From 1923 to 1933, the Chicago Field Museum and the University of Oxford conducted archaeological excavations at the site of Kish, located on the floodplain of the Euphrates River in modern Iraq approximately 80 kilometers south of Baghdad. Over the course of ten years of work, the expedition explored seventeen different mounds both inside and outside the ancient boundaries of Kish. The finds were divided at the end of each season, with the Iraq Museum retaining half of the objects and any one-of-a-kind items and the two excavating institutions splitting the remainder. Beginning in 2004, the Field Museum undertook a reevaluation of its Kish holdings. To highlight new research and insights into the material culture from Kish and our understanding of the importance of the site to Mesopotamian archaeology, the Field Museum held a symposium in 2008 that brought together an international group of scholars who presented papers on various aspects of the ancient city. This volume, which grew out of that symposium, presents a wide array of studies on the excavated material remains from Kish, including cuneiform texts, animal figurines, human remains, lithics, figural stucco wall decorations, and more.

This volume is an interdisciplinary investigation and contextualization of the various concepts of divine union in the private and public sphere of the Greek and Near Eastern worlds.

An ever-growing number of Christians are becoming more and more uncomfortable with the tenets of the church, the stories of the Bible, and the church’s worldview. Statistics show that these feelings easily escalate into a crisis of faith, and for now their predicament is being resolved by leaving the church. This book will certainly help dealing with the crisis by showing that the language of faith is built by a web of metaphors taken from the Ancient Near East. We do not need to take biblical language literally, but as parables for human values in need to be assessed critically.

An unprecedented undertaking by academics reflecting an extraordinary vision of world history, this landmark multivolume encyclopedia focuses on specific themes of human development across cultures era by era, providing the most in-depth, expansive presentation available of the development of humanity from a global perspective. Well-known and widely respected historians worked together to create and guide the project in order to offer the most up-to-date visions available. A monumental undertaking. A stunning academic achievement. ABC-CLIO's World History Encyclopedia is the first comprehensive work to take a large-scale thematic look at the human species worldwide. Comprised of 21 volumes covering 9 eras, an introductory volume, and an index, it charts the extraordinary journey of humankind, revealing crucial connections among civilizations in different regions through the ages. Within each era, the encyclopedia highlights pivotal interactions and exchanges among cultures within eight broad thematic categories: population and environment, society and culture, migration and travel, politics and statecraft, economics and trade, conflict and cooperation, thought and religion, science and technology. Aligned to national history standards and packed with images, primary resources, current citations, and extensive teaching and learning support, the World History Encyclopedia gives students, educators, researchers, and interested general readers a means of navigating the broad sweep of history unlike any ever published.

Messiah ben Joseph, the slain Galilean messiah of the rabbis, is the most enigmatic figure in Rabbinic Judaism and a key topic in Jewish-Christian debate. A deeper understanding of him has profound implications for all who love the Bible. This book is the largest ever written about him, and the first ever in English. It proposes that he is not a rabbinic invention at all, but that his origins lie in the oldest strata of the Bible. We follow him from his origins in the book of Genesis, through the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Targums, the New Testament and Church Fathers, the Talmud, the homiletic, exegetic, and apocalyptic midrashim, the Zohar, and the medieval rabbis, down to modern times. This second edition (2013) of the book extends the first edition (2016) by 23 pages. This immensely valuable monograph by David Mitchell offers a comprehensive account of Messiah ben Joseph from biblical times right through to the early modern period. Mitchell presents his case with great clarity and conviction. For that reason alone the volume is highly valuable, but also for its compendium and commentary contributions that will make it easier for Mitchell’s readers to engage with him as an undoubted authority on this fascinating topic. Professor Robert Gordon, Emeritus Regius Professor of Hebrew, University of Cambridge David Mitchell demonstrates that the Messiah ben Joseph—who dies before the appearance of the conquering, nationalistic Messiah ben David—is a product not of the first centuries C.E. but of earliest Judaic messianic thinking. Mitchell convincingly details Messiah ben Joseph’s emergence as early as the Pentateuch, and for the first time presents every relevant text, from the Psalms and Prophets, through the Babylonian Talmud, and including medieval Jewish writings. Critically acute and authoritative, this study is essential to any future evaluation of the foundations of Jewish and Christian messianic thinking. Alan Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor of Judaic Studies, The College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA You're going to learn about some trajectories here that I guarantee you've never heard before. I think this is a fair statement: When you hit something like this, it's one of those wake-up calls. Why is this not taught? This is an area of scholarship that is deeply-neglected. It will help you address the charge that the New Testament is fundamentally disconnected from the Old. When I came across this book I had one of these moments, like "How did we miss this?" And "Why did we miss this?" Was it an accident or was it intentional? I recommend you buy this book. Dr Michael S. Heiser. Author, The Unseen Realm. Mitchell's book is a landmark work in many ways, and he is to be commended for producing the most comprehensive collection and discussion of texts on Messiah ben Joseph in any language to date. His thesis that the concept of Messiah ben Joseph was derived directly from the biblical texts (as opposed to, e.g, a response to the failed revolt of Bar Kochba) demands attention. At the same time, Mitchell challenges us to look afresh at Deut. 33:17, among others that point to the importance of Joseph, while reexamining rabbinic interpretation of these texts. So, overall, a very important volume, now to be read side by side with Martha Himmelfarb's just published Jewish Messiahs in a Christian Empire, which offers a different understanding of some of the key texts. Dr Michael L. Brown, Talk Show Host Some scholars believe the tradition of the suffering Messiah was a Jewish reaction to Bar Kochba's failed uprising in AD 132-135. But Mitchell shows that the thought was already considerably older. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the pseudepigrapha are discussed in detail. The author sees pointers even in the first books of the Bible. Mitchell defends his case well. Prof. Dr M.-J. Paul, Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven.

God’s world was created “very good,” Genesis chapter 1 tells us, and in this book Jon Garvey rediscovers the truth, known to the Church for its first 1,500 years but largely forgotten now, that the fall of mankind did not lessen that goodness. The natural creation does not require any apologies or excuses, but rather celebration and praise. The author’s re-examination of the scriptural evidence, the writings of two millennia of Christian theologians, and the physical evidence of the world itself lead to the conclusion that we, both as Christians and as modern Westerners, have badly misunderstood our world. Restoring a truer vision of the goodness of the present creation can transform our own lives, sharpen the ministry of the church to the world of both people and nature, and give us a better understanding of what God always intended to bring about through Christ in the age to come.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth" is familiar to most as the first verse in the Bible. It describes the beginning of God's creation. It could be argued that first He created the angels and other beings that inhabited the third heaven with Him. But there is no argument among theologians that the angelic host was indeed created. The author sets forth the firstborn of that creation as Helel ben Shachar, which translates as Shining One, son of the dawn (or son of the Light). It is here between the Light (Jesus) and Helel ben Shachar (ultimately Lucifer) that the conflict of conflicts arises. It is some of the particulars thereof wherein the author believes that some of the mysteries of the universe and thus the Bible can be found. In the Unseen War, the author digs in depth into the questions of what has caused the constant war, strife, and destruction on the planet Earth and throughout the solar system and Galaxy. Why is there such a dichotomy between the things that science bears witness to and what the Bible bears witness to? Could there be some mistranslation on both sides? As an engineer, he takes a scientific view of the planet, solar system, and the universe and puts great stock in scientific discovery. But as a Christian, he believes that the Bible is not only factual but inherently and infallibly factual. The Unseen War, as discussed in this book, as it spans the eons, the ages, and space, relates to the great mysteries of the faith. Many of them can be found there, in that conflict, which is yet to end.

Previous research on Mesopotamian Flood traditions tended to focus on a few textual sources. How the traditions originated and developed as a whole has not been seriously investigated. By systematically examining a large body of relevant cuneiform sources of diverse genres from the Early Dynastic III period (ca. 2600-2350 B.C.) to the end of the first millennium B.C., this book observes that it is during the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600) and classical attestations of the Flood traditions are found. On linguistic, conceptual and literary-historical grounds, the book argues that the Flood traditions emerged relatively late in Sumerian traditions. It traces different evolutionary stages of the Flood traditions, from the emergence of the Flood motif within the socio-political and cultural contexts of the early Isin dynasty (ca. 2017-1896 B.C.), to the diverse mythological representations of the motif in literary traditions, to the historicisation of the motif in chronography, and finally to the interactions between various strands of the Flood traditions and other Mesopotamian literary traditions, such as Sumerian and Babylonian compositions about Gilgames. By uncovering the processes through which the Flood traditions were constructed, the book offers a valuable case study on the complex and dynamic relationship between myth-making, the development of literature, the rise of historical consciousness and historiography, and socio-political circumstances in the ancient world. The origins and development of the Flood traditions examined in the book, furthermore, represent one of the best documented examples illustrating the continuities and changes in Mesopotamian intellectual, linguistic, literary, socio-political and religious history over the course of two and a half millennia.

The question is this, what do we accept as the truth of what we believe in? We take many things by mere faith, but is faith the right path in putting our trust in a matter just because someone says so? Do we dig into a matter with an open mind rather than prejudice and influences from others as we were growing up? Does our relationship with others influence our perception of what is truth and what is not the truth? Do we tend to accept something as truth because we don't have time or resources to check it out? Or is it because of an emphatic speech by a cleric that proclaims the Bible is "without error" when in fact outside sources point to errors in dates, events, and even interpretation, yet we close our eyes and ears because we ask, "How can this be?" Many times the excuse is made that if so many people believe in a particular biblical statement or condition, then it can't be wrong! Or can it? Debate on biblical issues end up boggling the general populous, and many just walk away from it with disgust, won't deal with it, or dogmatically hold a position of biblical inerrancy. This brings us down to getting into the trenches of discovering the truth, as ugly and contentious it may seem. This is especially true when ufology is brought into the picture, especially when the topic of God or a God is introduced and examined in the light of various scientific disciplines.

The canonical shape of the Hebrew Bible reveals the footprints of the communities of faith that formed that literature. Nancy deClaisse-Walford explores the process by which the postexilic community selected, appropriated, and shaped various psalms into the Hebrew Psalter. The Psalter, she concludes, tells its own story of the history of ancient Israel and gives its shaping community and subsequent believing communities a rationale for continued existence as a people with God as their king.