The Dialogue between a Man and His God is the earliest known text to address the answer to the question of why a god permits evil, or

theodicy In the philosophy of religion, a theodicy (; meaning 'vindication of God', from Ancient Greek θεός ''theos'', "god" and δίκη ''dikē'', "justice") is an argument that attempts to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all powe ...

, a reflection on human suffering. It is a piece of

Wisdom Literature Wisdom literature is a genre of literature common in the ancient Near East. It consists of statements by sages and the wise that offer teachings about divinity and virtue. Although this genre uses techniques of traditional oral storytelling, i ...

extant on a single clay

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

tablet written in Akkadian and attributed to Kalbanum, on the last line, an individual otherwise unknown. It is dated to the latter part of the

Old Babylonian period The Old Babylonian Empire, or First Babylonian Empire, is dated to , and comes after the end of Sumerian power with the destruction of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the subsequent Isin-Larsa period. The chronology of the first dynasty of Babyloni ...

, around the reign of

Ammi-Ditana Ammi-Ditana was a king of Babylon who reigned from 1683–1640s BC. He was preceded by Abi-Eshuh. Year-names survive for the first 37 years of his reign, plus fragments for a few possible additional years. His reign was a largely peaceful one; ...

(reigned 1683–1640s BC) according to Lambert, and is currently housed in the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

Museum, accession number AO 4462. It is of unknown provenance as it was purchased from an antiquities dealer by the Museum in 1906. It shares much of its style with an earlier Sumerian work, “Man and His God”, a penitential prayer of the

Ur III The Third Dynasty of Ur or Ur III was a Sumerian dynasty based in the city of Ur in the 22nd and 21st centuries BC (middle chronology). For a short period they were the preeminent power in Mesopotamia and their realm is sometimes referred to by ...

period.

The text

With sixty-nine lines arranged in ten

strophe A strophe () is a poetic term originally referring to the first part of the ode in Ancient Greek tragedy, followed by the antistrophe and epode. The term has been extended to also mean a structural division of a poem containing stanzas of var ...

s, each separated by a horizontal line, the work is structured around a dialogue between two people, one of whom has lost favor with both his lord and his personal god, resulting in his intense suffering from an undisclosed illness. The text is difficult and fragmentary, especially in the middle leading to debate among scholars about its meaning and purpose. The opening line has been rendered as “a man weeps for a friend to his god” or, alternatively, “a young man was imploring his god as a friend”. He protests his innocence, “the wrong I did I do not know!”, and holds his god responsible for his condition. He continues his lament and cries for deliverance in a sufferer's prayer. At the end, the text switches to a third-person narrator who relates the man's pleas did not go unheeded and that his god responded to his entreaties with his deliverance from his afflictions, with the proviso “you must never till the end of time forget

our Our or OUR may refer to: * The possessive form of " we" Places * Our (river), in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany * Our, Belgium, a village in Belgium * Our, Jura, a commune in France Other uses * Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), a governm ...

god”, a “

happy ending A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which there is a positive outcome for the protagonist or protagonists, and in which this is to be considered a favourable outcome. In storylines where the protagonists are in phy ...

”

framing device A frame story (also known as a frame tale, frame narrative, sandwich narrative, or intercalation) is a literary technique that serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, where an introductory or main narrative sets the stage either fo ...

which also appears in other works of this genre. note 483.

Translation

Primary publications

* pl. vii and viii (text) * (with collations) * * * edition, with collations * (translation) *

External links

Dialogue between a Man and His God a
CDLI

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dialogue between a Man and His God 17th-century BC literature 1906 archaeological discoveries Akkadian literature Ancient Near East wisdom literature Clay tablets First Babylonian Empire Near Eastern and Middle Eastern antiquities in the Louvre Theodicy