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)
