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    Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible
    Unavailable
    Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible
    Unavailable
    Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible
    Ebook615 pages8 hours

    Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

    By John H. Walton

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Much of the Old Testament seems strange to contemporary readers. However, as we begin to understand how ancient people viewed the world, the Old Testament becomes more clearly a book that stands within its ancient context as it also speaks against it. John Walton provides here a thoughtful introduction to the conceptual world of the ancient Near East.

    Walton surveys the literature of the ancient Near East and introduces the reader to a variety of beliefs about God, religion, and the world. In helpful sidebars, he provides examples of how such studies can bring insight to the interpretation of specific Old Testament passages. Students and pastors who want to deepen their understanding of the Old Testament will find this a helpful and instructive study.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateNov 1, 2006
    ISBN9781585582914
    Unavailable
    Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible
    Author

    John H. Walton

    John H. Walton (PhD, Hebrew Union College) is professor emeritus of Old Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including Old Testament Today, with Andrew E. Hill; volumes on Job and Genesis in the NIV Application Commentary series; the six-volume Lost World series; and Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology. He was also coeditor, with Craig Keener, of the ECPA 2017 Bible of the Year winner, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible.

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    Reviews for Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Granted, one should not indulge in chronological snobbery (apud CS Lewis) and despise three thousand years of Scriptural exegesis because it did not draw on so much information as is available today; on the contrary, the older the interpreter, the nearer he was to a world which, apart from academic information, is now effectively lost to us.

      And yet, this book is fundamental. I cannot imagine one sitting down today to exegete the Bible in good faith while willfully ignoring such useful information. How can we presume to try to interpret Scripture while refraining from understanding the very meaning of the cultural references embedded in it? Yes, we can expose it based on the long, useful body of knowledge accumulated by three thousand years of interpreters, first in the Jewish synagogue and now in the Christian church; but we can only honour both the Bible and its interpreters by making at least an effort to try to understand the meanings of words, idiomatic expressions and, ultimately, the cultural context where God first spoke his Word now written down for us in Scripture.

      I will not comment on any specific example; the most interesting ones rely on too much contextual information to write down in this review. But it actually sheds light on many obscure passages for which no analogy in Scripture itself increase our understanding significantly. More than illuminating specific passages, it helps us receive the Bible, specially the Old Testament, as its original hearers understood it.

      This book does not indulge in speculation, nor it proposes major reinterpretations as do other titles by the same author. Rather it collects much contextual ancient Egyptian, Anatolian, Levant and Middle Eastern information to both point where Scripture draws on its wider context and where it departs from it; it ends up showing how different Yahweh is from the pagan gods, and how different the religion He inspired in the Bible’s human, inspired authors. It is not light reading, nor a running narrative, yet it truly inspires one to gain better Biblical understanding.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This is a refreshing work that steps beyond the superficial level of parallels between the Old Testament and the ancient Near East to consider the underlying psychological, presumptive and ideological worldviews of the general population. At the same time, Walton remains very aware of the dangers of academic anachronisms--keeping the discussion in check at regular intervals to ask, in essence, "To what degree do we moderns insist on interpreting the ancient world from a modern pretext?" Along the way he offers numerous "Comparative Analysis" side columns, very helpful for the student of the Hebrew scriptures specifically. As a new-comer to the arena of scholarship in this topic, I have so far found this book the most helpful synthesis of the genuine issues at play.

      2 people found this helpful