Shawn Zelig Aster, «Israelite Embassies to Assyria in the First Half of the Eighth Century», Vol. 97 (2016) 175-198
This article shows that the kingdom of Israel sent ambassadors on an annual basis to the Assyrian empire during much of the reign of Jeroboam II, and it explores the implications of these contacts for the interpretation of Isaiah 1–39 and Hosea. These diplomatic contacts are based on points Fales has raised regarding nimrud Wine List 4 (ND 6212), whose importance for biblical studies has hitherto not been recognized. The recipients of the wine rations in this list are to be identified as ambassadors of weaker kingdoms, among them Samaria, who visited Assyria to pay tribute.
192 SHAWn ZeLIG ASTeR
A single gift or tribute payment, followed by years in which nothing
was remitted, would clearly have been understood as repudiation of
the expression of amity or subservience. Since Assyria was not forced
to acquiesce to such a cessation, there is no reason to assume that it
would have been tolerated by Assyria or contemplated by Israel.
While it is possible that Israel did not continue to remit tribute to
Assyria for all of the period between the event represented by nWL 4
and the rise of Tiglath-Pileser III in 745, it is clear that Israel did remit
tribute for part of this period. As a result of this understanding of nWL
4, Israel’s submission to Assyria in about 740 BCe cannot be inter-
preted as a new encounter with Assyria after a break of nearly 100
years in relations between the two states, broken only by a one-time
submission of Joash to Adad-nirari III around 802. Rather, by 740
BCe, Israel was emerging from a hiatus of 40 years at most in paying
tribute to Assyria.
The narrowing of the gap between Israel’s encounter with Assyria
in earlier periods and its encounter in the time of Tiglath-Pileser III
have significant implications for comparative biblical studies. As
noted above, recent scholarship studying the responses to Assyrian
royal ideology in Israelite prophetic literature tends to see Israel’s
encounter with such ideology as a new intellectual phenomenon,
beginning after 745 BCe. Little attention has been given to the ques-
tion of Israel’s encounter with Assyria earlier in the eighth century.
Much of the scholarship focuses solely on Judah’s encounter with
Assyrian ideology after 745 and on the representation of this encounter
in the oracles of Isaiah.
It is important to recognize that Israel’s encounter with Assyrian
ideology and its experience of sending emissaries to visit the Assyrian
court at the time of Tiglath Pileser III were not new experiences
for the Israelites, whose historical memories spanned at least 40 years.
Assyrian royal ideology underwent limited changes in the course
of the late ninth and eighth centuries, from the end of the reign of
Shalmaneser III to the time of Tiglath-Pileser III. The central themes
which remain constant included: the religious legitimacy of the king
as leader of the Ashur cult (expressed by the epithets ßangû and ißßi-
aku); the king as military leader responsible for expanding the empire
(ßarru dannu, ßarru rabû, ßar kißßati); the universal nature of the
empire; and the doctrine of Assyrian invincibility. Many of the motifs
found in royal inscriptions of Adad-nirari III are also found in those
of the late eighth-century kings. These include the king going to
war by the command of Ashur, and the enemy overwhelmed by the