divine warrior motif in ANE lit.

[WARNING- i am aware that religion is a very scary topic on the interwebs and am pretty sure that it's not allowed here at 3reef. that being said, i don't want to get any flack or anti-religion crap, this is a strictly fact based thread]

i'm assuming that many of you don't know that when i'm not shoulder deep in my tank, i actually attend a seminary called Trinity Evangelical. Trinity has the privilege of many extremely prominent scholars on her faculty, the most interesting of which have to the the Old Testament and Semitic language guys. Trinity actually offers degrees in Ancient Near East language and Archeology so when i caught wind that they were offering a class entitled "Warfare of the ANE and Old Testament" i all but sprinted to get signed up.

this class is taught by James Hoffmeier, who is about the only American they allow to dig in Egypt without any trouble. We spend 5 hours every Monday morning working through primary texts from Ugarit, Assyria, Egypt, and other Sumero-Akkadian cultures. We basically walk through history, starting with about 4500BC and talk about how weapons were developed/evolved and how warfare basically shaped the civilization and culture.

my current assignment involves researching the Divine Warrior Motif (DWM) within the Psalms (this is a seminary). the DWM is, quite simply, any mention of a national deity as a rescuing/warrior entity within literature, poetry, song or stele/art. this is VERY common in the ANE during the Old Testament era and is actually picked up with some frequency in the biblical writings.

ok, i'm getting a little long-winded. the point i wanted to make is that this stuff is amazing! i loved learning about Greek mythology in HS and have always loved the movies (i am SO excited for clash of the titans!) but i never branched out to any other cultures. dude, Greece has nothing on ANE mythology! it is freaking epic (literally, epic poems). where else can you find a dude named Marduk defeating Tiamat, who is actually a personification of the sea, and creating the earth from the left over body parts (Enuma Elish)? this stuff is great!

ok, in retrospect this post doesn't have much of a point. i guess i just really get into this sort of stuff and felt like sharing. if it interests any of you or if any of you have any background in this stuff feel free to ask questions.

 

Your line of studies sounds fascinating. It is good to see you so enthusiastic about it. This should result in a lot of effort on your part, with the bonus that it will be because of your great interest in it.

I wish you well with the course!

(i watch an awful lot of the history channel etc and definitely enjoy Greek mythology as well. This sounds like taking all of that to a major level of detail now.)

keep up the hard work. We will expect nothing but A+'s outta you now!

 

i grew up on A&E, History, Discovery and the like. i've always been fascinated with Ancient Almanac or other shows like that. if you would have asked me at 13 what i wanted to be when i grew up, you wouldn't hear baseball player or movie star or anything like that. i would have told you i wanted to be the old bald guy in an ugly tweed jacket with "expert" under his name on the history channel

as for A+'s.... well, let's just say that i'm not an expert yet...

 

ha ha!

well if it wasn't for all those "ugly bald guys in tweed jackets" the rest of us would be all the more uninformed.

I am grateful for all of those out there who went on and became "the expert" - i have learned much from them.

Reach high and dont look back. Do not feel obligated to wear tweed either.

;D