Meir Malul

Adoption of Foundlings in the Bible and Mesopotamian Documents a Study of Some Legal Metaphors in Ezekiel 16.1-7:

Among the recent approaches in biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies there is one which involves the study of terms, figurative expressions, and metaphors in an attempt to strip them of their common literal meaning and to disclose their technical meaning, long lost to the modern reader. The basic postulate underlying this approach is that the biblical writer, whose intention was perhaps to write a completely imaginative story, has inadvertently woven into his or her creation terms and idioms taken from the contemporary legal, social, and political reality. The attempts to disclose what Y. Muffs has termed the technical-terminological quality of various terms and metaphors and to locate their Sitz im Leben in the reality of the ancient world, have yielded many useful studies, such as those of the technical-legal meaning of the expressions jyb Ibby/libbasu tab in Aramaic papyri from Elephantine and in Mesopotamian documents’ and of terms of joy and love as expressions denoting willingness and volition.3 In the case of the Bible, examples are provided by W. Moran’s study of the biblical concept of love of God as a technical concept from the realm of political treaties;4 M. Weinfeld’s numerous studies of various treaty terms;~ D. Daube’s study of several terms within the framework of what he calls ’Law in the Narratives’;6 and others. In the same vein is the present author’s discussion of several biblical terms and expressions which seem to reflect symbolic acts with legal-technical meaning.~ 7