3 - Andurārum and Mišarum: comments on the problem of social edicts and their application in the ancient Near East

Summary

1979

As a result of F. R. Kraus's publication of the Edict of Ammisaduqa, several scholars have tried to prove – partly based on the material Kraus has brought forward, stemming mostly from the Old Babylonian period and based, to some extent, on institutions that are mentioned in the Old Testament (namely, the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee) – the existence of a social institution outside Israel of an importance and a dimension comparable to the Old Testament's years of Jubilee and Sabbath. This institution is thought to have had a history, which goes back at least to Entemena of Lagash and survives into Neo-Babylonian times. In reviewing these theses one feels confronted by something which may be defined as a circulus logicus vitiosus: on the one hand, one may draw a conclusion from biblical material, which refers to the Year of Sabbath and the Year of Jubilee, for clarifying a similar institution in other parts of western Asia. On the other hand, several Old Testament scholars have used the Assyriological data to argue that the years of Sabbath and Jubilee are more than a mere myth, which supposedly arose in the seventh to sixth century BCE. According to these scholars, the years of Sabbath and Jubilee go back to a very old institution in Palestine and western Asia. I have published a study dedicated to the material in the Old Testament elsewhere. Here I shall try to confine my investigations to the history of two important terms for Old Babylonian royal social decrees – namely, mišarum and andurārum.