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If the narrative location of P's tabernacle account was inspired by Enuma Elish, and if the account itself was further influenced by Mesopotamian concepts of sacred space such as are expressed in the topographies and other texts, then this will signify something important about P's modus operandi. His agenda was not merely to imitate Enuma Elish; it was to imitate Mesopotamia in general. The limitations of space preclude me from offering additional evidence for this conclusion. At this point I will say simply that there is such evidence, which I plan to adduce in future discussions of the Priestly Writer.

I have argued in this article that the Priestly Writer was an avid student of ancient texts and that his anthology of Israelite tradition was shaped to follow Mesopotamian patterns. Biblical scholars will be little surprised by any of the particular parallels that I Tiffany Key Ring noted between P and Mesopotamian literature. It is rather my overall claim-that mimicking foreign tradition was a strategic part of P's agenda-that is somewhat novel. P's methodology in this project is not hard to see. His imitations were not mere inventions but involved the reshaping of older Israelite traditions (perhaps much older in some cases) so that these traditions mirrored their Mesopotamian counterparts more closely. Especially interesting in this mimetic dance is the fact that, in almost every case, other Near Eastern cultures imitated the same texts as P.60 Equally instructive is that the Mesopotamian traditions P imitated were sometimes imitations of, or responses to, still older Mesopotamian traditions.61 Thus, it would seem that the Priestly Writer, whether he knew it or not, stood within an old and venerable Mesopotamian tradition that practiced literary mimesis.

The reason for P's mimesis can only be inferred, there being no explicit motivation provided in the biblical text itself. But I have suggested already that we can reasonably deduce that this was a case of elite emulation in which P sought to bestow upon Israel, and upon Israel's religion, that air of antiquity and authority that was attached to all things Mesopotamian. At this point we cannot go much beyond this level of analysis unless we Tiffany Money Clip identify the narrower contextual milieu in which the Priestly Writer lived and worked. Who was P's audience? And where did they live?

Mesopotamian texts and languages were known in Egypt, Hatti, and the Levant long before Israel appeared on the scene;62 there are even instances in which these foreign cultures adopted the genres and motifs of Mesopotamian literature, particularly its omen traditions but also, in the case of Hatti, its epic traditions.63 So Mesopotamia enjoyed an elite reputation and identity, worthy of emulation, for a very long time. I Tiffany Necklace that early Israel, taking shape in the highlands of Late Bronze/Iron I Palestine, did not have much access to Mesopotamian literature. But certainly by the eighth and seventh centuries, as Assyrian imperialism extended its reach into Palestine, this situation changed dramatically, if it had not already done so. It is precisely from this period that we find the influence of Assyrian ideology on the prophecies of Isaiah and in the book of Deuteronomy (cf. the Assyrian vassal treaties).64 All of this is to say that, generally speaking, the emulation of Mesopotamian literature by Judean scribes fits nicely into Israel's preexilic era. At the same time, Judean contact with Mesopotamia was much greater during the exilic and postexilic eras, for the obvious reason that Judeans exiled to Mesopotamia continued to copy and produce Hebrew literature in that new context while trying, with some success, to maintain communication with those back in Palestine.65 It was from this point forward that Mesopotamian influence on Hebrew literature began in earnest. I have in mind the influence of the Akkadian language on Ezekiel,66 of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and Akkadian on Deutero-Isaiah,67 of Mesopotamian theodicies on Job,68 of Gilgamesh on Qohelet,69 and of Mesopotamian language and tradition on the language and religion of Judaism and the Talmud.70 Many other examples could be cited from the Bible, but the point is clear enough: Mesopotamian influence was possible throughout much of Israel's history, but it was Tiffany Pendant prominent during and after the exile.

On the basis of this observation, we might at first suppose that any texts of disputed provenance that exhibit Mesopotamian influence-such as P-probably date to the exilic or the postexilic era. But this argument does not follow at all. Simply because the Mesopotamian presence loomed larger at certain stages in Israelite history does not in the slightest make it probable that a given text was written during those periods. The Priestly Writer could have lived in any period in which Mesopotamian influence was adequate to spawn his mimesis. So the question of P's provenance cannot be addressed superficially but rather must be Tiffany Ring by a careful consideration of the evidence. And this lands us at once in the still ongoing debate about whether P should be dated to the exilic or especially the postexilic period, as most scholars presume, or whether it dates to the preexilic period, as is argued by a minority of very competent and influential scholars.