An interesting parallel to the Pillar of Fire/Cloud (translation, Egyptian, genesis)

[whoppers]

I recently began working through the Mesopotamian Epic of Erra - the myth of the god Erra, and his pal Ishum, who decides that the head-god Marduk has grown old and senile and needs a good butt-kicking. Erra wamts to take over the rule of the three major spaces of existence: the heavens, the earth and the underworld. The various tablets we have of the Epic come from around the 8th-9th centuries B.C.E., though it has been surmised that elements of the story existed prior to the date of the tablets we have, as is pretty common in many ancient stories.

Erra is a type of flame deity, and Ishum even more so. They also rally to their cause seven warrior deities. I suppose the number seven should be noted, but that's a pretty common parallel and doesn't bear pointing out. The real surprising parallel comes in how Ishum and Yahweh manifest themselves.

The parallel I noticed comes when Erra first decides to go on the march:

He said to you (Ishum), "I shall go out into the open country -
You will be the torch, people can see your light.
You are to march in front, and the gods [will follow you].
You are the sword that slaughters [.....]."
(Tablet I, Trans. S. Dalley, "Erra and Ishum" - Myths from Mespotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, Oxford: 1989)

I don't know about you, but the image of the theophany of a god in fire leading an army immediately brought to mind a familiar story, found in the Yahwistic Source of the Torah/Pentateuch, when the Israelites are fleeing Exodus:

Now YHWH goes before them,
by day in a column of cloud, to lead them the way,
by night in a column of fire, to give light to them,
to (be able to) go by day and by night.
There does not retire
the column of cloud by day
or the column of fire by night
from before the people!
(Exodus 13:21-22, SB Fox)


The column of cloud moved ahead of them
and stood behind them...
Here was the cloud and the darkness,
and (there) it lit up the night;
the-one did not come near the-other all night.
(Exodus 14:19-20 w/Yahwistic Source isolated)

The "column" or "pillar" does not merely serve the purpose of, like in the Erra Epic, "be[ing] the torch, [so that] people can see your light", but also serves a purpose of offense and defense:

Now it was at the daybreak-watch:
YHWH looked out against the camp of Egypt in the column of fire and cloud,
and he panicked the camp of Egypt...
Egypt said:
I must flee before Israel,
for YHWH makes war for them against Egypt!
(Exodus 14:24-25 w/Yahwistic Source isolated)

This theophany of Yahweh in fire (recall the Burning Bush and other fire-related occurrences) and cloud (recall the theophany in Job, as well as Yahweh's general nature as a storm-god) and the dual roles it serves to "be the torch " and be "the sword that slaughters" is very similar to Ishum's role in the Erra Epic. We may quibble about the cloud, and of course the possibility that neither of the authors knew each other's work - but I find it all very interesting. I look forward to tackling the rest of the work, but this passage stopped me dead in my tracks heh heh!

Any thoughts? I have briefly just stopped to post this, and will look into it some more, but would love some thoughts on the matter.

[whoppers]

I should add a further note before heading off to bed.

The column of cloud moved ahead of them
and stood behind them...
Here was the cloud and the darkness,
and (there) it lit up the night;
the-one did not come near the-other all night.
(Exodus 14:19-20 w/Yahwistic Source isolated)

If "them" refers to the same camp, then a further parallel can be adduced from Erra, slightly later in the text after Erra has been sleeping away the day and is finally roused by his warriors to action:

He made his voice heard and spoke to Ishum,
"How can you listen and stay silent?
Open up a path, and let me take the road!
Let me appoint the Sebitti [the 7 warrior gods], unrivalled warrior, to [...]
Make them march at my side as my fierce weapons.
And as for you, go ahead of me, go behind me."
(Epic of Erra, Tablet I)

Just another little tidbit that I noticed was missing until I read a little further. Certainly, it is just a cloud in the Biblical example, but I'm including it as an extra, anyways.

[Vizio]

So they copied off of the Biblical account of God?

[whoppers]

Originally Posted by Vizio

So they copied off of the Biblical account of God?

I guess that depends on whether it was a shared cultural motif of theophanies, and whether either author had access to each others writings, and at what date in history this could have been possible. It also depends on the date of authorship of both traditions, as well.

Would a Babylonian have had access to the Yahwist's account before or after it was redacted into the somewhat final form of the Torah? Or was it more likely that an Israelite scribe had access to a larger culture's writings and influences?

Difficult to say.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Vizio

So they copied off of the Biblical account of God?

The interesting thing is that, on the threads where Exodus has been discussed, the occasional hints came up that the writers of the first two books lifted a few ideas from the Mesopotamian epics. Apart from the pretty clear lift of the flood and Ark from the Ut-napishtim/Atram-hasis story, the babyhood of Moses has an uncanny resemblance to the babyhood story of Sargon of Akkad.

The suggestion that the writers of the Mesopotamian epic borrowed from Jewish originals is surely refuted in the archaeological evidence. The earliest version of the Mesopotamian Flood and Ark story are pretty much found on site in contemporary deposits. The story was re -used in Babylon and Assyria - with the tribal god becoming the Hero -god in each case. Not one of these versions hint at anything like the Noachian version, and they all follow the Sumerian one.

Is it not utterly clear that they did not copy the Genesis story? Thus, unless you adhere to the idea that the Noachian story was handed down from 4,000 BC or whatever date you give it, and that gave rise to a Sumerianized version which the others then copied, the idea of the Mesopotamians copying the hebrews does not hold water.

But then, you have the problem that there is no Israel until about 1200 BC, and not a trace of them in the Amarna records or any other Egyptian writing until the Merneptah stele. They and their story don't seem to have been around until Babylonian times.

Now, taking the archaeological indications that Israel didn't appear until after the vanishment of the Canaanite city states around 12 -1100BC, and the hill -tribes coming into the plain and forming Edom, Ammon, Moab and Israel, and that Omri devised a set of rules (Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy representing the first books, ascribing these laws to the divine command of YHWH, it is pretty clear that the purpose of the laws were to make the tribal god the only one the Jews could worship and to isolate them culturally from foreign influences.

Then, having to account for their origins as a chosen people of their god, rather than admitting that they grew up on site, a story of origins from the earliest state they knew of - Ur (1) - to being brought out of anywhere but the mountains of the holy land. Egypt was selected because (I suggest) of a folk memory of the Canaanite rulers of the Egyptian delta (Hyksos) being kicked out of Egypt by Ahmose rather than led out by Moses.

With some suitable editing with a mythological account of the origins of Passover and Sukkhot (2) and some ongoing management of God having to deal with a backsliding of the Jews onto other cults, which may as well be Canaanite as Egyptian. Keeping God -worship free of foreign influence was uppermost in the writers' minds.

Writing the origins of Moses, the story of Sargon was handy. Now Whoppers makes the interesting point that the pillar of fire might also have been lifted from the Mesopotamian tales. I wonder how much of Genesis and Exodus could eventually be traced to Mesopotamian originals?


(1) though, note, they describe it as of the Chaldeans - which was a MUCH later religous/cultural group in Babylon even than Israel. That suggests a very late date for this passage. another anachronism I have pointed out is that the Jews went into Sinai to avoid the lad of the Philistines. But the land of Philistia didn't exist until after the 1200's BC.

(2) that does raise the question of where these festivals came from if there was no 'origin' already. I would suggest that we look for some Canaanite festivals that might have been adapted to Jewish use - and some of the other festivals without an 'origin' story, too.

[whoppers]

All very fine points, Arequipa.

I will have to seek out the editio princeps of the Epic by Cagni (and its updates, which included some additional tablet fragments) to get a better picture of when the scribal copies were produced, and what the view is on how old the story underlying the copies may be - or at least, some elements of the story. As it stands now, it appears to at least use Atrahasis and the Flood Myth, but with the addition of the Seven Apkallus (Sages) from a separate tradition and the interesting change of the Flood's instigator from Enlil to Marduk. This makes sense, seeing as it is a Babylonian production essentially. There may be political undertones to the Epic.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

The interesting thing is that, on the threads where Exodus has been discussed, the occasional hints came up that the writers of the first two books lifted a few ideas from the Mesopotamian epics. Apart from the pretty clear lift of the flood and Ark from the Ut-napishtim/Atram-hasis story, the babyhood of Moses has an uncanny resemblance to the babyhood story of Sargon of Akkad.

I wanted to research how prevalent fire theophanies were in the ANE, but noticed from reading further into the epic some more interesting parallels. There is a section in which Marduk confronts Erra with his rebellion and threat to throw the world back into chaos, in which the language is very reminiscent of Yahweh's speech from the whirlwind to rebuke Job. I found that extremely interesting! This Epic is supplying with all sorts of interesting tidbits, and it surprises me that very little in the way of parallel studies to Biblical literature can be found (except for the Flood myth contained within). In fact, in trying to find any information as to whether anyone has made the connection between the Pillar of Fire/Cloud with Ishum's theophany - the first Google result is THIS thread! That's not very helpful ha ha!

Ever since George Smith's discovery of the Babylonian Flood Story in the 1800s, the Bible/Babel debate has raged on with the final realization that our previous view that the Biblical Account of Primeval History is no longer tenable. In fact, Hermann Gunkel in his Introduction to his ground-breaking commentary on Genesis in the early part of the last century pointed out that the Hebrew stories are among the youngest of the ANE stories. In normative scholarship and society in general, our view of history has vastly changed. We still have some holdouts in more Fundamentalist circles, but that is about it. There is no real substance to their claims anymore.



I would address your other points, but you did a fine job already and I don't have the energy to add more heh heh! As it is now, I am going to take a look at Patrick Miller's essay "Fire in the Mythology of Canaan and Israel" in Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology: Collected Essays (JSOT 267). Sheffield: 2000, to see if it can add any more information to fire theophanies. I suppose it's entirely possible that the motif of a fire theophany leading an army to war could just be a common one in the ANE, and that any parallels may be purely coincidental. Though it would not surprise me to see the Biblical author using the Erra story as a source and making a theological and political comment on it. He is certainly not above doing that in other situations! The Priestly Author is more famous for it, but the Yahwist was not immune. And to think, the only reason I ran into Erra is from a small footnote in J.C. de Moor and M. Korpel's new book Adam, Eve, and the Devil: A New Beginning (HBM 65, Sheffield: 2014) pointing out Erra's nature as a god that brings both benefit and harm. I don't think I'm every going to get through that book! But while I'm going through it, I will try to post some interesting things. Arequipa, you might be interested in the book - it claims to find an Ugaritic precursor to the Adam and Eve story, as well as a malevolent serpent god (among other interesting points). If you Google it, and read the back cover, you will find it extremely interesting, methinks! I will probably post about it at some point after I've weighed all the evidence.

[TRANSPONDER]

Thanks for your complimentary words, Whoppers. While much of what I posted is a bit speculative and even the down from the hills theory, while supported by archeology and odd hints in the OT, is not in the textbooks yet, I am pretty sure that the general lines of what I posted are in the right direction - though of course I would.

I would be fascinated to see more work done on the suggestion of borrowings in the OT from pre -existent writings. Particularly Mesopotamian.

It occurred to me that much of this seems to have been picked up in Mesopotamia, but not much from Egypt. It is an astonishing idea, even alarming, that much of the OT was written based on material read while in Babylon, during the exile, and the Satan -adversary idea was related to the Persian zoroastrian -ahriman dualism. That's why I was rather interested in which bits of the OT were written in the Persian -derived language of Aramaic. I was astonished to find that a chapter of jeremiah is supposed to have been written in aramaic.

I vaguely feel that Ezekiel is post Babylon and envisages the rebuilding of the ruined temple.

As you may know, I consider Daniel (which I am sure is an aramaic document) and the prophecies or Babylon and tyre, because of the historical conditions which are accurately described up to a particular date and which then fail place them in the post Alexander period.

Babylon was not destroyed. So we are rather stuck with a date of the fall of Babylon to the persians, but before it was clear that it would continue of capital of the Babylonian satrapy.

The Tyre prophecy is correct until shortly after the assault by Alexander, when the causeway was still a bare dyke of rubble for spreading nets and the city hadn't been rebuilt.

Daniel of course is dated to the time of conflict between Antiochus and Ptolemy and before the time of Antiochus' death in Persia and the outbreak of the Maccabean war.

[whoppers]

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

Thanks for your complimentary words, Whoppers. While much of what I posted is a bit speculative and even the down from the hills theory, while supported by archeology and odd hints in the OT, is not in the textbooks yet, I am pretty sure that the general lines of what I posted are in the right direction - though of course I would.

A few quibbles here and there, as usual, but for the most part a good look at the situation.

My big disagreement, and this is one I have with the majority of scholarship save for a few, is the standard identification of "Ur of the Chaldees" with the Southern Mesopotamian Ur. Ever since Sir Edward Wooley's excavation at the site, and his crafty usage of the public's thirst for anything Biblical, this has been used as a convenient means of postulating Mesopotamian influence on the Biblical Account. I do not feel this is necessary, given the interconnections between the major cultures that would have guaranteed Mesopotamian influence regardless, or terribly accurate. I much prefer the site of modern Urfa in Northern Mesopotamia, as well-argued by Cyrus Gordon and now his student Gary Rendsburg. There are too many Biblical indications of a Northern influence to uncritically accept a Southern Ur, in my mind - especially the later mentions of patriarchal connections to the Hurrians in the North, as well as the "wandering Aramean" line. All these are Northern.

Gordon (1958, 1965, 1997) suggests that Northern Ur was merely a commercial outpost established by the famous Wooley Ur of Southern Mesopotamia, much like the city of Haran was also a commercial outpost as far back as the 19th century B.C.E. This Northern area was a common place for various peoples to meet - among them Hurrians, Amorites, Syrians, Arameans, Hittites, etc. Add to that the clue that Abram was born in Ur, then spent some time in Haran (in the North) and then he had his entry into Canaan, and we have a much more plausible geographic setting than his family traveling all the way from the South.

Now these are the begettings of Terah:
Terah begot Avram, Nahor, and Haran;
and Haran begot Lot.
Haran died in the living-presence of Terah his father in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans.
Avram and Nahor took themselves wives;
the name of Avram's wife was Sarai,
the name of Nahor's wife was Milca - daughter of Haran, father of Milca and father of Yisca.
Now Sarai was barren, she had no child.
Terah took Avram his son and Lot son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, wife of Avram his son,
they set out together from Ur of the Chaldeans, to go to the land of Canaan.
But when they had come as far as Harran, they settled there.
And the days of Terah were five years and two hundred years,
then Terah died,
in Harran.
(Genesis 11:27-32, SB Fox)

A few things here. Abram is technically born in Haran, not in Ur. The city "Harran" or "Haran" traditionally is not the same as the personal name "Haran" - two different consonantal "h" sounds are involved, lost in transliteration. Harran was a Northern city famous for its worship of the moon-deity Sin. The term "Chaldeans", of course, is an anachronism used by both the Priestly and Yahwistic Sources. The LXX has "land" instead of "Ur", but how reliable this is and whether it came from a tradition or was apologetic is difficult to say.

E.A. Speiser, in answering the question as to why such an anachronistic "Ur of the Chaldeans" came into usage, writes that one tentative possibility presents itself: that since Haran and Ur were both famous centers of moon worship (unlike other cities), that these became religiously telescoped together by later tradents writing after the Chaldeans had become established in the North (AB I: Genesis, pp. 80-81). This may only be tenable with a Southern Ur, however.

Anyways, after that long spiel my point is that we don't really need a Southern Ur to show Mesopotamian influence on the Biblical writers. This has been demonstrated quite ably in a number of instances. What I feel is more important is the Northern influence (especially considering the nation was called Isra-EL, a decidedly Northwest Semitic deity, and not something like Isra-YAH, -YAHU etc.), which would have brought Mesopotamian influences with it as par for the course.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

I would be fascinated to see more work done on the suggestion of borrowings in the OT from pre -existent writings. Particularly Mesopotamian.

Thankfully, a good deal of work has been done (though some of it not easily available). I guess I tend to not make many threads about the things I'm accustomed to, but rather latch onto anything weird, new or interesting I may stumble upon. Bernard Batto's Slaying the Dragon: Mythmaking in the Biblical Tradition (1992) is an excellent study and devotes a lot of space to Babylonian ideas of religion, and the Mesopotamian influences on the Primeval History. He also explores the Exodus as myth, which has become more and more common in scholarship finally. In fact, Arequipa, this book must have been written for you! Here's the chapter list:

• 1. Mythopoeic Speculation in Babylon
  2. The Yahwist's Primeval Myth
  3. The Priestly Revision of the Creation Myth
  4. The Exodus as Myth
  5. Crossing Dry Shod: Mythopoeic Speculation in Cult
  6. Egypt and Gog as Mythic Symbols in Ezekiel
  7. Conclusion
  8. Epilogue: Mythopoeism in the New Testament

You can see the advancement of his ideas throughout the course of the work. I will probably touch on some of his ideas further below.

Works that deal more broadly, but which have a focus on the Primeval History and Creation Accounts are also very helpful. Especially helpful is Helge Kvanvig's Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical and Enochic - An Intertextual Reading (2011). While I don't fully agree with Kvanvig's decision to relegate the Yahwist to mere "non-P" status, the book is a very interesting study. I'm working my way through it presently, and so far it's been very good. Especially interesting is how the Watchers of later Enochic tradition get tied into this long stream of cultural consciousness, as well as the Seven Sages (the Apkallus), which the Bible mentions a few times.

Claus Westermann's commentary on Genesis 1-11 (1974, 1994 English) is also of the utmost value, especially with it's introduction which is a store-house of comparative data. Richard Clifford's Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible (1994) is also very valuable.

I've been thinking of making some threads that deal with some of these things occasionally, and I have been sorely tempted to do a thread on the possibility that according to the Genesis Account Yahweh was the father of Cain -just for the pure insanity of the idea. Sounds crazy, but a tradition grew up in direct opposition to this idea that suggested that it was one of Yahweh's angels, in fact Satan - to avoid the troubling possibility of Yahweh acting like one of the gods of Genesis 6. Anyways, if there is a certain parallel or influence you're interested in, we could possibly explore it at some point in more detail.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

It occurred to me that much of this seems to have been picked up in Mesopotamia, but not much from Egypt.

The Biblical writers seemed to have had an unnatural animosity towards Egypt, and this may account for what you mentioned above. There are some Egyptian influences in the Biblical tradition, but you are correct in saying that the majority of it was probably Mesopotamian, and I would add Canaanite and Syrian. Egyptian influences are sometimes hard to pin down, simply because Egypt's religion is so syncretistic with itself over a period of about 3,000 years that it is still improperly understood. It was a constant stream of intertextual and systematic revision that it becomes almost impossibly obscure. Some Egyptian influences, possibly, are that the Israelites and Egyptians shared a common view on the status of Creation before it occurred: that it was dark, watery, chaotic. That according to most Egyptian theogonies, Creation occurred via word alone by a single Creator god. The formula "before there was X" is a common term shared in the Creation Accounts. Much of this has parallels to the Priestly Account, in case you started noticing less Yahwistic influences there.

The animosity towards Egypt, I think, stemmed from the failure of Egypt to help the Israelites in their time of need when they were established in the Land. I don't think they were ever slaves, or even had anything to do with the Hyksos - but that Egypt and the Pharoah became a then modern-day bogey-man for the Israelite authors, especially among some of the prophets. This is where Batto's book is especially helpful. The Exodus is demonstrated to be very mythic, in his account, with even the "Reed Sea" having a very good possibility of being better understood and translated as the mythic "Sea of End". Many scholars do not much care for Batto's idea concerning the "Sea of End", but I find it very attractive.

After the chaos of the Babylonians, a sizeable amount of Israelites found themselves engaging in a reverse Exodus into Egypt, as it were. Elephantine saw a large religious community spring up that had Anat-Yahu as their double-deity - Anat being the daughter of El and the sister of Baal, and Yahu of course being the shortened form of Yahweh. Perhaps this group of individuals (with Jeremiah among them) found themselves adopting Egyptian religious customs quite easily, and this may account for some of the Biblical writer's animosity towards Egypt as some great enemy? At any rate, it shows that they quickly latched onto a Northern goddess much more naturally than a purely Egyptian one (Anat being adopted into Egypt by that time, and quite popular in many circles), and that they had no problem with reinstating Yahweh's wife. That it was Anat - who was said to have also been the lover of Baal in Ugaritic myth - that they chose for Yahweh's consort is interesting, as it shows further the relationship that Yahweh had to Baal initially. Asherah being the consort of El may have been a phase in which memories of Yahweh as El were retained, Asherah having been El's wife in the Ugaritic texts.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

I vaguely feel that Ezekiel is post Babylon and envisages the rebuilding of the ruined temple.

Moshe Greenberg has this to say on the dating of Ezekiel: that "it's contents fall between 593 and 571 B.C.E." (AB 22, Ezekiel 1-20, p. 12). Without going too much into Greenberg's analysis, I seem to recall that he was persuasive for the most part - but it's been a while since I read it.

[TRANSPONDER]

Thanks for that excellent post which I will study. I'll have a look at (Woolley's) Ur. The Royal graves suggested high status, the date seemed particularly early and I seem to recall that there was a Ziggurat. If that is correct, Urfa would have to match all that to be a candidate for Ur of the Chaldees.

I'll have a look.

Yes, It has a ziggurat and dates back to the U'baid period and reign of King Nannar 21st c BC (short chronology). confirmation in writing will be wanted.

Yes I see. Abraham is a native of Haran near Urfa (N. Mesopotamia). There are several 'Urs' I read, but the one in S Iraq seems to fit the bill for a very early city -state. But i take the point that it only has a reputation of tbeing the earliest and most important because of the Bible and crafty Woolley identifying his site with it.

[whoppers]

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

Thanks for that excellent post which I will study. I'll have a look at (Woolley's) Ur. The Royal graves suggested high status, the date seemed particularly early and I seem to recall that there was a Ziggurat. If that is correct, Urfa would have to match all that to be a candidate for Ur of the Chaldees.

I'll have a look.

Yes, It has a ziggurat and dates back to the U'baid period and reign of King Nannar 21st c BC (short chronology). confirmation in writing will be wanted.

Yes I see. Abraham is a native of Haran near Urfa (N. Mesopotamia). There are several 'Urs' I read, but the one in S Iraq seems to fit the bill for a very early city -state. But i take the point that it only has a reputation of tbeing the earliest and most important because of the Bible and crafty Woolley identifying his site with it.

Good work on finding the ziggurat! Many assume that southern Mesopotamian influence is indicated due to several stories that may hint knowledge of ziggurats, among them: a) The Tower of Babel, and b) Jacob's "Ladder".

a) The Tower of Babel.
I don't think it's necessary to review the story here, but to note that it concerns Babylon and to detail a passage that may help us:

They said, each man to his neighbor:
Come-now! Let us bake bricks and let us burn them well-burnt!
So for them brick-stone was like building-stone, and raw-bitumen was for them like red-mortar.
Now they said:
Come-now! Let us build ourselves a city and a tower, its top in the heavens,
and let us make ourselves a name,
lest we be scattered over the face of all the earth!
(Genesis 11:3-4, SB Fox)

A quick note to "a city and a tower" (עִ֗יר וּמִגְדָּל). It is possible that, rather than being two separate buildings, that this is a hediadys - a combination of two separate nouns to express a single idea, in this case a building that may have had a tower; not simply a tower. Westermann (1994)suggest a fortress-tower as found in Judges 8:9 and 9:46. E. A. Speiser (1962) critiques the view that the Biblical authors took inspiration from the Babylonian ziggurat Entemenanki by unfortunately stating that the Yahwist would have written prior to the building of this structure. If we ignore his liberal dating of the Yahwist to the 10th century BCE and the sources J used even further in the past, the construction of Entemenanki in the 7th to 6th centuries is not that big of a problem. He does, however, suggest a literary solution that would show reliance on the Babylonian Enuma Elish and the construction of the sacred precinct Esagila.

When Marduk heard this,
His face lit up greatly, like daylight.
"Create Babylon, whose construction you requested!
Let its mud bricks be moulded, and build high the shrine!"

The Annunaki began shoveling.
For a whole year they made bricks for it.
When the second year arrived,
They had raised the top of Esagila in front of (?) the Apsu;
They had built a high ziggurat for the Apsu.
They founded a dwelling for Anu, Ellil, and Ea likewise.
(Enuma Elish VI, 55-64, MFM Dalley)

Besides the obvious similarities, he offers these details: Apsu is a common poetic term for the sky (in addition to its normal meaning), Esagila is a Sumerian term that can be cognate to the Biblical "it's top in the heavens". He proposes that the Yahwist, to demonstrate the folly of humanity, wished to take the religious symbolism of the building of Esagila and transform it into a literal account of the building of the Tower of "Babylon". The suggestion is interesting, but not certain. See Speiser's Genesis (AB 1, 1962) and pp. 75-76. What really is convincing, however, is that the Biblical author is narrating a foreign style of brick-making, and the line "So for them brick-stone was like building-stone, and raw-bitumen was for them like red-mortar" was meant as an explanation in contrast to how the Israelites built buildings.

In examining the sources that the Yahwist employed, Hermann Gunkel and Claus Westermann both came to the conclusion that the story was not originally a unity. Westermann concluded that the motif of "making a name" was a later addition, and that the original intent of the story was to reach the domain of the gods and that it narrated "the failure of the attempt to reach heaven by means of a tower. We have here a primeval event that establishes the present state of reality: the definitive separation of the realm of God, the heavens, from that of people." (Genesis 1-11, Eng. 1994, p. 538)
In trying to find cognates in other literature, he mentions many tales from unconnected cultures in which humans try to ascend their mortal status by building a tower, only to be thwarted and usually killed. It should be noted incidentally that while these tales do not have anything to do with the confusion of tongues, they are still a good starting point. As for a direct literary reliance from the Ancient Near East, he does not share Speiser's view of dependence on Enuma Elish and finds no direct literary parallels. It is important to note that these are questions of literary dependence.

Leaving strictly literary influences, whether an actual ziggurat is the culprit has already been examined by many scholars, with the already mentioned Esagila in Babylon, with others suggesting Ezida in Borsippa, and your mention of the ziggurat of Southern Ur: Etemenniguru. That the Biblical authors would have been aware of ziggurats is probably not a strange idea, and if they had not been familiar with an existing one, they would have at least been aware of the ruins of ziggurats. Perhaps this accounts for the Yahwist's usage of what may amount to a fortress-tower (if we accept "a city and tower" as a hendiadys). It may very well be based on the Babylonian ziggurat, which religiously did serve the purpose of linking heaven and earth, and the critique may have been exactly of this, with the failure of the linking in the Biblical account.

It should be noted that the most convincing argument in favor of the Biblical author's knowledge of an actual ziggurat and Babylonian building techniques is in the explanatory note at the end of the passage above: "So for them brick-stone was like building-stone, and raw-bitumen was for them like red-mortar." Now, how the Neo-Sumerians built their ziggurat is something I'm not familiar with. Perhaps you can hunt that info down?

b) Jacob's "Ladder".
Jacob's "Ladder" is famous as well, but the traditional meaning of "ladder": סֻלָּם (sǔllām):, has been found to be inaccurate, and most translate it variously as "ramp" or "stairway". One can immediately see how this may reflect a ziggurat, especially with it reaching to heaven! An additional geographic argument is that this occurs when he is leaving Be'er Sheba and going to Haran to see his uncle Laban, and that this dream of a ziggurat symbolizes his entrance into a land that contains ziggurats. This is not the only motif of the story, just one detail.

The biggest issue with the geographic argument is that it ignores the Source separation. 28:10-11 (his geographic location) is attributed to J, while his dream (11b-12) is attributed to E, with J resuming immediately afterwards. E continues later with Jacob's declaration that it is the "gateway of God".

(J:10-11) Yaakov went out from Be'er-Sheva and went toward Harran,
and encountered a certain place.
He had to spend the night there, for the sun had come in.

(E:11b-12) Now he took one of the stones of the place
and set it at his head
and lay down in that place.
And he dreamt:
Here, a ladder [better "stairway" or "ramp"] was set up on the earth,
its top reaching the heavens,
and here: messengers of God were going up and down on it....

(E:17) He was awe-struck and said:
How awe-inspiring is this place!
This is none other than a house of God,
and that is the gate of heaven!
(Genesis 28:10-12, 17 SB Fox)

If we ignore the geographic argument that falls apart with Source Criticism, then we are left with the very compelling linguistic and literary evidence that points to Jacob's "Ladder" being Jacob's "Ziggurat". Linguistically, the argument is made on the noun traditionally translated as "ladder": סֻלָּם (sǔllām):. The root sll has a meaning denoting permanence: "to heap up (as a mound or pile)" or "to set up" (such as permanent stairs or ramps). Thus, the better translation of "ramp" or "stairway" as permanent structures, perfectly indicative of a ziggurat. Add to that the narrative details of the messengers going up and down at the same time, and a ladder is highly unlikely. That it points to a ziggurat is also found from the very nature of the sǔllām:. It is for divine beings to travel from above to below, just as a ziggurat linked the divine and the earthly.

Now it is just a matter of determining Elohistic knowledge of such structures, which I think is entirely possible again.


Does this help with a Southern Ur or Northern "Ur"?
As to whether all of this indicates a southern location for Ur? It could be argued that the existence of ziggurats was not limited to Southern Mesopotamia, and that the older Sumerian ziggurat may have been too far in the past to be a reliable source of inspiration, and that a Babylonian ziggurat may make more sense. Of course, these stories may have absolutely nothing at all to do with the tradition of Abram's father being from Ur either way, but then again - they might! If we postulate at least oral tradition found in the tribes of Abraham and Jacob, and the eventual committing of this to writing, then we may have a good argument for some sort of connection. Or it may have been common cultural knowledge of the ANE, or picked up from the Judahites stay in Babylon and Enuma Elish. So many puzzles to unravel! I love it!

At some point, I will try to look up some more details of Cyrus Gordon's theory. His book is around here somewhere!