THE ASSYRIAN AND HEBREW HYMNS OF PRAISE

Copyright 1934
Columbia University Press

Reprinted with the permission of the original publisher

Manufactured in the United States of America

GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
TO
RICHARD J. H. GOTTHEIL

NOTE

Professor Cumming has chosen a most interesting subject upon which to write a comparison of “The Assyrian and the Hebrew Hymns of Praise.” He has spent a number of years developing his theme, and has produced a book which I commend heartily to the attention of scholars who are interested in this field. Of course, we do not possess all the hymns written by the Assyrian poets, nor have we all those produced by the old Hebrew songsters. But we certainly have sufficient to make it possible for us to form a just idea of their character and of their beauty.

Richard Gottheil

FOREWORD

It was the author’s original intention to add to this book a translation of all the important Assyrian hymns; for a bringing together of hymns now scattered through many books and periodicals would be a very real service to Old Testament scholarship. Such a task however calls for the knowledge and skill of the thoroughly competent Assyriologist. It is hoped that the list of texts and translations appended to this book may make it easier for any interested reader to locate and carry further the study of any particular hymn. In the case of the Hebrew psalms some slight confusion may be spared the reader if he recognizes that the numbering of the verses is that of the Hebrew text, which differs slightly in certain psalms from that of the English translations.

Charles Gordon Cumming

CONTENTS

THE HEBREW HYMNS OF PRAISE

I. Hebrew Psalms Which Are Not Hymns 3

II. Hebrew Sanctuary Hymns of Praise 18

III. Hebrew Eschatological Hymns 32

IV. Hebrew Nature Hymns 39

V. Hebrew Hymns in Praise of Sacred Institutions 44

THE ASSYRIAN HYMNS OF PRAISE

VI. Assyrian Hymnal Introductions to Prayers 53

VII. Assyrian Antiphonal Hymns 72

VIII. Assyrian Self-Laudations of the Gods 83

A COMPARISON OF THE ASSYRIAN AND THE HEBREW HYMNS

IX. The Literary Form of the Assyrian and the Hebrew Hymns 95

X. The Supreme God among the Gods 100

XI. The Supreme God in His Dwelling Place 108

XII. The Supreme God as Creator 120

XIII. The Supreme God as Wise, Powerful, Merciful 130

XIV. The Supreme God as King and Judge 146

XV. Conclusion 154

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Texts and Translations of Assyrian Hymns 161

Selected Bibliography 169

Indexes 171

Division I
THE HEBREW HYMNS OF PRAISE

Chapter I
HEBREW PSALMS WHICH ARE NOT HYMNS

The Book of Psalms is no longer to be regarded by Old Testament scholars as an isolated phenomenon. Similar religious poetry is found not only in the narrative and prophetic portions of the Old Testament, in the Apocrypha, and the New Testament, but also in the literatures of Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, India, and Greece. Indeed, wherever religion really develops beyond the primitive stage, it expresses itself in poetry and we get something comparable to the Hebrew psalms.

One primary fact, then, to be considered in the study of the Old Testament psalms is that they are only the surviving fragments of the religious poetry of a race; and that they have been preserved partly by reason of the literary merit that made it difficult for them to be forgotten, and partly by reason of the fact that they happened to be included in the song books of the sanctuaries. One must accordingly bear constantly in mind the larger literature of which they were a part, and employ to a legitimate degree the imagination, in order to rightly comprehend the life out of which the psalms have come, and to see in any true perspective the significance of the surviving psalms.

Furthermore, it is now to be clearly recognized that the careful philological study of words and sentences, and the further effort to determine the date