The public readings of the laws in these instances are reported as one-time events. Yet, there is also a requirement of the periodic reading of the covenant to the whole people, mandated in Deuteronomy:

It emerges that the treaty imagery in the Bible bypasses the personage of the subordinate king and replaces him with the common Israelite. He is the one addressed by the covenant; he is the one upon whom God has bestowed favor; it is he who is enjoined to pay a fealty visit to the “court” of the divine sovereign; it is he who must hear the terms read aloud every seven years.

The degree to which the Bible envisions a direct relationship between the individual Israelite and the Almighty is unparalleled in the ancient Near East. Religious laws for the masses are sparse within Hittite legal codes, and are entirely absent from Mesopotamian ones. The common man in these cultures had only a small role to play in the public worship of the deity, which was relegated to the king and the priests. For all that we know about Mesopotamia, we possess no document that speaks of a role for the public in the official state liturgy or cultic ceremonies, even on the occasion of major festivals.⁷⁹ There is no cultic protocol that ever beckons any member of the public to enter the temple.⁸⁰

By contrast, God’s interest in each and every member of the Israelite polity is expressed in the Sinai narrative, which refers to the Israelites as a “kingdom of priests.”⁸¹ Every member of the polity is called upon to behave in a priest-like fashion; and indeed, we find in the Bible parallels between laws that are specifically enjoined upon the priestly class and analogous laws for the common man of Israel. Priestly proscriptions against cutting the hair at the corners of the head as signs of mourning are matched with similar injunctions for the common Israelite.⁸² The laws of holiness enjoined upon each member of Israel concerning the consumption of meat are similar to those elsewhere especially prescribed for the priests.⁸³ In Egypt, circumcision was a distinctive and obligatory mark of priesthood.⁸⁴ In Israel, the obligation is universal.

 

We have mentioned Peter Berger’s claim that ancient religions could be properly understood only by determining whose interests are served by the cosmic beliefs maintained by the culture; we mentioned a few of the ways in which the power structures that governed other ancient Near Eastern cultures were legitimized through their conceptualizations of the divine realm.

What may we say of the biblical covenant between man and God? Who benefited from it?⁸⁵ By a process of elimination, it is difficult to identify a clear beneficiary, an interested party that jumps out of the pages of the Bible as coming out overwhelmingly ahead. Covenant, it would seem, leaves very little to the Israelite king, since the covenant is fundamentally between God and the people of Israel. One can argue over whether it was with Israel collectively, or, as I have suggested, with each member of the polity. But at the very least, in Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, it is untenable to claim that the king, rather than the people, was the subordinate party to the treaty.⁸⁶

Nor, would it seem, did the notion of covenant serve to bolster the interests of the merchants or the gentry. Virtually the only mention of these groups is in terms of their responsibilities to the poor in the Pentateuch and their abuses in the Prophets. In Leviticus, to be sure, one finds an emphasis upon the priestly class, but not at all in the covenant texts of, say, Exodus 19-24, or Joshua 24, or within the book of Deuteronomy, where priests are denied land ownership.⁸⁷

Perhaps it was the prophets who stood to gain? Yet, few are the references to groups or guilds of prophets. The itinerant “sons of prophets” mentioned in the books of Samuel and Kings are never again mentioned elsewhere, and it can hardly be said that they are the great beneficiaries of the covenant paradigm.

Nor, as some scholars have pointed out, can the paradigm of covenant be said to represent the best interests of the state.⁸⁸ The systems that we saw in Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and Egypt may be said to represent state ideologies, as they put the well-being of the state at the center of the gods’ interests. By contrast, in the political treaty paradigm, it is hardly the greater glory of Israel that is cardinal to God’s concerns. When Israel is a faithful covenantal partner, God is only too pleased to ensure the welfare of Israel. But when the covenant has been breached, God has no problem showing his wrath against the state, even to the point of orchestrating its downfall. What is cardinal is the upholding of the relationship with which God engages Israel.

If much of biblical writing reveals an ambivalent attitude toward the notion of monarchy, it is not because the biblical writers feared marginalizing the Almighty. Rather, they feared that the monarchy would result in the marginalizing and dishonoring of the common man, and the severance of the direct relationship between the latter and God. The prophet Samuel, in trying to convince the Israelites to refrain from anointing a king, cites the ways in which such a king will violate the liberty and property of each and every Israelite:

This will be the practice of the king who will rule over you: He will take your sons and appoint them as his charioteers and horsemen, and they will serve as outrunners for his chariots. He will appoint them as his chiefs of thousands and of fifties; or they will have to plow his fields, reap his harvest, and make his weapons and the equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He will seize your choice fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his courtiers. He will take a tenth part of your grain and vintage and give it to his eunuchs and courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, your choice young men, and your asses, and put them to work for him. He will take a tenth part of your flocks, and you shall become his slaves. The day will come when you cry out because of the king whom you yourselves have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you on that day.⁹⁰

By recasting the encounter between man and God as a covenant modeled on the political treaties of the surrounding world, the Bible articulated a relationship in which honor could be reciprocally bestowed between God and the common man of Israel, enacting thereby a reformulation of social and political thought of great proportion. The common man was transformed, perhaps for the first time in human history, from a mere servant of kings to nothing less than a servant-king, who stood in honor before the Almighty Sovereign. This elevation of the individual in the eyes of God may well represent the most profound political teaching, and most lasting political legacy, of the Hebrew Bible.

Joshua A. Berman is an Associate Fellow at the Shalem Center and a lecturer in the Bible department at Bar-Ilan University. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book Biblical Revolutions: The Transformation of Social and Political Thought in the Ancient Near East.




Notes

1. See the overview of covenant in the writings of Max Weber in Ernest W. Nicholson, God and His People: Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), pp. 38-42.

2. Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel: Biblical Foundations and Jewish Expressions, vol. 1 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995). The book is a summary of the entire Bible from Genesis through the Babylonian exile. The subheadings that make up the three-page table of contents outlining this material contain no fewer than 46 occurrences of the word “covenant.”

3. Michael Walzer, Menachem Lorberbaum, and Noam J. Zohar, eds., with the assistance of Yair Lorberbaum, The Jewish Political Tradition (New Haven: Yale, 2000).

4. George E. Mendenhall, “Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition,” The Biblical Archaeologist 17 (September 1954), pp. 50-76; Klaus Baltzer, The Covenant Formulary in Old Testament, Jewish, and Early Christian Writings, trans. David E. Green (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971).

5. Peter L. Berger, Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 31-38. See discussion with regard to ancient Near Eastern religions in J. David Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2001), p. 92.

7. Berger, Sacred Canopy, p. 38.

8. Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (New Haven: Yale, 1976), p. 4; Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001), pp. 51, 91, 220; Robert Karl Gnuse, No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), p. 153.

9. Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford: Oxford, 2001), p. 58.

10. Indeed, some theoriphic names in Mesopotamia implied that Mesopotamians felt they could look to the gods for beneficence: Samas-hatin, “Samas is protector”; Samas-epiri, “Samas takes care of me”; Marduk-abi, “Marduk is my father” (Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, pp. 39-40).

11. Schloen, House of the Father, pp. 79, 94. Some of the patriarchal motifs that we see concerning kingship in Ugarit were present in Egypt as well. Jan Assmann has demonstrated that in Egypt Pharaoh was considered the father of the nation, as procreator, provider, and educator. He was the mediator between the divine and human realms, inasmuch as he was both the son of Amun, the sun god, and the father of the whole country. Jan Assmann, “The Picture of the Father in Ancient Egypt,” in The Father Picture in Myth and History, ed. Hubert Tellenbach (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1976) [German]; Jan Assmann, Stone and Time: Man and Society in Ancient Egypt (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1991). [German]

12. Smith, Origins of Biblical Monotheism, p. 60; Schloen, House of the Father, pp. 1, 350. For a contrasting theory of the Ugaritic pantheon see Lowell K. Handy, Among the Host of Heaven: The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as Bureaucracy (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1994) and a critique of the theory in Schloen, The House of the Father, pp. 356-357. Broadly speaking, the Ugaritic pantheon exhibited a four-level structure. The highest-ranking god, El, is depicted as an aging patriarch, and his divine wife, the goddess Athirat, was conceived as the rbt, the lady, or matriarch, of the divine household. As the king/patriarch, El presided over the whole pantheon, and indeed over humanity. The second level of the pantheon included the divine royal children, the seventy sons of Athirat. As in the earthly realm, these sons inhabited their own respective houses (Smith, Origins of Biblical Monotheism, p. 56). The third level of the pantheon, of which we know relatively little, seems to consist of godly “craftsmen” who serve the deities of the upper two realms. The fourth and lowest level of the pantheon consists of what Baruch Levine calls “the divine workers [or servitors],” the ins ilm, or “divine beings.” This group includes maidservants, messengers, and gatekeepers, who parallel the servants of the earthly king in his palace. (On this meaning of ins ilm, see Baruch A. Levine, “Review of Jean-Michel de Tarragon’s The Cult at Ugarit,” Revue Biblique 88 (April 1981), pp. 246-247.)

13. It is only in the writings of Plutarch that we have our first continuous version of the myth, but from various sources we are able to reconstruct a composite of it. The most complete Egyptian version of the myth is provided by an Eighteenth Dynasty stele in the Louvre. See Jacobus Van Dijk, “Myth and Mythmaking in Ancient Egypt,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 3, ed. Jack M. Sasson (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 1702. For summary and discussion, see Van Dijk, “Myth and Mythmaking,” pp. 1702-1705.

14. For a discussion of the various views on the divinity of the Egyptian king see Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, trans. John Baines (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), pp. 140-142.

15. These statements with reference to Thutmose III are found in Documents of the Egyptian Antiquity (Leipzig 1903-1939, Berlin 1955-1961) IV, 1236, 2; 165, 13 [German], cited in Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, p. 139, n. 104. In Mesopotamia, too, there is evidence that the king was awarded a degree of divine status, and thus his rule legitimated. From the time of Sargon (c. 2300 B.C.E.) we find temples erected for the worship of kings, and sculptures were made of them that incorporated typical iconographic hallmarks of divinity. William W. Hallo, “Texts, Statues, and the Cult of the Divine King,” in Congress Volume Jerusalem 1986, ed. John A. Emerton (Leiden: Brill, 1988), pp. 54-66; Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1948), pp. 295-312.

16. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, p. 7. This metaphysical divide between the realm of the king and the realm of the commoner was directly reflected in the social structure of ancient Near Eastern societies. Many junctures throughout the history of the ancient Near East witnessed the divide between the dominant tribute-imposing class and the dominated tribute-bearing class. The terminology used here is taken from Norman Gottwald, “Social Class as an Analytic and Hermeneutical Category in Biblical Studies,” Journal of Biblical Literature 112 (1993), p. 6. See in a similar vein Ignace J. Gelb, “From Freedom to Slavery,” in Social Classes in Ancient Mesopotamia and in the Adjacent Area: XVIII, The International Assyriologic Meeting, Munich, June 29 to July 3, 1970, ed. Dietz O. Edzard (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1972), p. 92 [German]; and Daniel C. Snell, Life in the Ancient Near East: 3100-332 B.C.E.(New Haven: Yale, 1997), pp. 146-147. These two groups, the exploiters and the exploited, were in fact opposite sides of the same coin. The dominant tribute-imposing class consisted, in short, of the political elite. This class included not only the nobility, but all who benefited by association with it: Administrators, military and religious retainers, merchants, landowners who directly or indirectly benefited from state power. What all of these have in common is that they participated in the extraction of surplus from the dominated, tribute-bearing class: Agrarian and pastoral producers, slaves, unskilled workers, all who did not draw surplus from other workers, but whose station in the culture dictated that their own surplus was to be taken by members of the elite class and its subsections. While the terminology here is that of Gottwald, the phenomenon is considered endemic to pre-modern agrarian societies. See Gerhard E. Lenski, Power and Privilege: A Theory of Stratification (New York: McGraw Hill, 1966), p. 243. For the structure of Mesopotamian society along these lines, see Gregory C. Chirichigno, Debt Slavery in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Sheffield: jsot Press, 1993), p. 49.

17. Psalms 2:7.

18. Code of Hammurabi, sections 170-171.

19. I Samuel 8:4-22.

20. Deuteronomy 17:14-15.

21. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, p. 341.

22. Mendenhall, “Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition,” pp. 50-76; Baltzer, The Covenant Formulary.

23. John A. Simpson and Edmund S.C. Weiner, eds., Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 17, second ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), “Suzerainty Treaty,” p. 332.

24. J. Gordon McConville, Deuteronomy, vol. 5 [Apollos Old Testament Commentary] (Leicester: Apollos, 2002), p. 24; Moshe Weinfeld, “Deuteronomy, Book of,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 2, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 169-170.

25. Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, ed. Harry A. Hoffner Jr. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999).

26. Amnon Altman, The Historical Prologue of the Hittite Vassal Treaties (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan, 2004), pp. 43, 64. For text, see Treaty between Mursili II of Hatti and Manapa-Tarhunta of the Land of the Seha River in Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, pp. 82-86. The standard of reference to these materials is to the catalog number assigned to each in Emmanuel Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971). The present treaty is entry 69 in that collection. Throughout the following discussion I shall cite the translation reference from Beckman’s anthology with a citation of the entry number of the treaty in Laroche’s collection.

27. For discussion and delineation of these two categories, see Altman, Historical Prologue, pp. 132-138.

28. Altman, Historical Prologue, p. 27; George E. Mendenhall and Gary A. Herion, “Covenant,” in Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 1, p. 1181.

29. Exodus 20:1-2.

30. Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” p. 1183.

31. Exodus 2:23-25; 3:7, 9.

32. Treaty between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Aziru of Amurru, par. 15
(Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 49), in Itamar Singer, “The Treaties Between Hatti and Amurru,” in The Context of Scripture: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World, vol. 2, ed. William W. Hallo (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p. 95.

33. Exodus 20:2.

34. See also Exodus 34:12, 15.

35. See Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” pp. 1179-1180.

36. Exodus 20:4. See also Exodus 34:14; Deuteronomy 4:24; 5:8; 6:15; Joshua 24:19; Nahum 1:2.

37. Deuteronomy 6:5; 11:13.

38. Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of Repentance 10:3.

39. El Amarna letter 138:71-73, in William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (January 1963), pp. 79-80.

40. El Amarna letter 53:40-44, in Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background,” p. 79.

41. See discussion in Saul Olyan, “Honor, Shame, and Covenant Relations in Ancient Israel and Its Environment,” Journal of Biblical Literature 115 (1996),
p. 210.

42. I Kings 5:15.

43. Exodus 20:5-6. Emphasis added.

44. Exodus 19:5. See Deuteronomy 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Psalms 135:4. The word may also be related to the Akkadian word sikiltu, meaning possession, as found in I Chronicles 29:3. See discussion in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, vol. 3, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervar, 1997), p. 224; Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdsmans, 2003), p. 294 and p. 563, n. 115.

45. See Claude F.A. Schaeffer, The Royal Palace of Ugarit, vol. 5 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1965), no. 60, lines 7, 12 [French] and discussion in Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), p. 226, n. 2.

46. Exodus 19:5.

47. References to the commitments made by the sovereign Hittite king to his vassals are summarized in tabular form in Altman, Historical Prologue, p. 151.

48. Dennis J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant: A Study in Form in the Ancient Oriental Documents and in the Old Testament (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1978), p. 128.

49. E.g., Exodus 20:7, 12; 23:20-33; Deuteronomy 6:10-11.

50. Exodus 20:3-4, 8-10, 20-22; 23:18-19.

51. See Treaty between Shattiwaza of Mittanni and Suppiluliuma I of Hatti (Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 52, par. 8; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 51); Treaty between Hattusili III of Hatti and Ulmi-Teshshup of Tarhuntassa (Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 106, par. 5; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 111); and the Treaty between Tudhaliya IV of Hatti and Kurunta of Tarhuntassa (Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 123).

52. Exodus 25:21; 40:20. See also Deuteronomy 31:26.

53. See discussion in Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” p. 1184; Altman, Historical Prologue, p. 184; Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, p. 63.

54. Treaty between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Tette of Nuhashshi (Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 53, par. 17; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 58).

55. Deuteronomy 32:46.

56. Deuteronomy 4:26; 30:19; 32:1; Isaiah 1:2; see also Micah 6:1-2 with regard to mountains.

57. E.g., Exodus 25:16, 21; 26:33-34.

58. Treaty between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Shattiwaza of Mittanni (Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 51, pars. 15-16; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 48).

59. Edward L. Greenstein, “On the Genesis of Biblical Prose Narrative,” Prooftexts 8 (1988), p. 350.

60. Deuteronomy 28:1-68. See also Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” p. 1181; Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, pp. 116-146. As indicated earlier, the Neo-Assyrian vassal treaties and loyalty oaths also provide illumination of certain covenant passages, particularly those in Deuteronomy, chs. 27-29. Nonetheless, it will be clear that the Neo-Assyrian material alone does not provide the complete provenance, or even, I would claim, the primary one for understanding the context for covenant in Exodus, Leviticus, Joshua, and perhaps the rest of Deuteronomy as well. The historical prologue is a feature exclusively of the Hittite treaties, and not the Neo-Assyrian ones. Blessings are matched with curses only in the Hittite treaties, but never in the Neo-Assyrian ones. Instructions for deposition of the treaty and its periodic reading are likewise features found only in the Hittite material and not in the Neo-Assyrian treaty or loyalty oath texts. Moreover, promises made by the sovereign king to the vassal, and expressions of affection toward him-elements so cardinal in the Pentateuch’s portrayal of God’s disposition to Israel-are found only in the Hittite treaties, never in the Neo-Assyrian ones. The most up-to-date summary of this argument is in Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, pp. 283-294. See also discussions in Hayim Tadmor, “Treaty and Oath in the Ancient Near East: A Historian’s Approach,” in Humanizing America’s Iconic Book: Society of Biblical Literature Centennial Addresses 1980,eds. Gene M. Tucker and Douglas A. Knight (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980), pp. 142-152; Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” pp. 1179-1202; Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, pp. 59-157.

61. Joshua 24:1-14, 19-20, 22-23, 26.

62. Exodus 24:7. See also Exodus 19:8; 24:3; Deuteronomy 5:24; Joshua 24:16-18.

63. Olyan, “Honor, Shame, and Covenant Relations,” p. 204.

64. El-Amarna letter 88:47, in The Amarna Tablets, vol. 2, ed. J.A. Knudtzon (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1915), p. 1177. [German]

65. Treaty between Tudhaliya II of Hatti and Sunashshura of Kizzuwatna, par. 9. Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 41: Hittite; entry 131: Akkadian; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 19.

66. Altman, The Historical Prologue, pp. 138, 484.

67. See Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, treaties 2, 3, 7-14, 15 (a parity treaty), 16-18. For the corresponding numbers in the Catalogue des Textes Hittites see the synoptic table of Hittite treaties in Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, pp. 6-8. Of the eighteen suzerainty treaties whose texts are in our possession, only a single one is between a Hittite king as sovereign and a subordinate people, with no mention of a king. The form of this treaty differs in significant ways from the treaties made with subordinate kings. This treaty bears no historical prologue and also bears no section delineating the blessings that will accrue to the subordinate for compliance with the stipulations of the treaty. As we have already seen, the Sinai narratives of Exodus and Deuteronomy include the historical backdrop of the Sinai covenant as well as a list of blessings promised to the children of Israel for compliance with the commandments. Put differently, the Sinai narratives resemble the form of the Late Bronze Hittite subordinate treaty made with a subordinate king, and not a subordinate people in the absence of a king.

68. Exodus 20:4-5.

69. I Samuel 2:30. God likewise bestows honor upon non-royals in Psalms 91:15 and especially Isaiah 43:4. See Olyan, “Honor, Shame and Covenant Relations,” p. 205.

70. See treaty between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Tette of Nuhashshi, par. 3: “Tette shall come yearly to My Majesty, his lord, in Hatti” (Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 53; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 55). See also Treaty between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Aziru of Amurru: “[You] Aziru [must come] yearly to My Majesty [your lord] in Hatti.” Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 49, par. 1; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 37.

71. E.g., Genesis 43:3, 5; Exodus 10:28-29; II Samuel 3:13; 14:32.

72. Exodus 23:17. See also Exodus 34:23; Deuteronomy 16:16.

73. Exodus 33:20.

74. Treaty between Mursili II of Hatti and Kupanta-Kurunta of Mira-Kuwaliya, par. 28 (Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 68; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 81).

75. Treaty between Muwattalli II of Hatti and Alaksandu of Wilusa, par. 16 (Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 76; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 91). Another treaty, between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Shattiwaza of Mittanni, states in par. 13 that a duplicate tablet of the treaty “shall be read repeatedly, for ever and ever, before the king of the land of Mittanni and before the Hurrians” (Laroche, Catalogue des Textes Hittites, entry 51; Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, p. 46).

76. Exodus 24:3-4, 7-8.

77. Joshua 8:30-35; II Kings 23:2-3.

78. Deuteronomy 31:10-13.

79. Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 165.

80. Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 118. Yet, at the end of “Ludlul bel Nemeqi,” the “Mesopotamian Job,” the author does enter a temple and walk around.

81. Exodus 19:6.

82. Leviticus 21:4-5; 19:27-28; Moshe Greenberg, Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995), p. 133.

83. Exodus 22:30; Deuteronomy 14:21; Leviticus 22:8; Ezekiel 44:31. Greenberg, Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought, p. 377.

84. Herman Te Velde, “Theology, Priests, and Worship in Ancient Egypt,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 3, p. 1733.

85. On this general issue see Stephen A. Geller, Sacred Enigmas: Literary Religion in the Hebrew Bible (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 174-177.

86. See, however, II Kings 23:1-4, where Josiah does seem to play an intermediate role.

87. Deuteronomy 18:1-2. On the equality of rights between priests and Levites in Deuteronomy, see Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), pp. 226-232.

88. Nicholson, God and His People, pp. 200-201.

89. John L. McKenzie, A Theology of the Old Testament (New York: Geoffrey Chapman, 1974), pp. 267-317; Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, vol. 1, trans. J.A. Baker (London: SCM Press, 1961), p. 441.

90. I Samuel 8:11-18.