Chapter 2

Jonah Lynch – January 2023

A Structural Approach

1 The history of religions describes conceptual systems for defining the intangible absolute, and institutional systems for relating to it. Mesopotamian religion is particularly interesting because it “combines the two poles (the divine and the matrix), with great coherence and long-term continuity.” An emphasis on spirituality aids in studying the system from a structural point of view.

2 The importance of a structural approach is even greater when comparing one religion with another. The main object of our research is Mesopotamia, and it is regularly compared with the Bible in order to highlight the structure of the system.

3 Mesopotamia is an interesting object of research because it is a complete cycle, a civilization with a beginning and an end, and because many features of our contemporary world (the city, writing, the scientific approach to knowledge) had their origin in Mesopotamia.

The Bible Illuminates Mesopotamian Experience

4 Although Mesopotamian thought did not produce the ultimate philosophical principles that Greece produced, it did arrive at a synthesis that gives meaning to the fragments of experience. I propose the concept of spirituality as the unifying principle of even the most infinitesimal parts.

5Biblical spirituality is in continuity with Mesopotamia, and may have originated there. In any case, it is the “only structural alternative within the ancient Near East to Mesopotamian religion.” 6 The terms of comparison are unequal, but I believe it is justified on the grounds that the religious and spiritual stimuli that emerge from the biblical canon can illuminate the essential connecting pieces in the Mesopotamian spiritual experience.

Cohesiveness and Coherence

7 It is my understanding that Mesopotamian religion consists of a system of perceptions and interactions that are historically documented for specific times and places, from which a central fulcrum of spirituality can be deduced. This presupposes a cultural sharing that, while regionally varied, bears an overall supra-regional (“Mesopotamian”) cohesiveness and coherence for its whole duration, almost three millennia. This is why this study is essentially synchronic.

8 Again, we will focus on the common structural elements that remainin place for long periods of time.

9 There is no term “religion” in the Mesopotamian languages, but the absence of the term does not indicate the absence of the experience. We cannot approach the past independently of our own categories, including our linguistic categories, but we can be conscious of them, and we can identify repetitive patterns in the past. Our theoretical constructs and categories can help guide our search.

10 Religion was a major factor in achieving political goals, but from a chronological point of view it is political history that offers us an adequate plot of historical development. This topic is treated in detail in the first volume of this series, and on the site Mes-Pol. One salient feature of the creation of cities and empires is the functionalization of the human person, expressed in slavery and class structures.

11 In the religious domain as well, the relationship with the intangible absolute can be “civilized” through control mechanisms, and therefore aim at the elimination of the unexpected. 12 Control extends to space and time as well, with the invention of calendars and the idealization of physical features of the landscape.

Origins and Interlocutors

13 The term “Mesopotamia” is improper, as the arable land is defined by proximity to rivers and canals rather than its being between two rivers.

14 Israel’s history begins very late in Mesopotamian times, possibly from a group of agropastoralists originating in Mesopotamia. The details of this hypothesis are not developed in this book, since we focus essentially on the structural comparison between the two religions. Although biblical sources are of a late date, in my view they reflect a “very long-term process, related to an institutional commitment as well as to a widespread emotional articulation, a historical phenomenon that cannot have happened in a vacuum. By biblical spirituality, therefore, I mean a system of apprehension of the divine recorded in a coherent and long-term way in a written canon.”

15 The interlocutors are scarsely described in Mesopotamian religious texts, whereas the biblical addressees are so frequently named that one would think that the nature of the audience conditioned the writing of the texts themselves.

16 The biblical tradition arrives unbroken to us, and is relevant to the present, whereas the Mesopotamian tradition is broken by the fact that its bearers have disappeared. I propose however to see Mesopotamian spirituality as being deeply influential and relevant to us, because we are the heirs to intellectual schemes that were formed in those millennia now far away.

The central point of the considerations developed here has to do with the deeper distinction between polytheism and monotheism. These are radical contrasts that go far beyond the quantification suggested by the two terms. Thus the contrast of two mutually exclusive conceptions emerges in full light, conceptions which coherently propose, albeit over a long period of centuries, a real system for defining the absolute and relating to it.