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…