Intro to ANE and OT Studies: Parallels

There are quite a few good books out there which serve the purpose of tying together or somehow relating the OT to the parallel ANE documents. A few that come to mind are Jack Sasson's Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, Amelie Kuhrt's The Ancient Near East, and the classic set edited by J. B. …

Elijah and Elijah: Polemics against Baal

In her outstanding comparison of the canonical Elijah/Elisha texts and the ANE Baal texts, Leah Bronner makes the point that the Elijah/Elisha stories are polemics against Baal and his minions.  Here is a summary in her own words. "The writer of these episodes about the lives of these prophets wrote them as deliberate polemics against Canaanite mythology, as we …

Storm Imagery in the Bible

  In The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, the authors do a fine job of summarizing the storm imagery in the OT and NT.  Here is just a summary of a summary -- you'll have to pick up the dictionary to read the details.  It is well worth it! "Storms provide many varied biblical images....  The …