JSOT Wright Procreation FINAL

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Vol 36.2 (2011): 131-162

The Author(s), 2011. Reprints and Permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/0309089211423732
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Making a Name for Oneself:
Martial Valor, Heroic Death,
and Procreation in the Hebrew Bible
*

JACOB L. WRIGHT

Candler School of Theology, Emory University, 1531 Dickey Dr., Atlanta,
GA 30322, USA

Abstract

Surveying a wide range of ancient sources, this discussion of the political thought of the
Hebrew Bible treats name-making in relation to (1) martial prowess, (2) heroic death, and
(3) procreation. Commemoration of the war dead is one of the chief expressions of
statehood in both the ancient and the modern world. Tellingly, the Bible is completely
devoid of texts that glorify the names of the fallen. Combining this fact with observations
related to the strong emphasis in biblical literature on name-making through procreation,
this article argues that what propelled the redaction and transmission of the sources
transmitted in the Bible was an interest in creating a form of peoplehood that could
withstand the loss of statehood.

Keywords: War commemoration, procreation, nationhood, statehood, redaction history,
political theory, masculinity.

* This article was presented at the Collge de France as the 2010/11 lecture in
Milieux Bibliques. I thank Thomas Rmer and Jean-Marie Durand for the honor of this
invitation and for their gracious hospitality. Versions of the study were also presented at
Emory University and the University of Pennsylvania. I have beneted especially from
the feedback of Steven Kraftchik as well as Hanspeter Schaudig and Natalie Dohrmann. I
dedicate this article to Yoram Hazony, in appreciation for his intellectual curiosity.
132 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36.2 (2011)

1. Introduction

In Make a Name for Yourself (2002), one of Americas leading brand-
strategists, Robin Fisher Roffer, describes how women can supercharge
their careers by creating their own personal brandsnding your big
idea, the core you, and putting it out in the universe to fulll itself.
Although appearing characteristically modern, the aspiration to make a
name for oneself, as well as the expression itself, are attested widely in
ancient sources. What is perhaps new is that Roffer addresses women
who aspire to make a name. With few exceptions, our ancient sources
represent this as a distinctly male ambition.
1
The masculinity of the
name-making enterprise is expressed forcefully in the correspondence
between the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad (eighteenth century BCE) and
his son Yasmah-Adad in Mari. By placing his son on the throne in this
important city, Shamshi-Adad establishes his name there physically and
politically. He wishes his son to do the same in Qatna. To make his
point, this great ruler adopts the popular parenting approach of gender-
shaming:

Here your brother won a victory, but there you lie among women! Now, when
you march with your army to Qatna, be a man (l awlt). As your brother has
established a great name (umam rabm itaknu), you also in your region
establish a great name. (ARM 1.69, rev. 8-16)

The expression establish a great name means to vanquish the enemy
and to take possession of the land by setting up a victory monument,
appointing representatives, stationing garrisons, building temples, etc.
For Shamshi-Adad, to be a man is not to lie passively among women, but
to be active, to achieve big things, to create (and destroy) something.
And the stage he envisions for this performance of manhood is rst and
foremost the battleeld.
In what follows I explore various witnesses to the desire and aspira-
tion to make for oneself a great name through martial prowess and heroic
death. My specic interest is the attitude and response of biblical authors
to this ambition, which is most often gendered as a masculine attribute.
As I will attempt to demonstrate, the biblical authors assign priority and
primacy to procreation as a means of making and perpetuating ones

1. That also women sought to make a name for themselves in the ancient world is
undeniable, yet this desire is most often conceived in masculine terms. Thus Pharaoh
Hatshepsut assumed the highest name in the land, rather than simply the title of the
Kings Great Wife, when she adopted male attributes, persona, and garb.
WRIGHT Making a Name for Oneself 133

name. While they countenance and even condone name-making through
martial valor, they cast aspersions on heroic death. By attending to the
attitudes of biblical authors to these three strategies of name-making, we
can better appreciate what prompted and sustained the formation of
biblical literature. The driving force was, I will argue, a concern to build
a robust and sustainable nation after the defeat of the state and the loss of
territorial sovereignty.

2. Name-Making through Martial Valor and Heroic Death in
Comparative Sources

When today one hears about the death of a young manin battle or
otherwisethe reaction is usually much more emotional if he leaves
behind a wife and child. In the ancient world, the reverse is supposed to
have been the case: dying without having rst made a name in the form
of progeny (a genealogical namesake) was considered completely devas-
tating, while the news that the man left behind a (male) child would have
brought some relief.
2
Such a generalization is of course risky, yet it
points to what many see as a late development in the histoire des men-
talits: In modern times, the self (ones name) is conceived individu-
alistically, while in pre-modernity, identity (ones name) is constructed
according to collectivemost fundamentally, familialparameters.
3

2. This emotional response, however, does not correspond to the fact that members
of modern societies seem actually to behave no differently than those in ancient societies:
during times of war in the twentieth century one can observe a sharp increase in the
birthrate. Thus 3,104,000 babies were born in 1943 in the US. The post-war baby boom
merely continued a demographic trend that began during the war. These gures match a
common sentiment I encountered in the responses to a question posted on Yahoo: Why
are more baby boys born during time of war? For example, one woman responds, my
husband is at war right now and Im having baby because my husband might die and I
want to try and have at least something to remind me of him (ungrammatical English
in original) (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080617110644AAIthsF,
accessed 9 October 2009). Nevertheless, modern governments tend to protect fathers over
non-fathers. Thus, when President Kennedy decided to send military troops to Vietnam,
he stipulated that married men with children should occupy the very bottom of the call-up
list. All across the country there was a last minute rush to the altar by thousands of
Kennedy Husbands. A similar phenomenon can be witnessed in early modern France
(Hippler 2008: 20); the French Leve en masse of 1793 granted deferrals to married
men.
3. For a helpful discussion of modern vs. pre-modern identity construction, see
Taylor 1992.

This conventional polarity should probably, however, be construed
less in temporal terms and more along an axis of class and social status.
Also in the ancient Near East, elites often focused on their individual
names and construed their lives in terms of careers. Our richest evi-
dence stems from the autobiographies of ministers in early New King-
dom Egypt. In preparation for departing his earthly existence, the author,
often a military ofcer, looks back upon his life and describes, in CV-
like form, his accomplishments that led to his present status (rank) and
good name.
4
Such personal statements tend to play down their birth and
inheritance. Most important is what they achieved in their lifetimes.
5
In
many ways, this mentality and orientation toward the individual career is
no different from that of modern professionals, especially of academics.
Conversely, in the modern world, the underprivileged in society, without
prospects of upward mobility, are often much less individualistic and
cannot, from the perspective of the longue dure, be clearly distin-
guished in mentality from the underprivileged in pre-modern societies.
Nevertheless, one can reasonably claim that Western modern societies
and their conceptions of masculinity ascribe less signicance to pro-
creation and descendants than their ancient predecessors. Indeed, one
of the most prominent features, if not emblems, of modernity, which
emerged in the late nineteenth century, is the biologically non-repro-
ductive male (Weeks 1996). In the ancient world, a self-conscious social
group or lifestyle of the non-reproductive males did not exist.
6
To the
contrary, men were expected to be potent and virile. Pragmatically, what
was most important for families is that they produced at least one son. In
addition merely to continuing the family name on the patrimonial land,
the son played a critical role in caring for his parents in their old age,
giving them a proper burial and protecting their graves.
7
His lial duties

4, The present author is currently working on a study of name in relation to social
mobility and ancient military meritocracy.
5. More than anyone else, Jan Assmann has studied and discussed this aspect
of Egyptian culture (e.g. Assmann 2003). He, however, attributes it to a theological-
religious point of departure (the emphasis on the heart being weighed in the balances,
etc.), which then later becomes politicized. Instead of following Assmann here, I would
argue that this theology is informed by and replicates bureaucratic meritocracy that
developed for its own historical reasons.
6. For the case of eunuchs, see Wright and Chan forthcoming.
7. That a daughter usually (or at least often) did not perform this function is due to
the fact that she legally belonged to the house her husband and was expected to assist him
in caring for his parents.

also included the performance of the memorial rites during which, among
other things, the names of his parents were invoked and remembered.
8

The importance of producing a male child to perpetuate the family
namein his body, in his quotidian activities, and in his ritual-com-
memorative performancewould be difcult to overstate for ancient
Western Asian and Eastern Mediterranean peoples.
9

As today, young men in antiquity were often levied for military
service just as they were beginning to establish a family of their own.
These soldiers knew that there was a very high chance that they might
die without having rst produced progeny to carry on their names.
10
Few
other situations in the ancient world compared to wartime with respect to
mortality risk. Hence it is not surprising that we encounter a range of
texts that reect the concern of young soldiers for the fate of their names
after death.
Some of these texts witness to the practice of kings commemorating
their fallen soldiers (similar to the royal decrees for faithful eunuchs; see
Wright and Chan forthcoming). Thus, when King Ammi-aduqa of
Babylon (sixteenth century BCE) makes offerings to the dead, those
whom he encourages to imbibe the offerings are not only his (real and
ctive) royal ancestors but also every soldier who fell in the service of

8. Under normal circumstances the son was the one who sets up the stele of his god-
of the-father, in the sanctuary, the monument of his ancestor (nb. skn. ilibh. b. qd. ztr.
!mhKTU 1.17 I 26-27). See 2 Sam. 18.18. The child attended to the welfare of his/her
ancestors by way of specied rituals subsumed under the larger category of Totenpege
(Akk. kispu[m]). Mesopotamian Totenpege typically involved the provisioning of water
and food for the dead (paqdu[m]; cf. Tob. 4.17) and the invocation of the deceaseds
name. The rituals were usually performed by the (rstborn) sonthe so-called lu2-mu-
pa3-da or zkir umim (compare the habit of some aging Jewish parents calling their
eldest sons my Kaddish). See Brichto 1973: 21; Tsukimoto 1985: 34-38; Jonker 1995:
187-88. Egypt was no different in this regard; see, for example, the importance of the son
expressed in the inscription on the tomb of Petosiris, High Priest of Thoth, in Hermopolis
(fourth century BCE): I built this tomb in this necropolis / Beside the great souls who are
there / In order that my fathers name be pronounced / And that of my elder brother, / A
man is revived when his name is pronounced! (Lichtheim 1980: 45-46).
9. For ancient Israel, Jon D. Levenson notes that the absence or loss of descendant is
a threat that is the functional equivalent to death as we think of it (2006: 114-15). For
the other options of producing/adopting a child, see Postgate 1992: 92-93, 105; Wunsch
2005; van der Toorn 1996.
10. Eunuchs could adopt a male child, but the option would have been exceptional
since it contradicted the general purpose of eunuchism.

his lord (ina dannat bliu
[!]
imqut) (l. 33).
11
The latter belong to the
category of the dead who have no one to provide and care for them
in their death. As a kind of prayer for the Unknown Soldier, the
Babylonian ruler herewith commemorates his men who sacriced their
lives for him on the battleeld without leaving behind descendants who
could attend to their needs in the afterlife (see already Finkelstein 1966:
113-14).
12

Gerdien Jonker claims that the motivation behind such commemora-
tion practices was self-protection, since the dead would have posed a
threat to the living and the welfare of the kings reign (1995: 223-25).
While her thesis is tenable, the text may also witness to a realization by
ancient Mesopotamian rulers that their soldiers, especially those who
lacked sons, would perform their service more fearlessly if they could be
assured that, were they to die in the line of duty, the king would person-
ally care for them, even allotting them a place of special recognition
when performing the commemoration ceremonies for the royal family.
A similar understanding informs the practice of kings in pre-modern
Europeand the state representatives todayof conferring high hon-
ors on their young fallen soldiers and interring their remains in state
cemeteries. That the principle was also known in ancient Egypt is
rendered likely by Herbert Winlocks discovery of a tomb in 1923 near
the funerary monument of Mentuhotep II (twenty-rst century BCE) at
Deir el-Bahari. The tomb contained the heavily mutilated remains of
some sixty soldiers. The common interpretation of the nds, likely
correct, is that the king honored these soldiers, who were probably killed
during a Nubian campaign, by allotting them graves adjacent to his own

11. The practice of invoking the names of ones ancestors is closely related to the
collection of written genealogies; see Radner (2005: 86-90). The signicance of this point
for biblical genealogies deserves greater attention.
12. Commemoration ceremonies in honor of the Unknown Soldier are attested in the
practice of carrying an empty stretcher during the funeral ceremonies for the fallen in
ancient Greece. They did not, however, become common until the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury in Germany, after the Civil War in the USA, and especially after WW I in countless
other nation-states; see Smith 2003: 246-48, 257 and his wider discussion. Nevertheless,
the pre-modern attestations of commemorations of anonymous soldiers who died for their
ruler/land calls seriously into question the sweeping statement that one nds on the rst
page of Benedict Andersons Imagined Communities: No more arresting emblems of the
modern culture of nationalism exist than cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers
[It] has no true precedents in earlier times (1983: 9).

(Winlock 1942: 122-27 and 1945; for an alternative interpretation, see
Vogel 2003).
Evidence from Southern Mesopotamia in the Old Babylonian period
reveals that ofcials were commissioned to make registers listing the
names of deceased soldiers (with the sign BAD / before the name).
We have many documents that refer to the elds of soldiers who died
childless, expressed in Babylonian as kinnum bel, literally the hearth
has gone out (compare the expression in 2 Sam. 14.7).
13
One may
compare these registers to troop-rosters from Arrape that list some
soldiers as alqu, lost, which may refer either to soldiers who were
missing-in-action or who had dodged their duties (von Dassow 2009).
That men should ideally marry and procreate before embarking on
dangerous campaigns is reected in a range of literary texts. In the
Sumerian myth Gilgamesh and uwawa (Version A), the warrior calls
out in refrain-like repetition: Let him who has a household go to his
household! / Let him who has a mother go to his mother! / Let bachelor
males, types like me, [4 mss. add: fty of them,] join at my side! (49-
51). Here, as in most cases where young men were mustered, we are not
dealing with independent adult male citizens who had taken possession
of property and entered marriages, but rather young single males
(NITA.ME.E sag-di-lu-u
2
; lit. single-headed males) who still
belonged to their fathers households.
14
Another example is the Ugaritic
Legend of Keret (KTU 1.14 + 1.15 + 1.16), a myth that deals with a

13. It is often unclear who exactly the new landholder is and whether he belongs to
the extended family of the deceased. In some cases these elds appear to be in possession
of the state or the community/city of the deceased. In other cases they have been assigned
to the commander or other soldiers (given that it was originally granted by the king as
soldier land). Occasionally the city allots the land to (one of) his colleagues (lik idim),
so that the property remains within the possession of the same professional circle (see
Stol 2004: 796-98).
14. A Sole Survivor Policy, as adopted by the US military, was not needed in the
ancient Near East given that most often obligations were placed on villages to provide a
certain number of individuals. A family would usually have to send a man to complete
the required term of service, but it was usually not required to send all its male members.
Despite explicit prohibitions in the Hammurabi Code, it was normally possible for
(wealthy) families to send a slave or pay for a substitute. (To cite an example from the
late rst millennium, a text from l-Ydu refers to a Judahite paying someone else to
assume his duties of military/corve service; unpublished text, private correspondence
with Cornelia Wunsch, 17 March 2010.) Universal levies were typically issued only in
states of emergency or when a specic campaign warranted such radical measures.

massive campaign by the sonless king for the sake of obtaining a
princess and producing children. In preparation for this campaign, the
epic resorts to hyperbole, describing how widows hire (skr) substitutes to
serve in their place. Similarly, the sick, the blind, and even the newly-
wed groom are mustered.
15
Since the account depicts the call-up of the
newlywed as something highly unusualas strange as the conscription
of the sick and the blindit would seem that grooms were normally
exempted from military service.
The ethos appears to have been common to the Aegean world as well.
A passage from the Iliad tells of the Thracian Iphidamas, who as a
bridegroom newly wed goes forth from his bridal chamber upon hearing
the news of the Achaean assault. In battle he is killed, as an unhappy
youth far from his wedded wife, bearing aid to his townsfolkfar from
the bride of whom he had known no joy (ll. 225-45; trans. A.T.
Murray). That an Aegean soldier ideally procreates and establishes a
household before going to war (in order to defend them) is represented
visually in the widely attested departure scene from the Classical
period. Earlier versions of this motif usually featured a mounted hoplite
and charioteer with a small band, yet by the end of the sixth century BCE
it had become an image of the hoplite taking leave of his wife, his son,
the family dog and often friends or attendants (see Lissarrague 1990,
Figs. 8-22).
When facing death on the battleeld, soldiers often console them-
selves with the knowledge that they are dying brave or even heroic
deaths (Sherman 2005). An expression of this response is found in a
letter to the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal from a commander
lamenting the straits in which he and his troops found themselves. Since
the enemy far outnumbered them, they were certain of death. Yet accord-
ing to the commander, his soldiers assured themselves: If we die, we
will do so with an excellent name (k nimmutu ina MU [umim] babban
nimt; de Vaan 1995: 265-69). Their identity would survive their death
inasmuch as the manner in which they died produced an excellentand
thus enduringname.
We may contrast this natural response to imminent death in battle with
the Faustian ambition for immortality, or an eternal name, that drives the

15. The next line refers to the groom leaving to another his wife / To a stranger his
beloved; cf. Deut. 20.7 and m. Sot. 8.7 (all go out to battle, even the bridegroom from
his chamber and the bride from her chuppah).

warrior to seek an occasion not only to ght but also to die.
16
An early
witness to this warrior mentality is found in Gilgamesh and uwawa,
Version A, 4-7 and 32-33. In it Gilgamesh aspires to establish for him-
self a name by demonstrating his intrepidity in battle against the awe-
inspiring uwawa (or umbaba), the one whose name the lands keep
repeating. Since a man cannot pass beyond the borders of life, I want to
set off into the mountains, to make/establish a name for myself there
(mu-u
10
ga-am
3
-ar). Gilgameshs reason for taking on this monster is
precisely because he stands very little chance of winning or even walking
away alive from the encounter. The danger makes the feat all the more
worthy of commemoration. In the Old Babylonian version, Gilgamesh
responds to Enkidus warning by declaring:

The days of humans are numbered;
Whatever they will do, it is wind.
Why will you always fear death?
What has become of your mighty valor?
Let me walk in front of you,
And you can call to me, Go on without fear!
If I should fall (umma amtaqut) in battle,
I will have nonetheless made my name to stand (umi lu uziz),
namely as: Gilgamesh fought with the monstrous uwawa!
(OB Yale Tablet, iv. 138-50)

The quoted statement should probably be understood as what Gilgamesh
hoped others would proclaim in praise of his life or inscribe on the
monument that he made to stand after he falls.
17
In Robin Fisher

16. The glorication of death is found widely throughout Shakespeare; see, for
example, the passage from Anthony and Cleopatra: Tomorrow, soldier, / By sea and
land Ill ght: or I will live, / Or bathe my dying honour in the blood / Shall make it live
again (IV, ii, 4). A familiar example from Hollywood, to risk a breach of taste, is the
scene of Lieutenant Dan cursing Forrest for rescuing him from his fate of death on the
battleeld in the lm Forrest Gump. You cheated me. I had a destiny. I was supposed to
die in the eld! With honor! That was my destiny! [] I was Lieutenant Dan Tyler. The
story goes on to show how Forrest, in contrast to Lieutenant Dan, makes a name for
himself in various ways, and ultimately through a son.
17. Richter 2002: 166. Abusch writes on this passage: In this version, Gilgamesh
and Enkidu mount an armed expedition against the monster uwawa because of Gilga-
meshs belief that he would thereby maintain his role as a warrior, experience the
excitement of adventure, and win fame [=name]. For it is the accomplishment of great
acts of valor that is the highest achievement of life and one that serves as the basis of
lasting fame, fame in the form of stories of ones great deeds that are told and retold by
future generations (2001: 617).

Roffers terminology, such would be his taglinea short memorable
statement that expresses ones expertise and foremost accomplishments.
Yet whereas Roffer discusses strategies for making a name that promotes
and benets the bearer during her lifetime, Gilgamesh is concerned with
a name that endures his death and indeed that he makes by his death.
18

Like the ancient myths of Achilles, much of the Gilgamesh tradition
promotes this ethos of the warrior, with its accompanying ideal of an
individual, heroic, tragic death (cf. the death of Patroclus in the Iliad).
19

Near the end of the Twelve Tablet version, Gilgamesh asks: Have you
seen the one who fell in battle? Enkidu responds: I have seen him. His
father and his mother hold him in high honor (ru na, lit. lift up his
head), and his wife mourns his death (148-49). To this scene one may
compare the death of Enkidu as a consequence of his battle with
uwawa. Gilgamesh commands not only the artisans to construct a
monument but also the inhabitants of Uruk, together with all nature, to
mourn his death and sing sweet songs in his honor.
20
The various
Sumerian versions of The Death of Gilgamesh contain many such
praises and laments for the fallen hero and were probably used to bewail
the deaths of other warriors.
21

Such glorication of individual heroic death has, to be sure, a long
legacy. Within Europe, it is found in the Greco-Roman warrior tradition.
Thus, in addition to Homer, the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus (c. 625 BCE)
expressed the Code of the Citizen-Soldier who dies for the immortal
glory awarded him by his polis, his parents and his posterity:

And he who so falls among the champions and loses his sweet life,
so blessing with honor his polis, his father, and all his people,
[]

18. On the monument as an eternal name (uma a dr) and Gilgamesh, see Yale
Tablet v 183-87 (in reference to both death in heroic battle and chopping down a massive
cedar in the far-off Lebanese forests).
19. Caroline Alexander (2009) shows how Achilles must choose between a short
heroic life in the battleelds abroad or a long unheroic life of oblivion in his Greek
homeland.
20. See the discussion of these texts in Radner 2005: 92. Such praises and laments for
warriors may very well represent the earliest remnants of the Gilgamesh tradition, as has
often been argued.
21. Compare, for example, the refrain [the great hero] has lain down and is never to
rise again with Davids how the mighty have fallen. The Sumerian sources in
transliteration and translation are collected on The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian
Literature: http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/.

why, such a man is lamented alike by the young and the elders,
and all his polis goes into mourning and grieves for his loss.
His tomb is pointed out with pride, and so are his children,
and his childrens children, and afterward all the race that is his.
His shining glory is never forgotten, his name is remembered,
(oc t oxt t o t oov o o cxoi oc o vou oc oc )
and he becomes an immortal, though he lies under the ground
(trans. R. Lattimore)

In The Invention of Athens, Nicole Loraux shows how the death of the
individual citizen-soldier became in Athens an occasion to praise the
city, and thereby to articulate a collective identity and values to which
citizens should aspire. The epitaphios logos of the fth and fourth centu-
ries is a funeral oration delivered by an elected orator to celebrate the
war-dead of that year. The best-known exemplar is attributed to Pericles
after the rst year of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides, Hist. 2.34-46).
Pericles oration is an extended glorication of Athens as the city for
which these citizens died, and it urges the living to keep up the good
ght:

So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine
to have as unfaltering a resolution in the eld, though you may pray that it
may have a happier issue For this offering of their lives made in common
by them all they each of them individually received that renown which never
grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have
been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be
eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall fall
for its commemoration. (trans. R. Crawley)

This glorication of fallen warriors is a common feature of public cult
and culture in most societies.
22
Commemoration of the war dead occupies
such a central place in public ritual and space (cemeteries and monu-
ments) that it may be said that the glorication of sacrice on the

22. See also Herodotus, Hist. 1.30-32, where Solon explains why he identies Tellus
of Athens as the happiest man: First, because his country was ourishing in his days, and
he himself had sons both beautiful and good, and he lived to see children born to each of
them, and these children all grew up; and further because, after a life spent in what
our people look upon as comfort, his end was surpassingly glorious. In a battle between
the Athenians and their neighbors near Eleusis, he came to the assistance of his
countrymen, routed the foe, and died upon the eld most gallantly. The Athenians gave
him a public funeral on the spot where he fell, and paid him the highest honors (trans.
George Rawlinson; my emphasis). See also the important discussion in Herodotus, Hist.
9.71. For patriotic death in the political thought of the Middle Ages, see Kantorowicz
1965.

battleeldof the willingness of men to die, and women to send their
men to die, on the behalf of the stateis one of the chief expressions of
statehood throughout history. Inasmuch as states must demand of their
subjects a readiness to die, it is not surprising that bravery and courage
are often elevated to the highest civic virtues. In periods when the ght-
ing was performed by an elite few or aristocracy, courage and manliness
was seen as the mark of nobility. As participation in battle broadened
and, in some places, as citizen-armies emergedcourage and manli-
ness were democratized to a virtue to which all should aspire.
23

The glorication of martial valor and the cult of the war-dead have
provoked dissent and antipathy not only in modern society, but also in
antiquity. Thus, Pericles funeral oration appears to be satirized in
Platos Menexenus (Monoson 1998). For Egypt, the Parody of the Pro-
fessions from Papyrus Lansing (dating probably back to the Middle
Kingdom but widely transmitted as a school text thereafter) describes the
woes of the soldier and contrasts them to the advantages of scribal life.
On a campaign in the god-forsaken Levant, the ofcer exhorts his
soldiers in the heat of battle: Quick, forward, valiant soldier! Win for
yourself a good name! In the end, however, the commanders promise is
empty: The soldier dies on the edge of the desert, and there is none to
perpetuate his name. In contrast, the scribal profession, like a university
career in former days, promises a more secure path to a good name
(Lichtheim 1975: 184-92).
24
This text is distinctive because it demon-
strates that scribes, when writing for themselves, could take issue with
the practices of the state, such as the way the military promised a good
name as an incentive to soldiers to risk their lives in battle.

23. We can witness this move in Greek literature, perhaps already with Tyrtaeus.
The poetry of the latter presents aristocratic martial valor portrayed in Homer as virtue
achievable by a wider body of ghters; on the genre, see Irwin 2005: 1-82. Similar
developments in the medieval West have been studied by Contamine (1984). For modern
masculinity, the cult of the war dead since the French Revolution and its impact on new
hegemonic masculinities has been studied in groundbreaking works by George L. Mosse
(1990 and 1996), followed by Ute Frevert (2001) and Karen Hagemann (2002). See also
Frantzen 2004 as well as Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals 13.
24. Compare The Advice of a Supervisor to a Younger Scribe (-dub-ba-a C),
which similarly promises the scribe that his name will hailed as honorable (ll. 60-61)
and sung with sweet songs, like those performed for a great warrior. These and others
texts that elevate the vocation of the scribe over the soldier stand in continuity with the
tension between the life of ghting and the life of learning in later Jewish and rabbinic
texts.

For Mesopotamia, various streams of the Gilgamesh tradition chal-
lenge the ethos of the hero seeking to make an enduring name for himself
through martial valor. An Old Babylonian text depicting the encounter
between Gilgamesh, who is still mourning for his fallen warrior-com-
panion Enkidu, and the divine tavern-keeper Siduri, allows the latter to
respond to Gilgamesh and the ethos he represents. As an alternative to
the restlessness of the warriorwhose desire for an enduring name is
matched by his non-reproductive sexual exploitsSiduri sets forth the
enjoyment of a non-heroic life, one that seeks pleasure in food, wife, and
child:

Gilgamesh, whither do you rove?
The life you pursue you shall not nd.
When the gods created mankind,
Mortality they appointed for mankind.
Immortality in their own hands they held.

You Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full.
Day and night keep on being festive.
Daily make a festival.
Day and night dance and play.

Let your clothes be clean,
Let your head be washed, in water you may bathe.
Look down at the little one who holds your hand,
Let a wife ever be festive in your lap.
This is the lot (of humans).
(Meissner-Millard Tablet, iii.1-13)

Tzvi Abusch offers a compelling interpretation of this text: The sexual
act is [now]also a procreative act which brings into being the posterity
and future signaled by the child. Progeny implies death But a child is
also a form of immortality, and in our passage, this is the only kind of
immortality that Gilgamesh can hope for (1993: 58; see also G.A.
Anderson 1991: 78-82). An enduring name is to be made not in the death
of the warrior but rather in the birth of a namesake. This text may not be
an explicit critique of the glorication of death on behalf of the state, as
in the Egyptian Parody of Professions discussed above, yet rulers who
depended on the willingness of their subjects to ght to the death and
who promised them an immortal name in return for such sacrice would
certainly have been reluctant to embrace its sentiments.
25

25. Annette Zgoll compares Gilgamesh to Etana (whose myth revolves around his
quest to produce a son). The rst of these two Identikationsmodelle represents name
through fame and the second name through progeny. Einmal wird ein Weiterleben des

3. Name-Making through Martial Valor and Heroic Death in
Biblical Literature

When Seron, the commander of the Syrian army, decides to wage war
on Judas and his forces, his real intention is, according to 1 Maccabees,
to win honor in the kingdom: I will make a name for myself! (oi oc
t uocxc o vouo, 3.14). However, he achieves the opposite. As he
approaches Beth-Horon, Judas delivers a stirring pre-battle speech to his
small band of troops that inspires them to ght valiantly and effectively
rout the Syrians. The glory that had impelled Seron to go to war is in the
end won by his enemy: The name of Judas became known to the king,
and the nations spoke of his battles (3.25-26). Later the fame of Judas
arouses jealousy among his compatriots: two commanders, Joseph and
Azariah, decide to go to battle against their neighbors so that they too
could make a name for themselves. But because they ght merely for
renown and fail to heed the advice of Judas and his brothers, they suffer
a great defeat, causing the loss of 2000 lives (5.55-62). In the next
chapter we hear of a certain Eleazer (or Avaran) who in the midst of the
Battle of Beth-Zechariah notices an elephant decked in royal armor
among the enemy ranks. Supposing that the elephant bore the king, he
courageously ghts his way to the animal and stabs it from the under-
side. As the massive beast falls, it crushes Eleazar underneath it. The
fearless ghter undertakes this suicidal mission, the author declares, in
order to save his people and win for himself an everlasting name (o vouo
oi c viov) (6.44). 1 Maccabees thus presents men often being driven to
war by aspirations of name and fame. While not altogether disparaging
this ambition, it portrays true glory being awarded to those who are
motivated by higheror at least collectiveconcerns (e.g. the survival
of the people and their laws; see 3.18-22 and esp. Mattathias dying

Namens angestrebt durch Nachruhm, das andere Mal durch Nachfahren. Einmal wird die
Unsterblichkeit durch die geschichtliche Tat erreicht, die in Texten und Erzhlungen
tradiert wird, das andere Mal durch den Sohn und den Sohn des Sohns bzw. die Erbfolge,
in deren Kette der einzelne wieder ersteht bzw. lebendig bleibt. [] Etanareprsentiert
die Hoffnung auf ein Weiterleben in Kindern und im Totenkult der eigenen Familie. []
Gilgame bietetein Identikationsmodell fr den Knig als tatkrftigen Herrscher,
[das] auf andere Menschen bertragbar [ist] (2003: 9-10). Zgolls suggestive contrast
underscores how family and progeny are essentially collective in nature and sharply
opposed to the individualism of personal fame. One must, however, bear in mind that the
Gilgamesh tradition is not monolithic and in certain parts, like the text cited above,
problematizes the name through fame model.

exhortation in 2.64 to be valorous and resolute for the Torah, because
through the Torah will you win glory!). Fame-seeking or name-making
is otherwise presented as a vainglorious and reckless enterprise (cf.
5.67).
26

Nevertheless, 1 Maccabees glories heroic death and presents mortal
sacrice in battle as a legitimate means of name-making. Thus, when
Bacchides and Alcimus march with 20,000 footsoldiers and 2000 cavalry
against Jerusalem, the majority of Judas 3000 men ee in fear. Judas,
however, commands his army of 800 soldiers to attack. In response, they
attempt to dissuade Judas: We lack the strength. Let us save our lives
now Judas in turn proclaims: Far be it from us to do such a thing as
to ee from them. If our time has come, let us die bravely for our
kindred, and leave no cause to question our honor! In the end, Judas
falls in battle and his army is vanquished. Later, at his funeral, all Israel
extols this warriors name, lamenting: How is the mighty fallen, the
savior of Israel! (9.1-22; cf. 2 Sam. 1).
While similar in many ways to what we nd in material from Meso-
potamia and Greece, the portrayal of heroic death in 1 Maccabees lacks a
parallel in transmitted biblical (and later rabbinic) literature. This fact
bears exceptional signicance and offers us an insight into the ethos and
concerns of the authors who shaped this literature.
One of the best-known biblical accounts of making a name on the
battleeld is the DavidGoliath story. While King Sauls apprehensions
resemble those of Enkidu, Davids response contrasts with that of Gilga-
mesh in its condence of not only survival but also triumph (1 Sam.
17.33-37). Moreover, unlike Gilgamesh in the text quoted above, David
does not aspire to make for himself a name, especially one that would
survive a heroic death.
27
Yet even though such is not his intention, the
bravery he demonstrates in slaying the giant for reproaching Israel and
its deity brings him great renown. The conclusion to the account, which
is internally inconsistent, portrays Saul and his general Abner as not
knowing who David is (or more precisely, whose son he is) and taking
an interest in his identity after witnessing how he went out against the

26. For a discussion of some of these passages referring to name-making, see
Adinol 1969: 103-22. (I thank Daniel Schwartz, Jerusalem, for this reference.)
27. See however 17.24-31, which is one of the clearest witnesses to social mobility
and military meritocracy in biblical literature: The successful ghter is promised wealth,
membership in the royal family (the kings daughter), and special (aristocratic?) status for
his patrimonial house.

Philistine. Following his post-battle audience with the king, David goes
from the youngest son of a rather insignicant Bethlehemite family to a
position in the royal court (17.5518.5). It is precisely at this point that
Jonathan begins to love David, dressing him in his own armor and giv-
ing him his own weapons (symbols of a warriors individual identity).
In this way the narrator can show how David, at his rst encounter with
Jonathan, already begins to assume the place of Sauls biologicaland
in this case, dynasticnamesake (Jobling 1986: 20; Exum 1992: 80;
Ackerman 2005: 219-20). A different thread of the narrative tells how
David also begins to assume Sauls own name as paramount warrior.
When the young hero returns from vanquishing the giant, the women
come out of all the towns of Israel and sing his praises: Saul has killed
his thousands, and David his ten-thousands. This name, or tagline, that
David makes for himself with the help of Israels women provokes great
jealousy and fear on the part of Saul (1 Sam. 18.6-13), and it becomes
known word-for-word as far as the Philistine coasts (21.11; 29.4).
28

Many different biblical texts complicate the masculine ambition to
make a name for themselves in battle (see Wright 2012). For example,
the book of Judges employs women for this purpose: rather than promot-
ing the names of warriors through their victory songs, as depicted in the
book of Samuel, women deect honor away from men (e.g. 1.12-15; 4.4-
9, 17-24; 5.24-31; 9.53-57; 11.34-40; chs. 1416). Similarly, the divine
name contends with and counterbalances the names of warriors and
kings. Thus, within the nal form of Joshua, it is the deity who wins
fame: in the older parts of the book, the kings of Canaan hear of
Joshuas military feats (6.27; 9.1; 10.1; 11.1). A later author, however,
constructed a new framework for these stories by prefacing them with

28. A different strand of the narrative presents David as very ambitious and xed on
making a name for himself from the beginning (see, e.g., 1 Sam. 17.24-30; 18.17-30).
This ambition derives, the narrator suggests, from the fact that David is the youngest of
eight sons and hence stood little chance of claiming a substantial inheritance. For this
reason, the youngest sons choose military careers in many societies. As Eliot A. Cohen
observes with respect to modern militaries: It is generally true that the younger and more
aggressive ghtersparticularly those who have never experienced combathanker for
the testing of their skills and for opportunities for glory and promotion (1996: 356).
Tacitus reports the same proclivity among the Germanic tribes in the rst century CE:
Many of the young nobility, when their own community comes to languish in its vigor
by long peace and inactivity, betake themselves through impatience to other tribes which
then prove to be in war [B]y perilous adventures they more quickly blazon their
fame (Germania 14; trans. T. Gordon).

accounts of how all the kings hear about the rst great conquests by
YHWH (2.10-11; 5.1).
29

While biblical authors sanction name-making through martial valor
(after re-contextualizing it), they leave no room for name-making
through heroic death. This fact is remarkable given that commemoration
of the war dead occupies such a central place in public ritual and space in
cultures from antiquity to the present.
30
We would expect, for example,
that the book of Joshua would contain a scene in which the nations
leader exhorts his soldiers not to shirk their duties but to be willing to die
a noble death, as Judas enjoins his men in 1 Maccabees. Likewise, the
biblical authors had many occasions to tell how Israel mourned those
who fell in the wars of conquest, commemorating their names and sacri-
ce for the nation. But astonishingly we nd nothing of the sort.
31

29. From these passages one comes quickly to Exod. 9.16 and 15.3 and a wide array
of texts related to the name of the divine warrior (Isa. 63.12-14; Jer. 14.9; Hab. 3.2; Dan.
9.15, etc.), which anticipate the hypostatization of the divine name in later Jewish,
Samaritan, and Gnostic works (Fossum 1985). Power is also conceived as being syner-
gistic in nature, not only through human collaboration but also through the divine spirit
that seizes the warrior (Gideon, Samson, Saul) directly before deeds of valor. Through
redactions, Gideon is transformed from a great warrior into the least likely candidate
(compare 6.15 with 6.12, 14, 27; 7.14, etc.); likewise his forces are reduced both in size
and military experience (7.2-7). One may also compare how Josh. 1.1-9 presents Torah-
study as Joshuas fundamental and abiding obligation. The same goes for David in the
Psalms and in later Jewish interpretation.
30. The close association between statehood and heroic death is expressed superbly
in the Arc de Triomphe in Paris: underneath this magnicent monument is the Tomb to
the Unknown Soldier. Here, in the most straightforward symbolic form, the principle is
expressed that statehood, and the triumph that it presupposes, is erected on the sacrice
and graves of its citizens.
31. 1 Kgs 11.15 is an inconspicuous exception that proves the rule. The death of the
warrior Uriah is closely tied to Davids name-making (see the connection between
2 Sam. 8.13 to 12.28), and signicantly it is depicted in an account that censures Davids
despotic behavior. The prologue to the Praise of the Ancestors (Ben Sira 44.1-15)
contrasts heroes who left behind a name so that others will declare their praise with
those who left no memory and perished as if they had never been born. Leading the list
of criteria that qualify one for inclusion in the eulogy is military prowess: These ruled in
their kingdoms, and made a name for themselves by their valor. The nal line (v. 15)
calls on the congregation to join the reader praising these gures. For the late Second
Temple period, it witnesses to a possible formal, ritual setting in which the names of
national heroes and warriors were commemorated with the help of texts like the Praise
of the Ancestors. Whether similar ceremonies were celebrated in earlier times is not
known, yet even here we do not have commemoration of heroic death (see explicitly
44.14).

Instead of dying heroic, noble deaths, the warriors venerated in
biblical literature die in peace, with many children to mourn them.
32
For
example, the deaths of the most illustrious gures in the book of Judges,
which memorializes the names of military heroes, either are not told or
are depicted as occurring peacefully in an advanced age. Gideon has one
of the most celebrated names in the book. Although his family is among
the poorest in Manasseh and he is the youngest son (6.15), he rises to the
top in Israelite society because of his leadership and valor on the battle-
eld, and later dies in a good old age (8.32). In contrast, Abimelech,
one of the most denigrated gures in the book, suffers a tragic and
violent death, begging his armor-bearer to nish him off so that he would
not be remembered as dying at the hands of a woman (9.53-54). The
narrative takes a drastic turn after this episode. In keeping with the
announcement in 10.13, Jephthah does not deliver/save Israel (cf. also
10.1 with 12.8-15); he also has no children except a daughter (11.34),
whom he sacrices in order to secure victory and become the paramount
of Gilead.
33

The book presents a very ambivalent image of the nal judge,
Samson, who despite his extraordinary sexual exploits lacks children,
and whose martial feats are motivated more by personal vanity than by
the collective good. His nal moment is his most memorable: out of
revenge for what the Philistines did to his eyes, he pleads for divine
strength one last time in order to bring the roof down on the party. This
one example of noble death in the Bible is notably found in an account
that was most likely inuenced by Aegean mythology, as most scholars
agree. Yet it is important to note that Samsons death is presented as
being of real pragmatic value (and not tragic in the strict sense of the
term): Those he killed in his death were more than he killed in his life
(16.30). This nal feat entitles him to an honorable burial (16.31).
Whereas Gilgamesh wishes to make a name for himself in death at the
hands of a great and worthy opponent, Samson makes a name for himself

32. The ideal of living a long life is, to be sure, not unique to biblical literature. It is,
for example, attested often in the biographies of career soldiers from the Egyptian New
Kingdom. Thus Ahmose Pen Nekhbet and Ahmose son Ebana both claim to have
attained a good old age (Lichtheim 1976: 11-24).
33. Compare the durations in vv. 8-15 with those in 3.11, 30; 8.32; 10.1-5all before
YHWHs declaration in 10.13). Jephthah is said to have been buried in the towns of
Gilead (12.7). The rabbis interpreted this plurality as meaning that Israel, in their rage
against Jephthah, cut up his corpse and dispersed the pieces throughout Gilead.

in death that is accompanied by great losses for his enemies and thus
great gains for his people dwelling in their land. The difference between
this suicide in the Philistine banquet hall and the suicide at Masada
centuries later is apparent: in contrast to Samsons utilitarian death,
Masada represents collective death as an alternative to servitude (see the
discussion below).
In addition to commemorating heroes, The Names of Davids
Warriors in 2 Samuel 23 contains several narrative portions that describe
how various gures acquired their fame and standing. Signicantly, there
are no accounts of heroic deaths. Instead, we are treated to vignettes
portraying remarkable events from the daily lives of great warriors and
how they made names for themselves through valorous feats (e.g.
vv. 20-23).
34

Perhaps the most famous battleeld death in the Bible is that of Saul
on Mt Gilboa.
35
The lament David utters at the news of this death (2 Sam.
1.17-27) may be compared to the warrior laments that stand at the
beginning of the formation of the Gilgamesh tradition. Similarly, the
emphasis on the person of Jonathan brings to mind the scenes of Achilles
and Gilgamesh mourning the deaths of their companions, and the
mourning David performs for these warriors and the others who fell by
the sword (1.12) is on the surface level similar to the commemoration of
fallen soldiers by kings, discussed above. Yet one cannot miss the deep
disparity between these texts: the lament does not praise these warriors
for bravely sacricing their lives for the common welfare. Instead,
it presents their deaths as completely tragic, without any redeeming
esthetic value. The fatalities are shameful: Tell it not in Gath, nor pro-
claim it on the streets of Ashkelon (1.20). To make their point even
clearer, the biblical authors contextualized the lament within a narrative
that presents Saul dying in the same wretched manner as Israels rst

34. A paragraph of this chapter (vv. 14-17) tells of an occasion when Davids three
greatest ghters subjected themselves to mortal danger by breaking through the Philistine
lines and bringing some of the water back to David. David refuses to drink it and pours it
out as a libation to the deity, explaining: Is this not the blood of the men who went at
peril to their very lives? (v. 17). The passage, which may have been interpolated into the
list of names, serves to counterbalance the glorication of what appear to be conceited or
otherwise pointless exploits (such as jumping into a pit with a lion on a snowy day,
v. 20).
35. 1 Sam. 31.4-7; 2 Sam. 1.1-10, as well as prominently in 1 Chron. 10; see
Knoppers 2006. For an intriguing treatment of this account in relation to Masada,
Custers Last Stand, and other myths of death, see Rosenberg 1974.

failed king, Abimelech. Both petition their arms-bearers for a coup de
grce. The authors have also placed this dirge on the lips of one who will
not only witness greater success in actually defeating the enemy, but will
also die as an old man after a long and very full life (see the description
of his nal days in 1 Kgs 1.1-4).
36
The mourning that David performs
is comparable to that of Jeremiah on the behalf of the fallen Josiah
(2 Chron. 35.20-25); for both, as for the author of the Deuteronomistic
History (2 Kgs 23.29-30), his death is seen as an embarrassing loss, not
noble sacrice.
37

By creating conditions for Israelite soldiers to produce progeny before
performing military service, the Deuteronomic Code sets forth legal
institutions that obviate the need for royal commemoration of the war
dead. One of these laws, Deut. 24.5, applies to the man who takes a new
wife. He is not to go out with the army or be charged with any military
duty; he shall be exempt (; see 1 Kgs 15.22) for one year Two
reasons are provided for the ruling: for the sake of his household
() and so that he make happy () the wife he has taken. While
house is often interchangeable with name in biblical and cognate
literatures, happy-making is likely a euphemism for impregnation.
38

Another law demands a draft deferral for anyone who had betrothed a
woman yet had not married her, lest he die in battle and another marry
her (Deut. 20.7). This clause, and the two immediately preceding it,
address the problem of name perpetuation faced by the male Israelite
going off to war. The provisions establish an Israelites full legal claim
over house, vineyard and wife so that his name would be preserved in the
event that he is killed in battle.
39
In addition to a wife, ones house and

36. David is signicantly presented as smiting Amalek, which Saul had failed to do
(1 Sam. 15), at the very moment that the latter dies his awful death (2 Sam. 1.1 when
David had returned from defeating the Amalekites) and an Amalekite gives Saul his
coup de grce (v. 13).
37. Biblical scholarship has yet to do justice not only to the great overlap between
the heroic tradition (specically as represented in the Greek sources) and biblical
literature, but above all the great chasm separating them on the point discussed here.
Stanley Issers work (2003) as well of that Greg Mobley (2005 and 2006) treat various
aspects of biblical heroic literature with many important insights. Yet they fail to note the
fundamental rejection of heroic death in this literature.
38. For house and name, see, e.g., 2 Sam. 7. Compare the English and German
expressions for pregnant: happy/felicitous state and im glcklichen Umstand.
39. According to a leading scholarly interpretation, the law is concerned for the
psychological conditions of the soldier: the prospect of another man taking control of a

land represented indispensable legal and physical conditions for the
perpetuation of a family name (see, e.g., Ruth 4). The acts of conse-
crating house and vineyard are analogous to consummating a marriage
inasmuch as they legally rename them (i.e. secure possession of
them).
40
One may read these laws in tandem with the provisions for
levirate marriage, the purpose of which is to ensure that a name will be
perpetuated () and not be blotted out from Israel (Deut. 25.5-
10). Talmudic sources and medieval Jewish commentators not only
connect this law to the former two (see, e.g., Da!at Zekeinim mi-Ba!alei
ha-Tosafot to Deut. 24.5), but also underscore its applicability for war
casualties. If a man had failed to reproduce before going to battle and
happened to die in battle, the institution of levirate marriage makes it
possible that he could still perpetuate his name.
41

These three laws reect a general ethos in the ancient Near East to
which various texts, discussed above, witness.
42
Yet Deuteronomy does
not merely condone a general ethos or convention that grants furlough
for the purpose of procreation; it legislates it. The need for a king to

soldiers property (before he had a chance to consummate his marriage or consecrate his
house and vineyard) would adversely affect his performance on the battleeld. See
scholars listed in de Bruin 1999: 24. This opinion is attested already in Rashi, and more
explicitly in the Gur Aryeh ad loc.
40. One may compare these texts to the concern with property rights and inheritance
of soldiers vis--vis their wives and sons in the Hammurabi Code (see esp. 27-29).
According to the Deuteronomic Code, those whose names and property rights are to be
protected include all of Israels families.
41. Notably, levirate marriage is often practiced in non-Western societies that have
been plagued for sustained periods by military conicts and that as a result must deal
with a high percentage of widows (Beswick 2004: 211-12). In addition to expressing an
enduring legal principle with relevance to civilian contexts, the biblical law would have
had value for ancient military morale, as underscored in rabbinic interpretation: it creates
conditions in which members of Israels citizen-army could ght in a more focused
manner and take greater risks by knowing that their name would not be extinguished if
they were to fall in the line of duty.
42. That all these laws are found in the Deuteronomic Code, and that this same work
is concerned with strangers (refugees), orphans, and widows (social groups that usually
make themselves felt particularly during and after war), demonstrates the extent to which
the Code emerged in response to a sustained period of military conict. To be sure, these
laws do not mirror how the military in ancient Israel or Judah actually functioned. It is
unlikely that they were ever actually enforced since they presuppose an ideal situation in
which the whole nation ghts together without a professional standing army. It is also
highly doubtful that any military ofcer in the ancient Near East ever consulted a law
book when establishing rules and policies.

commemorate his fallen soldiers is thereby effectively eliminated; the
law assumes the role of the king (cf. Levinson 2001 and 2006). In this
way, Deuteronomy provides formal legal support for the emergence of a
true peoples army rather than a professional standing force serving a
king.
43

The making of a name through procreation is in the interest not only
of individual families but also of a peopleespecially a small people
concerned with the survival of their name. Indeed, procreation in prepa-
ration for war is often ofcially fostered through state incentives.
44
As a
consequence, one has often evaluated the extensive attention devoted to
fertility in biblical literature primarily in relation to (pre-state and state)
realities during the Iron Age.
45
While state-sponsored fertility and repro-
ductive politics deserve consideration, they fail to account fully for the
importance of procreation in the Bible. The combination of the great
emphasis on procreation and the absence of any glorication of heroic
death, which gures so prominently in the public culture of states,
suggests that, rather than statehood, it was the loss of statehood and
conditions of defeat that best explain the primacy assigned to procreation
in the Bible and its reticence to celebrate heroic death.
The way in which progeny and procreation can replace an army and
combat is illustrated in a variety of biblical and post-biblical texts. For
instance, the rst chapter of Exodus presents the Egyptian king
oppressing the Israelites out of fear that, in the event of war, they may
increase and join our enemies and ght against us (v. 10). His nal
solution is to command the Hebrew midwives to destroy the male infants
and thereby thwart the danger posed by the lively Hebrew women.
46

43. After all, Deuteronomy assigns no military role whatsoever to the king; in the
place of a standing army ghting in the employ of a particular ruler (as in Samuel, Kings
and Chronicles), this book (together with the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges) presents a
people ghting for its own future under the direct command of the deity.
44. Often pressure by governments to procreate in wartime results in a reduction of
womanhood to motherhood. For ancient Greece, see Loraux 1981. For US history,
Theodore Roosevelt compared, in a speech delivered on 10 March 1908, the woman who
shirks her duty to bear children, and who must be condemned and despised, to the
man who fears to do his duty in battle when his country calls him. For the pressure on
men as well, see texts like Ps. 127.3-5.
45. See, e.g., Meyers 1983 and Frymer-Kensky 1977, and more recently, with
reference to the Judahite pillar-gurines, Byrne 2004. (For a critique of Byrnes
interpretation, see Darby 2011.)
46. The text describes the bravery (and trickery; Propp 1999: 142) of the God-
fearing midwives. Their acts to ensure the survival of Israels name are divinely rewarded

Likewise, in Genesis 3233 the wives and numerous children of Jacob
stand over against Esau and his 400 warriors. The book of Ruth imagines
an alternative society to that depicted in Judges: war is completely
absent, Israel is sustained by name-making through offspring, and a
is not a warrior but rather a man of noble virtue and social status,
who plays a key role in this decisive act of procreation.
Yet some of the richest material is found in the midrashim related to
King Og of Bashan. This fearsome giant and leader of massive armies
attends the feast that Abraham prepared for the weaning of Isaac. He had
previously insisted that Abraham would not succeed in producing a son.
47

Therefore, the party guests ask him what he has to say now that Isaac had
been born. Og replies that the youth does not qualify as a real descendant
since he could squash him with one nger. In punishment for his con-
tempt of Abrahams sole descendant, Og lives to see not only the seventy
sons of Jacob in the court of the Pharaoh (Deut. R. 1.22) but also a
myriad of Israelites wipe out his name in battle (Gen. R. 53.14; see they
smote him and his sons and all his people until there was none left of him
remaining in Num. 21.35). By virtue of their sheer numbers, Israel could
defeat the giant Og and his superior military forces; and these numbers
are due originally to a single act of reproduction.
The contrast between Isaac and the formidable Og reminds one of the
competition between the young David and the fearsome Goliath. Yet
whereas the Goliath tradition afrms the role of clever tactics and
fearless condence in divine assistance, the Og tradition expresses the
importance of the act of procreation and demographic growth.
48
Within
the Pentateuch, such procreation is the most basic and primary means of
Israels existence not only in that it produces the nation in the rst place,
but also in that it represents a survival strategy for a people without a
state and standing army.
49

with houses being built for them. This account is situated on the narrative seams
connecting the account of the birth of the nation through acts of procreation in the book
of Genesis to the account of the territorial conquest in ExodusJoshua. On midwives, see
now Meyers 2005: 40-42.
47. On Abrahams virility in Gen. 15.2-4, see b. Yeb. 65a; Num. R. 10.5, as well as
Baskin 2002; Callaway 1986; J. Cohen 1989 and Ska 2009.
48. On the relationship of the promise to Abraham to the promise to David, see
Wright 2012, especially n. 47.
49. The rst commandment of in Gen 1.22 is repeated three times after the
ood (Gen 8.17; 9.1, 7); in contrast, the Atraasis epic presents the ood as a population-
control measure (Frymer-Kensky 1977). The emergence of names such as Amichai

4. Conclusions

In this article I have studied name-making in relation to martial prowess,
heroic death, and procreation. My aim has been to show that the biblical
authors valorize name-making through martial valor, yet cast aspersions
on the glorication of heroic death, emphasizing in its stead procrea-
tion.
50
These moves on the part of the biblical authors call into question
the tendency in much of contemporary scholarship to identify statist
concerns as the primary catalyst for the composition of the Bible. It is the
defeat of the state that can best account for the emphasis on reproduction
and the concomitant reticence to extol wartime sacrice. While statist
concerns may have precipitated the composition of the Bibles sources,
what propelled the redaction and reception of these sources was an
interest in creating a form of peoplehood that can withstand the loss of
statehood.
51

Now admittedly, Israels kingslike any state government, ancient or
modernwould have been keen to promote population growth. Yet
Israels kings would have also been eager to petition their men and boys
to offer themselves up dutifully on the battleeld as a seless sacrice

witnesses to a consciousness of individual procreation as a contribution to national
survival; among the contemporary generation, the name is often borne by children born
after the Yom Kippur war.
50. Warriors often personify and embody collective cultural identities, because by
nature they, as individuals, test the values and push the limits of their respective societies.
One must, however, not allow the collective implications of the warriors to obfuscate the
fact that the biblical authors still present them as individuals with distinctive personalities
and characteristics. Indeed, the texts we have touched on here resist a hermeneutic that
would permit these gures, with all of their colorful personal traits, to forfeit their
individuality and become mere nameless soldiers in the hosts of Israel. The individual
martial skills and capacities for violence of these men are not demonized; rather, they are
shown to be of real benet for the collective good. Inasmuch as they successfully lead
their people into battle and contribute to their general welfare, these warriors make a
name for themselves that the biblical authors proudly extol. Much stills needs to be done
in the way of comparison of warriors as cultural representatives, but see in the meantime
the discussion provided by Yadin 2004 and comparative work by Ackerman 2005.
51. As for factors in the Iron Age that paved way for the biblical authors, chief
among them is the fragility of Israels and Judahs existence. Israel and Judah were
located at the crossroads of great ancient empires, and defeat loomed large on the horizon
for Judah during the century leading up to its conquest (Wright 2009). These conditions
required its leaders either to forge alliances with other states or to negotiate with military
superpowers.

for the sake of military triumph, just as they would expect women to
produce strong soldiers and be willing to send off their sons, husbands,
and brothers to die in battle. In contrast, the biblical authors present
procreation as a survival strategy for people without a king and army.
Reproduction and progeny no longer serve the raisons dtat but the
raisons de la Nation.
Similarly, one can point to many examples of peoples who are land-
less or bereft of state sovereignty commemorating heroes who have
sacriced their lives for national aspirations. These celebrations of
martyrdom express the yearning for, and represent concrete steps toward,
statehood. Homage to the war dead is, to be sure, an indispensable com-
ponent of statehood; those who risk their lives in defense of the state
must be assured that their names will be venerated in perpetuity. Hence,
it is only natural that commemoration of fallen soldiers and the hallow-
ing of heroic sacrice accompany the establishment of many states.
52
The
fact that the Bible (with the possible exception of the account of
Samsons death, yet in clear contrast to the depictions in 1 Maccabees)
does not celebrate battleeld death reveals that this corpus of literature is
more about the collective preservation of a militarily impoverished
people than the re-establishment of territorial sovereignty.
The predilection for procreation over heroic death relates to the
fundamental difference between state and nation ( and ).
Pericles delivered his famous funeral oration extolling heroic death after
the rst year of the Peloponnesian War (see above). With triumph in
sight, he beckoned the citizens of Athens to keep up the ght. In contrast,

52. Thus, an iteration or variation of Horaces dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
(see below) appears in the founding histories of many states, whether it be the USA
(Nathan Hale: I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country) or modern
Israel (Joseph Trumpeldor: , It is good to die for our country!, to
which the controversial and prize-winning Israeli lm Late Summer Blues [1987, directed
by Renen Schorr] responds). See Zerubavel 1995 and, from the perspective of Jewish
law, Levey 1987. Unfortunately, Levey not only fails to note the absence of any cult of
the war dead or martial sacrice, but he also conates ghting for and dying for the
state (p. 181). As Michael Walzer pointed out, Fightingis not the same thing as dying
(Walzer 1970: 82). A man who dies for the state defeats his only purpose in forming the
state: war is the failure of politics (p. 82). Walzers analyses continue to be the most
important in political theory on the irony (or contradiction) of dying for the state. For the
discontinuities that accompanied the rise of rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the
state and the necessary legal and institutional changes that accompany the re-
establishment of a Jewish state, see most recently Gordon and Levy 2011.

the Bible emerged when defeat was on the horizon, or when Israels and
Judahs hopes of military resistance had been vanquished. Written in a
time when victory was no longer a possibility, and expressing dis-
approbation of various attempts to reestablish a monarchy (during the
Persian and Hellenistic periods), the Bible, in its transmitted forms,
champions an unspectacular, pragmatic survival strategy. It consists of
the basic activities of procreation (and education), of reshaping Am
Yisrael so that its members could surmount the cataclysmic collapse of
the state.
The rabbis of the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods are even more
deliberate in their repudiation of heroic death. Thus, they did not transmit
1 Maccabees, with its statist ideals of noble death. Similarly, the events
at Masada are not even mentioned in the Talmud. The reason for this
silence is likely that the rabbis, if they knew about Masada at all (Cohen
1982), found any glorication of a group that would commit mass
suicide before compromising territorial sovereignty counterproductive to
their own project of peoplehood.
53
They therefore constructed counter-
myths like Yavneh that emphasize both negotiation with the empire and
education.
54

53. Note the wording of the inuential speech attributed by Josephus to Eleazer:
Since we, long ago, my generous friends, resolved never to be servants to the Romans,
nor to any other than to God himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind, the
time is now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice. And let us not at
this time bring a reproach upon ourselves for self-contradiction, while we formerly would
not undergo slavery, though it were then without danger, but must now, together with
slavery, choose such punishments also as are intolerable [A]nd I cannot but esteem it
as a favor that God hath granted us, that it is still in our power to die bravely, and in a
state of freedom, which hath not been the case of others, who were conquered unexpect-
edly. It is very plain that we shall be taken within a days time; but it is still an eligible
thing to die after a glorious manner, together with our dearest friends (Ant. 7.6, trans.
W. Whiston).
54. See Boyarin 1997 and 1999. The value of Masada as symbol for the state (rather
than for communities seeking an existence in the Diaspora) can be witnessed in
contemporary Israel, where the Israeli army continues to celebrate the ceremonies for the
completion of basic training there; see the chapter Masada and the Meaning of Death in
Zerubavel 1995. However, the symbolic power of this place is due not to long-standing
tradition but rather to a rediscovery and reconstruction in modern times; the project was
greatly bolstered by the poem Masada composed by Isaac Lamdan in the 1920s and
later by excavations conducted by the general and archeologist Yigael Yadin.

One may compare this reaction to that of biblical authors, whose work
set a precedent for the efforts of the rabbis.
55
The book of Jeremiah
ascribes much of the responsibility for the catastrophe in 587 BCE to a
political faction in Jerusalem who insisted on violently resisting any
Babylonian encroachment on Judean sovereignty. What this faction
achieved, the reader learns from this book, was only the destruction of
the Temple and the forfeiture of the right to dwell in the Land.
56
It is
against this backdrop that one may better understand the reticence of
other biblical authors to commemorate the war dead and glorify heroic
death. By extolling martial sacrice, their writings would have bolstered
the willingness of some to lay down their lives in acts of resistance to
imperial rule, thereby impeding the reconstruction under new political
realities that the biblical authors promoted.
Given the challenges of their time, the authors who were responsible
for the transmitted shape(s) of biblical literature, like the rabbis who came
after them, would have undoubtedly disdained the attitude expressed in
Horaces oft-quoted line: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (How
sweet and beautiful it is to die for the fatherland, Odes III.2.13). Instead,
they would have been much more likely to join the young Bertolt Brecht
in responding: Tis sweeter and more beautiful to live for ones country.
57

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