Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis – serie

The nature of divine speech in Antiquity in the Mediterranean Basin has often been the object of scholarly analysis, especially regarding its divinatory context and questions of genre and rhetoric. The present volume not only provokes a dialogue with this past research, but seeks to respond to a problem that has received little consideration until now: the articulation of divine speech with the various forms of its representation (linguistic, literary, and material). The aim is to analyze the nature of divine speech through its materiality and the impact of the latter on the former’s definition and evolution. La recherche s’est souvent intéressée à la nature du discours divin dans l’Antiquité, par exemple, les contextes divinatoires ou encore les questions de forme et de rhétorique. Si le présent volume n’exclut pas que ces questions soient à nouveau abordées, il vise cependant à répondre plus précisément à une question qui n’a pas encore été traitée, à savoir l’articulation du discours divin avec ses différentes formes de représentations (linguistiques, littéraires et matérielles). Le but est d’étudier ces différentes représentations et de montrer comment elles participent de la définition même et du statut du discours en question.

The story of the primeval cataclysmic flood which wiped out all life on earth, save for one family, is found in different ancient Mesopotamian texts whence it reached the Biblical and Classical literary traditions. The present book systematically collects the earliest attestations of the myth of the Flood, namely all the cuneiform-written Akkadian sources – from the Old Babylonian to the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, including Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh –, presenting them in a new synoptic edition and English translation which are accompanied by a detailed philological commentary and an extensive literary discussion. The book also includes a complete glossary of the Akkadian sources.