Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East [Paperback]

This is an excellent source to keep handy. It identifies the common ancestry of
much of the biblical stories, and gives their derivation. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun, and originality is a word with little meaning when
ancient tales are told and retold. While the plots remain the same, the characters are different. Proverbs and maxims translate quite readily across cultural lines. An ideal book for the serious student of ancient literature of the near east.

*Old Testament Parallels* is indeed a useful anthology of ANE texts with perspicuous translations for the casual reader. The selections, short albeit, are actually very enjoyable, and as I read them I was reminded of just how beautiful, crude, wise, and diverse the world of ANE literature can be; from the raw vagaries of the Baal cycle, through the mundane social interactions of the Nuzi Texts, to the practical and epigrammatic sapience of Anksheshonq...the parallels are engaging enough on their own without minding their comparisons with the Old Testament at all. Many of the bible passages adjacent to the lines in the ANE selections often don't seem to relate or to be of any real consequence anyway.

Nevertheless it is still a delight when they do. The selections follow the order of the books of the Old Testament, although some of them are misplaced. The 'Stories of Sinuhe' contain striking parallels to Moses' exile in Midianite territory from Egypt and to David and Goliath, but nothing apparently from Joshua-Judges, the section it's found under. Likewise with the 'Gezer Almanac'. And I certainly can't discover what the 'Yavne-Yam Letter' is doing under the prophets section. The authors were also remiss to inform the reader where it is preserved today. I'm inclined to withhold a star, but I'd recommend to anyone.

The book includes three brief outlines of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Israelite history, bibliography for each text and for the pictures, and an index of over 1,300 Old Testament parallels.

Fun Facts:

* Yes, I counted the items in the index out of boredom!

* The island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean is conspicuously missing from the map on p. 177.

This is the type of book that is probably best used as a reference book, but worth reading through in its entirety. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the "parallels", although in the majority of instances that word is used very loosely. As the authors make clear in their introduction: "There are genre parallels, motif parallels, social institution parallels, plot parallels, and parallels in historical events."

As you read through the text you will be treated to an introduction to each ancient document that usually discusses it's origin, date, and reason for its inclusion in the book. In addition to this, as you read through each selection you will be treated to referenced biblical texts for comparisons. Although the referenced biblical texts strewn throughout each ancient selection often seemed quite awkward when presented as parallels. I flipped open the book randomly and pulled up an example of this. This particular ancient text reads as follows:

"Then I will travel with you to safe harbor, Then we shall live together forever" pg229

The parallel text is Psalm 94:19 which reads as follows: "In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul." KJV.
As you can see, I was left scratching my head as to how this was a parallel, but others are slightly more applicable, dealing with similar topics(ie: food, life, oxen, etc.) as we see in the biblical texts.

Now to the primary topic, the stories/texts themselves! Many of these stories are thematically similar(ie: laments, poems, stories about brothers, laws against crimes, stories about barren women, etc.) to the biblical narratives, but often strikingly different in actual content and intent. The most notable exception to this is the flood story of Gilgamesh. However, this is difficult to determine if this is due to a common tradition of a real event, a borrowed tradition from one culture to another, or something else entirely. As the authors themselves make clear: "Establishing the correct connection between related biblical and non-biblical traditions is never easy. Simple solutions are generally misleading solutions." (Forward xiii).

The most enjoyable parallels were those that demonstrated grammatical and stylistic similarities of the texts - it is a beautiful reminder that the Hebrew people were a real people, in the real world, who interacted with their cultural peers.

That said, I learned quite a bit from this volume and I have accumulated a few pages of notes for further study.