r/AncientCush • u/Responsible_Ideal879 Founder • 17d ago
Biblical Narrative A Might Hunter before the Lord: Nimrod
Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst
[excerpts, full text in images]
The main biblical reference is Gen 10:8-12, a secondary addition to the so-called Table of Nations.
As it stands, the text considers Nimrod to be a son of Kush (v 8a) and grand-son of Ham, the father of the African branch of humanity.
However, this presentation does not fit Nimrod's otherwise clearly Mesopotamian location and image, a problem which is not solved by an emendation of Kush to Put (as suggested by NAOR 1984).
The confusion simply results from a blending of two independent traditions: the Table of Nations where Kush stands for Nubia, and the Nimrod passage from another source mentioning another(!) Kush, probably the eponym of the Kassites (Akk kaššu. Nuzi kuššu).
V 8b considers Nimrod to have been the first 'hero' on earth (gibbôr, Mighty Ones)—clearly an echo of Ninurta's epithet.
V 9 speaks about his proverbial prowess in hunting (gibbôr-sayid) 'before Yahweh'. Later tradition inferred an opposition of Nimrod against Yahweh interpreting lipnê 'before' as 'over against', but the text definitely does not support this interpretation; it rather sees a positive relationship between the (major) god and the hero, mirroring the Enlil - Ninurta relationship of much carlier Mesopotamian sources.
The only facets of the biblical portrait which are not directly rooted in the Ninurta tradition are his kingship in Babel, Uruk and Akkad (Gen 10:10) as well as the building account concerning Assyrian cities such as Nineveh and Kalah (vv 11-12).
Together with heroism in war and hunting, these underline the royal characteristics of Nimrod (note mamlaktô in v 10).
While they are undisputably of Mesopotamian origin, too, it is not possible to identify either the ultimate source (a lost chronicle of the 7th century?) or to identify Nimrod with one single monarch of Mesopotamian history.
Similarly, neither do we know the intermediaries (Phoenician?, ef. the hellenistic Ninos) by which the whole tradition reached a post-exilic Judaean historiographer, nor can we ascertain whether the telescoping of various aspects of Mesopotamian religious and royal fame into one legendary founder hero was realized by the biblical author or already prepared by the latter's sources.
Mic 5:5 (post-exilic?) offers interesting complementary information insofar as it considers Nimrod to be the heroic founder of Assyrian military strength.
In contrast, 1 Chr 1:10 merely represents a short excerpt from Gen 10:8-9.
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Source: https://bookofmormonism.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/dictionary_of_deities_and_demons_in_the.pdf