Hymn of the Righteous Sufferer

Impact

Since there are no contemporaneous references, it is unclear what impact, if any, the Hymn of the Righteous Sufferer may have had during its time. When it was first translated in the 1950s, some scholars struggled to make connections with the biblical book of Job, thinking that the Babylonian sufferer may have been the model for Job. Indeed, the “righteous sufferer” is commonly referred to as the “Babylonian Job” because both suffered the loss of social position and health, only to have them restored by their respective gods. Similar efforts were also made to historically connect the Mesopotamian creation story known as the Enuma Elish and the Mesopotamian flood story Atrahasis with events occurring in the Old Testament. This approach has fallen out of favor. Modern scholars are unlikely to use such ancient documents to bolster fundamentalist Judeo-Christian history; instead of using one story to support any one particular belief, they evaluate the stories comparatively, tracing story lines and patterns and determining how they relate to each other. People study these stories today to learn about Mesopotamian beliefs and practices and how they fit into the rich cultural world of the Middle East. By studying the specific language usage, one learns about the transmission of stories throughout the Neo-Assryian Empire. As new scholarship evolves, more will be learned about how this story, and others like it, were used in their own time; in particular with respect to the Hymn of the Righteous Sufferer, historians hope that new scholarship will shed more light on the configuration of the fourth tablet.