English translation of Assyrian royal inscriptions.

In this companion volume to his bestselling Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? Lester L. Grabbe provides the background history of the main ancient Near Eastern peoples and empires: Babylonia, Assyria, Urartu, Hittites, Amorites, Egyptians. Grabbe's focus is on Palestine/Canaan and covers the early second millennium, including the Middle Bronze Age and the Second Intermediate Period and Hyksos rule of Egypt. Grabbe also addresses the question of a 'patriarchal period'. The main focus of the book is on the second half of the second millennium: Late Bronze and early Iron Age, the Egyptian New Kingdom, the Amarna letters, the Sea Peoples, the question of 'the exodus', the early settlements in the hill country of Palestine, and the first mention of Israel in the Merenptah inscription. Archaeology and the contribution of the social sciences both feature heavily, as does inscriptional and iconographic material. As such this volume provides a fascinating portrayal of ancient Israel and this definitive work by one of the world's leading biblical historians will be of interest to all students and scholars of biblical history.

Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (SANER) is a peer-reviewed series devoted to the publication of monographs pertaining to all aspects of the history, culture, literature, religion, art, and archaeology of the Ancient Near East, from the earliest historical periods to Late Antiquity. The aim of this series is to present in-depth studies of the written and material records left by the civilizations and cultures that populated the various areas of the Ancient Near East: Anatolia, Arabia, Egypt, Iran, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Syria. Thus, SANER is open to all sorts of works that have something new to contribute and which are relevant to scholars and students within the continuum of regions, disciplines, and periods that constitute the field of Ancient Near Eastern studies, as well as to those in neighboring disciplines, including Biblical Studies, Classics, and Ancient History in general.

The NIV Application Commentary helps you communicate and apply biblical text effectively in today's context. To bring the ancient messages of the Bible into today's world, each passage is treated in three sections: Original Meaning. Concise exegesis to help readers understand the original meaning of the biblical text in its historical, literary, and cultural context. Bridging Contexts. A bridge between the world of the Bible and the world of today, built by discerning what is timeless in the timely pages of the Bible. Contemporary Significance. This section identifies comparable situations to those faced in the Bible and explores relevant application of the biblical messages. The author alerts the readers of problems they may encounter when seeking to apply the passage and helps them think through the issues involved. This unique, award-winning commentary is the ideal resource for today's preachers, teachers, and serious students of the Bible, giving them the tools, ideas, and insights they need to communicate God's Word with the same powerful impact it had when it was first written.

This new examination of the region of Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon (605-562 BC) includes revised interpretations of the Babylonian Chronicles for his reign, especially for the years of the campaigns against the West and the capture of Jerusalem. Excavations at Babylon are used to give a view of the city in Neo-Babylonian times, including the royal `Hanging Gardens' and the ziggurat. The varied literary genres current in this city of learning in the sixth century BC (including dreams and prophecies) and the role of hostages, exiles, and prisoners of war are used to throw light on the life of the Jewish exiles there. An assessment of the character of Nebuchadrezzar as a military and political leader, religious devotee and legal administrator is attempted on the basis of textual evidence.

The Early Professional Interdisciplinary Conference was designed to bring together graduate students, post-docs, and lecturers within the first five years of appointment from any of the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Its goals included the facilitation of professional development through interdepartmental idea exchange and collaboration, as well as the application of annual themes to better the understanding of teaching and learning within and between disciplines. This volume brings together approaches from Archaeology, Art History, Assyriology, Cinema, Cultural Anthropology, Egyptology, History, Literary Criticism, Marketing, Medieval Studies, Music, Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology to the theme of “meaning and λόγος.” Topics range from Urartian archaeology, Egyptian religious practice and Roman sculpture to Peppa Pig, brain imaging, heavy metal and the murals of Belfast. Thematic introductions ensure a coherence among and between the various chapters. The word λόγος had many meanings in Ancient Greek: word, opinion, expectation, speech, principle, rhetorical argument, reason, and even meaning. Investigating how the meaning of a word links ideas and affects pedagogical issues began with Herakleitos and continues today. Logos is also the root of the suffix “–logy”, which is used to describe many of the fields in the Humanities and Social Sciences. As such, it provides an appropriate link between the many branches of investigation and scholarship included here.

This study provides the archaeological record and pictorial documentation of ornamental wall painting produced for Assyrian royal residences. It examines the changing trends in the decorative designs and selection of motifs, some with symbolic meaning. Many illustrations are from the excavation reports.

Akkadian Royal Letters in Later Mespotamian Tradition reconsiders the question of the authenticity of the letters attributed to earlier royal correspondents that were studied in Assyrian and Babylonian scribal centres ca. 700–100 BCE. By scrutinizing the letters’ contents, language, possible transmission histories ca. 1400–100 BCE and the epistemic limitations of authenticity criticism, the book grounds scepticism about the letters’ authenticity in previously undiscussed features of the texts. It also provides a new foundation for research into the related questions of when and why these beguiling texts were composed in the first place.

This close synchronic analysis of Exodus 1-2 looks at how the pericope's structure, language, focalization and management of information form its conception and judgement of its events and characters. A coherence of concerns is detectable in Exodus 1-2 with allusions to Genesis and the later chapters of Exodus. One chapter is assigned to each of seven narrative unities and deals in various ways with its narrative problems. The resulting eclectic choice of analytical tools includes the study of Proppian structural functions, repetition, public rhetoric, narrative speeds, order and symbolism.

Series: Jewish and Christian Heritage Series, 2 Early Jewish Exegesis and Theological Controversy is an important collection of essays on aspects of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament theology, the reception of biblical texts in Judaism and Christianity; the Aqedah, and related topics. The book comprises three main parts: a) the Aqedah and the Temple, b) Biblical Texts in Polemical Contexts, and c) Biblical Theology, Judaism and Christianity. Although each part deals with a specifically defined topic, all are linked by some common themes: all the sections discuss early Jewish exegesis, namely the early scriptures’ interpretation in late Biblical literature, in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, in Jewish-Hellenistic writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a variety of Rabbinic sources, essentially the Targumim and midrashim. Each chapter of the book covers theological controversies, either among the Jewish groups themselves, and/or between Judaism and other religious denominations, especially Christianity. “By now Isaac Kalimi is recognized the world over as one of the last of the vanishing breed of biblical historians and as one of a handful of experts in the biblical books of Chronicles. Kalimi demonstrates in the first five chapters of Early Jewish Exegesis and Theological Controversy that he is also fully grounded in Second Temple literature and qualified to discuss the exegesis of Hebrew Scripture reflected in rabbinic literature, Samaritan lore, the New Testament, and the Nag Hammadi library. The message conveyed by prefacing five important studies on ancient exegesis—Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan—to his two essays on biblical theology at the dawn of the twenty-first century is that Kalimi’s mastery of all relevant dialects of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and his unquestioned competence as a historian of both events and ideas qualifies him to offer some very original and timely advice to the world community of biblical scholars concerning biblical theology.” – Mayer I. Gruber, In: Review of Biblical Literature (2004). “This book belongs on the shelves of every serious Judaica library; it also addresses a general readership, and it is of interest to undergraduate as well as graduate students... [it states] the important engagement and willingness of the author to approach the virtual minefield of discussion about biblical history and exegesis.” – Rivka Ulmer, In: Review of Rabbinic Judaism 7 (2004). “As is necessary in interdisciplinary studies, Isaac Kalimi emerges as a jack of many trades in this book: rabbinic, Samaritan studies, patristics and theology. He has also demonstrated that he is a master in biblical studies... Kalimi’s book is a necessary, timely and much appreciated offering. It serves as a model of mutual scholarly benefit for Jewish and Christian scholars engaged in the literature of their formative periods.” — T. Meacham, In: Biblical Interpretation in Judaism and Christianity (2006). “Kalimi’s argumentation is thorough, wide-ranging, and impressionistic. His technique is to collect evidence from a variety of sources, to construct a history, and then to propose a single circumstantial explanation... There is much to discuss in these essays. Kalimi is an energetic, thoughtful, and challenging scholar...a fine collection by a scholar who represents one of the most interesting traditions in Israeli biblical scholarship.” – Francis Landy, In: Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 4 (2002-2003).