Preface
“The Hebrew Bible is a compendium of Ancient Near Eastern texts.” However, Bible readers of today are “shaped by the cultural assumptions and reading strategies” of a modern western world. “We lay those assumptions over the biblical text so that they obscure the complex web of interconnections between ancient Israel and Judah and the other cultures that surrounded and preceded them... The Scriptures are exceedingly ‘respiratory’: they breathe in the culture of their times, and breathe it back out in a different form... The Hebrew Bible was formed of sometimes disparate parts through a lengthy process of scribal transmission and compilation... of borrowing from texts and adapting them to their own purposes.” - Dr. Christopher B. Hays (Theologian, Fuller Theological Seminary)
Intro
Intro
“The Bible is the product of minds that were exposed to, influenced by and reacting to the ideas and cultures of their day. Comparative study of the Bible and the literature of the ancient Near East, reveals the shared cultural and literary heritage.” – Christine Hayes
Israelite wisdom literature belongs to a much wider and broad wisdom legacy or tradition in the Ancient Near East. There’s very little in Biblical wisdom literature that is not paralleled in the wisdom literature of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan.
Egyptian influence on Israel and Judah was particularly strong during the reign of Solomon and Hezekiah; as a result, Hebrew literature is permeated with ideas and figures derived from Egyptian literature.
“The Bible is the product of minds that were exposed to, influenced by and reacting to the ideas and cultures of their day. Comparative study of the Bible and the literature of the ancient Near East, reveals the shared cultural and literary heritage.” – Christine Hayes
Israelite wisdom literature belongs to a much wider and broad wisdom legacy or tradition in the Ancient Near East. There’s very little in Biblical wisdom literature that is not paralleled in the wisdom literature of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan.
Egyptian influence on Israel and Judah was particularly strong during the reign of Solomon and Hezekiah; as a result, Hebrew literature is permeated with ideas and figures derived from Egyptian literature.
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