Ryan Conrad Davis
2016 Relating

Marco De Pietri – January 2021

Ryan Conrad Davis 2016 Relating

Davis 2016 Relating
Relating with Gods: Investigating Human-Divine Relationships in the Prayers of Israel and Mesopotamia Using a Performance Approach to Ritual,
PhD Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin

ToC of Davis 2016 Relating

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1:
A PERFORMANCE APPROACH TO RITUAL
     1.1 Introduction
     1.2 Preliminary Questions
     1.3 Ritual as Performance
     1.4 Interaction as Ritual
     1.5 Ritual as Performative
     1.6 Ritual as a Social Domain
          1.6.1 Ritual Commitment and Agency
          1.6.2 Ritual as Framed Performance
     1.7 Summary and Conclusion
CHAPTER 2:
HUMAN-DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS IN AKKADIAN ŠUILLA PRAYERS
     2.1 Introduction
     2.2 Classifying šuilla Rituals
          2.2.1 Meaning of the šuilla Rubric
          2.2.2 Three Types of šuillas
          2.2.3 Akkadian šuillas and Incantation-prayers
          2.2.4 Šuillas: A Category of Rituals
          2.2.5 Šuillas Dataset
     2.3 Description of Textual Evidence
     2.4 Topical Description of šuilla Ritual
          2.4.1 Ritual Space
          2.4.2 Ritual Time
          2.4.3 Ritual Objects / Ritual Action
          2.4.4 Ritual Sound / Language
          2.4.5 Ritual Identity / Agency
     2.5. Description of Ritual World within šuilla Rituals
          2.5.1. Audience Scene
          2.5.2 Steps 1–2 - Announcement / Stepping Forward of Petitioner
          2.5.3 Steps 3–5 - Greeting Gift/Gestures/Words of Petitioner
          2.5.4 Step 7 - Speech of Petitioner
          2.5.5 Step 9 – Thanks of Petitioner
     2.6 Conclusion
CHAPTER 3:
THE HUMAN-DIVINE RELATIONSHIP IN DINGIRŠADABBA PRAYERS TO PERSONAL GODS
     3.1 Introduction
     3.2 The Category of dingiršadabba
     3.3 The Audience Scene in dingiršadabba Rituals
          3.3.1 Ritual Action / Objects in dingiršadabba
          3.3.2 Ritual Speech in dingiršadabba
          3.3.3 Examples of Dangerous Audience Scenes
          3.3.4 Comparisons to the use of the dingiršadabba as used in larger rituals
          3.3.5 Renewed Assessment of Gift Giving in dingiršadabba
     3.4 Performance Aspects of dingiršadabba Rituals
          3.4.1 Circumstances of the dingiršadabba
          3.4.2 Circumstances Inside and Outside the dingiršadabba Performance
     3.5 Summary and Conclusion
CHAPTER 4:
HUMAN-DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS IN THE INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNAL LAMENTS OF THE HEBREW BIBLE
     4.1 Introduction
     4.2 Classifying Individual and Communal Laments
          4.2.1 The Lament Genre: Generic Realism?
          4.2.2 Individual and Communal Laments as Analytical Genres
          4.2.3 Laments as Rhetorically Persuasive Pleas for Help Directed at a Divine Superior
     4.3 A Ritual Setting for the Individual and Communal Laments
          4.3.1 Evidence from Psalm Headings
          4.3.2 Evidence of Psalms Employed in Temple Rituals
          4.3.3 Levitical Participation in Petition
          4.3.4 Laments and the Burnt Offering
          4.3.5 Levitical Participation in Praise and Thanksgiving
     4.4 A Scripted Audience with a Positive Reply
          4.4.1 Psalms: Internal Evidence for Scripted Performativity
          4.4.2 The Order of Sacrificial Activity
          4.4.3 The Audience Scene in Narrative
          4.4.4 Individual or Communal Laments?
          4.4.5 Circumstances for the Performance of Individual and Communal Laments
          4.4.6 Summary
     4.5. Where is Prescribed Prayer in the Hebrew Bible?: The Diachronic Issue
     4.6. The Human-Divine Relationships in Individual Laments and Communal Laments
          4.6.1 Previous Relationship with Supplicant(s)
          4.6.2 Epithets of Yahweh
          4.6.3 Yahweh as Creator
          4.6.4 The Crisis in the Laments
          4.6.5 Close vs. Distant Relationship?
          4.6.6 Summary: The ̕ĕlōhîm of the Individual and the ̕ĕlōhîm of the Community
     4.7. Summary and Conclusion
CONCLUSION

General topic(s)
of the book

“The prayers of ancient Israel and Mesopotamia are rare windows into how ancient peoples interacted with their gods. Much work has already been done to describe how social conventions are important driving factors behind these interactions with deities. In order to utilize these observations and further understand the relationships between humans and gods, it is important to understand the ritual environment in which these relationships are created. A performance approach to ritual allows us to properly contextualize the human-divine relationships that are attested in prayers within their ritual environments. In both Israel and Mesopotamia, actions within rituals take place in framed domains; because all social action occurs in framed domains as well, rituals can be profitably compared to other domains, such as theatre or sports. This dissertation uses a performance approach to analyze four different groups of prayers from the first-millennium BCE. Two groups of prayers are from Mesopotamia and are clustered around two rituals: the Akkadian šuilla and the dingiršadabba. The other two groups of prayers come from the Book of Psalms: the individual and communal laments. A performance approach allows us to talk about the rituals that utilize these prayers in two complimentary ways that are similar to how we talk about theatre in Western cultures. We can talk about a theatrical production without discussing what happens on-stage, and we can talk about what happens on-stage while ignoring off-stage elements. Because these ancient Near Eastern rituals are framed domains of action, we can talk about the domains themselves without entering inside of them, and likewise, we can talk about the world inside these domains while ignoring the world outside. This approach helps us better understand the bounded nature of the relationships that take place within ritual domains, and it helps us better understand how the domains themselves influence the relationships within them. This dissertation offers not only new ways to explore human-divine relationships but also new ways for understanding ritual efficacy in the both Israel and Mesopotamia” (author's abstract on pp. vi-vii).

Extended summary of Davis 2016 Relating

«The prayers of ancient Israel and Mesopotamia are rare windows into how ancient peoples interacted with their gods. Much work has already been done to describe how social conventions are important driving factors behind these interactions with deities. In order to utilize these observations and further understand the relationships between humans and gods, it is important to understand the ritual environment in which these relationships are created. A performance approach to ritual allows us to properly contextualize the human-divine relationships that are attested in prayers within their ritual environments. In both Israel and Mesopotamia, actions within rituals take place in framed domains; because all social action occurs in framed domains as well, rituals can be profitably compared to other domains, such as theatre or sports. This dissertation uses a performance approach to analyze four different groups of prayers from the first-millennium BCE. Two groups of prayers are from Mesopotamia and are clustered around two rituals: the Akkadian šuilla and the dingiršadabba. The other two groups of prayers come from the Book of Psalms: the individual and communal laments» (from author’s abstract on pp. vi-vii).

This thesis presents a comparative approach in the analysis of Mesopotamian and Israelite prayer, understood as a personal way to communicate with the divine sphere.

Excerpts from Davis 2016 Relating

Human-divine relationship in Biblical laments

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Human-divine relationship in Biblical laments	pp. 247-250	[...] the individual and communal laments of the Book of Psalms find a place alongside the burnt offering in the Jerusalem temple. This combined performance of the lament and burnt offering is part of a ritual series that enacts a successful audience before Yahweh. Our analysis of the laments within a ritual frame has helped us properly contextualize these prayers. In keeping with our performance approach to ritual, we are able to understand the lament ritual from two different perspectives. From one perspective, the lament ritual was a unit of performative action. The successful performance of the lament ritual essentially guaranteed that Yahweh would grant the petition of the supplicant. The positive reply of Yahweh was prescribed into many of the laments, and the unquestioned movement from burnt offering to peace offering demonstrates that each ritual element was expected to be efficacious upon enactment. From another perspective, however, the laments are persuasive pieces of rhetoric meant to persuade a divine superior to act on behalf of the supplicant(s). In the communal laments, the participants become a part of a wider community that looks to specific events of their shared past in which Yahweh has delivered them. However, Yahweh has changed his behavior and his actions have allowed the armies of their political enemies to prevail. They plead with Yahweh to intercede. In this instance, Yahweh takes on the role of the patron deity of the community who operates on the global and cosmic scale. These performances within the ritual frame may or may not reflect the situation of the individual and community outside of the ritual frame. Although this ritual performance could be enacted in the face of impending danger to individuals and communities, it could also be enacted according to a ritual calendar. [...] This performance approach helps us better understand how to interpret the human-divine relationships within individual and communal laments. Some ways of relating with deity are restricted to specific, framed environments. Seeing the different human-divine relationships attested in these two lament genres helps us understand how individuals related with Yahweh in specific rituals; this change in relationships between rituals is similar to how relationships between two individuals change depending on the social domain they are in. Since social domains, including ritual domains, have so much influence on relationships, we must exercise caution in extending these same relationships to other circumstances. Although we might be able to call the relationship found in individual laments a "personal god" relationship, it is not clear if that relationship was any more real to the supplicant than the one enacted in the communal laments. We are unsure of the other contexts within the life of the individual in which these different relationships might be activated, but it is clear that the two relationships found in the individual and communal laments were clearly options for relating with Yahweh during the first-millennium BCE.

Human-divine relationship in dingiršadabba prayers

Topic	Page	Excerpt
*Human-divine relationship in dingiršadabba* prayers**	pp. 156-157	[...] We have seen that the dingiršadabba creates two personas – one for the human participant and one for the god – that interact with one another in a prescribed way. The human participant takes on the role of an individual that is afflicted and ostracized by the misdeeds that he has ignorantly committed against his divine protector. The personal god takes on the person of a god that has an established relationship with the supplicant, but the personal god is also an all-powerful and angry divine judge who is actively punishing the supplicant for his misdeeds. The goal, from the perspective of the supplicant, is to survive the encounter. [...] If both human and god properly participate in this performance, the outcome is as guaranteed as the end of a play; the supplicant and deity will reconcile with each other once more. This performance could be conducted in response to physically manifesting symptoms, observed omens, or it could take place on a scheduled basis as a prophylactic ritual. The use of the ritual when no obvious signs of divine displeasure are apparent highlights the difference between the performance happening within the ritual frame and what is observed outside of it. What happened in the ritual frame was starkly contrasted not only from the "non-ritual" environment but from other rituals that may even take place side-by-side in larger rituals, such as bīt rimki or bīt salā̕ mê.

Human-divine relationship in šuilla prayers

Topic	Page	Excerpt
*Human-divine relationship in šuilla* prayers**	pp. 95-97	[...] a performance approach to šuilla rituals helps us understand the interaction between the supplicant and the addressed deity. I have shown that šuilla rituals are a category of ritual procedures that utilize a variety of prayers that were deemed appropriate for reestablishing a relationship with the divine sphere. The ritual provides a framed environment in which the world inside the ritual may not always correlate with the world outside the ritual. [...] From the perspective within the world of the ritual, the prayers used in the šuilla ritual are persuasive pieces of rhetoric meant to move a social superior to action. They also tell the story of a supplicant who comes before a powerful deity and who has little previous relationship with this deity. The distance between then shrinks with each successful interaction. The gradual closing of the distance is demonstrated by moving from 3rd person to 2nd person address, and by emphasizing the deity's power to aid individuals just before the supplicant moves to mention him or herself for the first time in the petition. [...] However, from the perspective outside of the ritual world, the prayers are not only rhetorical, they are performative utterances that accomplish things by their enactment. The entire exchange is a scripted interaction where there is no doubt as to its ending. When all the human or divine participants take part in the ritual, the results are assured; this is similar to how a theatrical performance will always end the same way when all the actors show up and perform their parts correctly. Additionally, from the outside perspective, we notice that the roles adopted within the ritual frame are not entirely congruous with the roles of either participant outside of the ritual frame. The identity and role of each participant is supplied by the ritual itself in the same way that the script of a play supplies the identities of individual actors and the relationships between them while on stage.

Performance approach to rituals

Topic	Page	Excerpt
Performance approach to rituals	pp. 21-22	[...] I understand ritual to be both a domain of performance, as well as a quality of all performance. This way, interactions that take place in recognized rituals are not entirely different than interactions that take place outside of recognized rituals. In either case, both are "twice behaved" performances, and we spend as much time practicing "everyday" social interactions as a ritual specialist might practice his or her craft; each performance restrains the agency of individuals and takes place within bounded and restricted frames. The framed domains in which all types of performance occur carry with them identities and relationships that overlay relationships that exist outside of them; because these identities are situated within cultural domains, they have varying degrees of relevance inside of other cultural domains. As we explore the four ancient Near Eastern rituals treated in this dissertation, we will better appreciate the influence that ritual framing has on identities and relationships. Understanding rituals as framed performances will allow us to explain many instances when the world within the ritual frame does not coincide with the world outside of the ritual frame.

Mesopotamian Religion

8. Excerpts

Ryan Conrad Davis2016 Relating