A Recontextualization of the Study of Literary Parallels, Ancient Scholarship, and Conceptual Autonomies.
Magnus Arvid Boes Lorenzen holds a bachelor’s degree is in Assyriology, however, he also has extensive experience in Anthropology, Arabic language, and Medieval and Modern Middle Eastern history, all from the University of Copenhagen. He holds a master’s degree from the Nordic Religious Roots of Europe programme, and his primary research interests are in “the middle-grounds” between Biblical studies and Assyriology, and trying to find new, constructive, interdisciplinary approaches in and between these fields. Below you find an abstract of his thesis, and at the bottom of this page, various links where you can find more of his work.
In Genesis 6-9, we meet Noah, a patriarch who survived the great Flood sent by God, by building the ark, according to God’s commandment, to house his family and all the various animals of the earth. Towards the end of the Epic of Gilgamesh, on the eleventh tablet, we hear about Utnapishtim, an ancient, immortalized man, who survived the great Flood sent by the gods, by building a grand boat with instructions from Ea, the god of Wisdom, and bringing with him his family, various craftsmen, precious metals, and animals of the earth.
In Exodus 1-2, we hear about Moses’ birth in Egypt to anonymous Levite parents, who must let him go due to the pharaoh’s orders to kill every newborn Hebrew boy. He is set upon the Nile in a pitched reed basket, discovered by the Pharao’s daughter, fetched by her servants, and raised by midwives before being adopted into the royal palace, eventually being chosen by God to lead his people out of Egypt, to freedom and greatness. In the Sargon Legend, we encounter Sargon, ancient king of Akkad, and hear of his birth to an unknown father and an anonymous high priestess, forbidden from bearing child. His mother sets him on the Euphrates in a pitched reed basket, and he is discovered by a gardener, raised in court, eventually being favoured by the goddess Ishtar, becoming a great king, and performing legendary deeds throughout his life.
Why are these texts examples so similar? As a closer look will reveal, not all is as it seems. Parallels between Biblical and ancient Mesopotamian literature have been noted and commented on for centuries, both in religious communities, popular culture, and in academia. Yet the relationship between the disciplines that study these literary traditions, the various Biblical scholarships, and Assyriology, has been marked by strain, reservation, ideology, trauma, and even death and war. In this thesis, I show a way to reapproach these intriguing parallels, attempting to navigate the mistakes of past scholarship. Each text has its own value, context, and autonomy, and we cannot simply rely on one to explain the other. I encourage a comparative approach which takes this realization seriously, while also taking seriously the parallels between the texts, as they can hardly be considered entirely coincidental. What I hope to show with this thesis, using the parallels in Genesis-Gilgamesh and Sargon-Moses as examples, is a more constructive way forward between the diverse disciplines of Assyriology and Biblical scholarship, and a suggestion for much closer collaboration and intimacy with each other’s methodologies, languages, and texts.
Working with this thesis made several trajectories of further research stand out to me, which I am currently thinking about how to move on with. Ideas include tracing potential ancient Babylonian practises and ideas in the Babylonian Talmud, as well as a comparison of the theology surrounding the Babylonian gods Marduk and Nabû in the late 1 st millennium CE to binitarian and early Christian theologies. Both of these ideas I came upon while researching for my master’s thesis, and a discussion of the potential for the former idea is given in the thesis itself. My re-edited and improved thesis, as well as other essays on the topics discussed here, such as one early exploratory one on Nabû, Marduk, and Logos theology, can be found on my Substack-blog. I hope to be able to combine research interests with my passion for public dissemination.
Further reading:
Blog with serialized, re-edited thesis:
https://magnusarvid.substack.com/s/the-thesis-series
The original thesis, from the Royal Library of Copenhagen:
https://soeg.kb.dk/permalink/45KBDK_KGL/1pioq0f/alma99125666103505763
An early essay exploring the idea of comparing Nabû-theology to the surrounding religious landscape in the late 1st millennium BCE:
https://magnusarvid.substack.com/p/the-father-and-the-son-in-the-tower
Boes Lorenzen, Magnus Arvid. 2024. “Divine and Conquer: Ancestors, Gods, and the Right to Rule”. In (editors Drewsen, Anne; Poulsen, Anne; Sletterød, Marie D.) Chronolog Journal, Issue 2. Royal Library of Denmark: Tidsskrift.dk. Pp. 47-59. https://tidsskrift.dk/Chronolog/issue/view/11055
Nordic Network for Jewish Studies 