Mythology and Genesis 1-11
Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies, 2023
Towards a History of Assyriology, ed. S. Fink and H. Neumann (IO 4; Münster, Zaphon)., 2023
The following stems from a project nearing completion, an intellectual biography of A. Leo Oppenh... more The following stems from a project nearing completion, an intellectual biography of A. Leo Oppenheim (1904-1974), who, while not one of Assyriology's founding fathers, figures as one of the most significant students in this discipline's stillformative years of the middle of the last century. 1 That project's overall subject relates, inter alia, to the interests of the present communication. Namely, it seeks to understand the meaning of two of Oppenheim's key and interrelated ideas as reflected in his writings, most notably in his most synthetic work, Ancient Mesopotamia. 2 One such idea, arguably the most famous, is that of a cuneiform "stream of tradition," introduced early on in the book and revisited often thereafter. 3 The other appears in the book's very subtitle, Portrait of a Dead Civilization. These ideas, both in letter and spirit, have become pillars in the way in which Assyriology approaches its subject, even in the present day. In the case of the "stream of tradition," Oppenheim's influence can be seen literally, since his term was picked up by many who found in it a useful metaphor by which Mesopotamia could be conceived via its textual record, sidestepping thereby definitional landmines of various sorts. 4 By contrast, the idea of a dead civilization, which Oppenheim did not promote conceptually, has correspondingly not become Assyriological doctrine. However, as is demonstrated below, not only can its reverberations still be heard today, but its message, at least in the manner it is conceived, still guides Assyriology in important, indeed at times, even critical ways. This claim may seem bold, though support for it could be mustered from many examples in recent Assyriological scholarship. The following limits itself 1 Winitzer, forthcoming a. The reader is referred to this work for detail and commentary on much appearing here, which could only have been touched on briefly in this setting, as well as for references to primary and secondary sources mentioned herein. The present article represents a minor reworking of the paper read 64 th Innsbruck RAI meeting, at the kind invitation of Dr. Sebastian Fink. 2 Oppenheim 1977. Although the work was published in the first edition in 1964, the present communication references the later, revised edition (different almost exclusively in the bibliography).
EBR, 2023
Adolf Leo Oppenheim (1904-1974) was one of the most influential Assyriologists of the 20th centur... more Adolf Leo Oppenheim (1904-1974) was one of the most influential Assyriologists of the 20th century. Born in and raised among Vienna's Jewish community, Oppenheim was educated in that city's university, initially in Hebrew and Semitics and ultimately in Assyriology, the field in which he took his PhD (1933) and which would occupy much of his work thereafter. Despite another year of postgraduate studies with the eminent legal historian, M. San-Nicolò, Oppenheim failed to obtain an academic position in his native land. Following the Anschluss, he found a temporary haven in Paris, though with the outbreak of war his then-German nationality landed him in a French concentration camp. Freed paradoxically by the German invasion, Oppenheim set to escape to the United States, and managed to do so in the spring of 1941. Now in New York, Oppenheim took temporary work where he could find it, including a two-year post at Dropsie College and one at Johns Hopkins, as a substitute for W. F. Albright. His work from this period remained centered on Assyriology, but included several studies in Hebrew lexicography as well. All the while he persisted with efforts to locate his parents and secure their release. Word of their demise reached Oppenheim after the war's end. In 1947 Oppenheim accepted an invitation to join the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, with the goal of reviving that institution's Chicago Assyrian Dictionary project. Under his chief editorship (1955-73), twelve of the twenty-four volumes comprising the dictionary were completed and published, and substantial portions of others written as well. Oppenheim also pursued his own writing at this time, which contended with an almost incomparably varied array of subjects concerning Mesopotamian civilization, and produced volumes on dream interpretation and glassmaking, as well as studies on international trade, fiscal practices, legal terminology, 3rd-millennium seafaring, 1st-millennium history, prayers, rituals, medicine, and more. Additional work from this period relating biblical and even mishnaic concepts to Mesopotamian antecedents or parallels attest to a continued engagement with questions about Mesopotamia's legacy in the Hebrew world as well as Israel's place in the ANE. Yet it was also during this time that Oppenheim penned his most influential work, a scholarly introduction to his subject of inquiry, whose title, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization, seemingly hints at a basic rupture between its topic and related concerns. The work offers several basic parameters to its topic of study, which have since been adopted in the discipline's self-understanding. But his commitment to the Bible and its indebtedness to Mesopotamia is also best witnessed in his Ancient Mesopotamia, which, replete with biblical references, simultaneously finds Israel as part of the ANE and at times even its quintessential spokesperson but elsewhere as a derisive witness to traditions it fails to comprehend.
Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature, 2013
"The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts", 2018
Encyclopedia of the Bible Online, 2013
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, 2013
: The following presents an edition of a heretofore-unpublished OB omen collection concerning the... more : The following presents an edition of a heretofore-unpublished OB omen collection concerning the padanum, or “Path.” As may be expected, this text, larger than most of the known padānum collections, enhances our understanding of the zone in Mesopotamian extispicy known by that name, typically the second according to the standardized inspection sequence. An examination of the text, however, reveals an interweaving of omens concerning other zones bearing the label of “Path.” This interweaving raises questions about the development of extispicy literature in this period and challenges conceptions concerning its standardization – from a new perspective.
AfO 54
S tef an B o jo w ald , Zur Erklärung des ägyptischen Wortes ἰꝪŚ in pAshmolean Museum 1984.
Moonstruck in Harran: On a Consequential Intersection of First Millennium History and Literature
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Papers by Abraham Winitzer