Texts in Conversation
In the Dream of Gudea, a god shows the Sumerian ruler a stone tablet inscribed with the plan of a temple. Exodus echoes this pattern when God shows Moses a model of the tabernacle on Mount Sinai.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
The Dream of Gudea
Gudea Cylinders
Ancient Near East
“She counseled with herself. “Secondly, there was a strong man; ... a tablet of lapis lazuli he held in his hand. For the temple a plan he made. Before me a holy head basket he placed; the holy mold he arranged. The brick of fate in the mold he made. By the sacred . . . placed before me the . . . bird brought morning light to me. An ass crouched at the right of my lord.” The patesi his mother Nina answered. “My shepherd, your dream I will interpret for you. As for the man in form like heaven, in form like the earth, as to his head a god, at his side the storm-bird, at his feet the hurricane, at whose right and at whose left a panther lay, truly my brother Ningirsu it is. He has commanded you to build the abode of his Eninnu. The sun which arose from the world is your god Gishzida; like the sun from the world he arose for you. The maiden who . . . made, who in her hand held the sacred stylus, who possessed the tablet of the favorable stars, who counseled with herself, truly it is my sister Nidaba.
Date: 2125 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Exodus 25:40
Hebrew Bible
36 Their buds and their branches will be one piece, all of it one hammered piece of pure gold. 37 “You are to make its seven lamps and then set its lamps up on it, so that it will give light to the area in front of it. 38 Its trimmers and its trays are to be of pure gold. 39 About 75 pounds of pure gold is to be used for it and for all these utensils. 40 Now be sure to make them according to the pattern you were shown on the mountain.
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Notes and References
... In the Gudea Cylinders and other Ancient Near Eastern temple building texts, the construction of a divinely pleasing sanctuary necessarily involved receiving and following a detailed and divinely revealed plan. The same is true in the Bible, but unlike Gudea, who needed to virtually pry the details of the plan out of the deity through cultic means, this information is readily forthcoming in ancient Israel (Exodus 25:1-9; 1 Chronicles 28:11-19; Ezekiel 40-42). The revealed tabnit 'plan' or 'pattern' of the biblical tabernacle, the temple, and their furniture (see specifically Exodus 25:9, 40; 26:30; 27:8; Joshua 22:28; 1 Chronicles 28:11-12, 19; compare Ezekiel 43:10-12) corresponds to both the gis-hur ('plan') of the temple and the visionary picture of the completed sanctuary in the Gudea Cylinders ...
Averbeck, Richard E.
"The Cylinders of Gudea" in Hallo, William W., and K. Lawson Younger Jr. (eds.) The Context of Scripture, Volume II: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World
(p. 420) Brill, 2003
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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