Redaction and Tradition History of the Oracles concerning Egypt in Ez 29-32

• Applicant: Dr. Meike Röhrig
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 460845261

While the book of Ezekiel is the subject of great attention in current research on the Hebrew Bible, the oracles concerning Egypt in Ez 29–32 have been remarkably little studied to date. Two research desiderata in particular are the starting point of the proposed project:1) Concerning the literary and redaction history of Ez 29–32, there are to date mainly small-scale studies on selected parts of Ez 29–32. They suggest a long and complex literary history for the text corpus. What is lacking, however, is a comprehensive diachronic analysis that examines Ez 29–32 as a whole and links the results with the redaction and composition history of the book of Ezekiel. 2) Previous research on the possible ancient oriental background of Ez 29–32 has unveiled extensive references to ancient oriental, especially Egyptian, traditions, but has hardly ever taken into account the diachronic literary history of the texts. While current literary historical research assumes a long period of transmission and redaction for the book of Ezekiel that reaches from the 6th century up to the Hellenistic period, studies concerned with the tradition-historical background of the motifs in Ez 29–32 mostly rely on the dates given in the texts themselves, assuming their origin in the first half of the 6th century BC. This dating, however, excludes some potential contexts for the question of extra-biblical influences a priori. Thus, research has until today exclusively focused on Egyptian material from the 3rd and 2nd millennium B.C., while material from Late Period Egypt, especially the Persian and Ptolemaic periods, has not been taken into account. Of course, this was not only due to assumptions regarding the dating of the Egypt oracles, but partly also to the fact that the Late Period material in question has only recently become the focus of interest in Egyptological research.The research project proposed here addresses these problems and desiderata by making Ez 29–32 the object of a detailed investigation that intertwines the study the diachronic literary history of the texts and the study of possible Egyptian influences. In this, the project is innovative in two ways: on the one hand, the study of extra-biblical influence is consistently linked back to the diachronic literary history of the texts. On the other hand, new material that has only recently been made accessible in the field of Egyptology is taken into account. The project can, thus, also open new avenues for the study of the book of Ezekiel in general.The working hypothesis is that a stronger influence of late Egyptian ideas and traditions can be found especially on younger literary levels of the Egypt oracles which partly even date as late as the Ptolemaic period.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants