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Ancient Israel was a nation in the Near East, but it conceived of itself as a unique people. This chapter investigates the ways that Israel constructed its cultural identity in relation to its neighbors, and how its cultural, religious, and ethnic boundaries were contested and reinterpreted in various biblical texts.

This chapter lays out the peculiarities of the Ugaritic language and hence of its peculiar contributions to our knowledge of the history of culture. It discusses the nature of the language and its place within the languages of the ancient Near East, the nature of the writing system, and the nature of the Ugaritic texts that have been preserved.

This chapter examines how an historian of the ancient Near East sets about reconstructing a picture of the past using material of great diversity in terms of type and historical value. It demonstrates this approach by considering the figure of the Achaemenid king, Cyrus II ‘the Great’ of Persia. The discussion begins by creating a conventional image of the king and consolidating it. It then analyses the evidence that has been used to strengthen the picture and presents some historical realities. The basis for the standard picture of Cyrus the Great is provided by material in classical writers and the Old Testament. Cyrus introduced a new policy of religious toleration together with active support for local cults, exemplified by the permission he granted to the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple, with generous funding from central government. The chapter also considers the date for Cyrus' defeat of the Median king Astyages (550), as well as his conquest of Babylon itself.

The distinctive features of the biblical sense of history may be illuminated by comparison with classical Greek and ancient Near Eastern concepts. The biblical view includes features of what we call myth, epic, and history. A useful category is “genealogical time,” in which the past provides a foundation, a model, and continuous connection to the present and future.

This chapter provides an island history of Bronze Age and early Iron Age Cyprus, discussing at length all published documentary evidence related to Alashiya, Ku‐pi‐ri‐jo, and Iadnana (Neo‐Assyrian cuneiform texts). Whilst specific focus falls on issues of identity, the more general intention is to situate Cyprus in its eastern Mediterranean context. Each section — on economy, society, and polity — provides commentary on the material dimensions of the textual evidence; a general historical overview concludes the chapter. Given converging streams of evidence, it is argued that Late Bronze Age Cyprus was centrally organized — politically and economically — under a ruling class that had adopted a coherent ideological and symbolic repertoire of material paraphernalia to signal their identity, within and beyond the island. The documentary evidence related to Alashiya demonstrates a role so pervasive and influential in the international world of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East at this time that it is difficult to see how its king would not have controlled the entire island.

This chapter looks at the issues occupying the interpretation of Genesis at the time of Darwin and notes that the impact of the discovery of ancient Near Eastern creation accounts came at more or less the same time as the impact of Darwin's writing. As a result, the interpretation of Genesis could operate within two completely different hermeneutical frameworks, neither of which was directly linked to the plain-sense concerns of the Genesis text. A variety of examples of interpreting Genesis in the light of ancient Near Eastern texts is explored, seeking to demonstrate that there is a variety of ways in which hermeneutical benefit may be derived from reading a text in the light of other concerns, and a similar case is then made with respect to the hermeneutics of reading Genesis after Darwin.

This chapter presents the historical circumstances that gave birth to the story of the Ten Lost Tribes in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. The two most important elements in this chapter are the imperial deportations and the prophetic culture that “processed” them into a divine punishment understood to be an overall exile of an entire nation. The chapter tells how the rise of the Assyrian Empire to world dominance during the 8th century BCE resulted in the destruction of the Israelite kingdom in Northern ancient Palestine and the deportation of several tens of thousands of its subjects to the eastern provinces of the Empire. This was an uncommon occurrence in the ancient Near East as other small kingdom and nations were deported as well. However, this particular deportation was recorded in the Bible. The chapter then describes how prophets in Israel and the southern Kingdom of Judea‐most notably Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah turned the deportation into a divine punishment enacted by God through Assyria. Most crucially, Isaiah (and he was followed by other prophets such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel) promised that the tribes would return. When they did not, their search began.

Focusing on the circulation of knowledge about religion and religions, this chapter shifts focus from Europe to the history of the study of religion in the United States, highlighting the importance of Morris Jastrow Jr. in the emergence of an academic discipline in America. Like imperial comparative religion, this study of religion was structured by the divide between savagery and civilization, with Native Americans and African Americans cast as proximate savages. This chapter also reviews research in American folklore, anthropology, and religious studies that contrasted the visionary quality of Native American religion with the emotional character of African American religion. In the study of the religions of ancient civilizations, the British interest in India was superseded by the American interest in the Ancient Near East. Between 1914 and 1920, Jastrow dedicated his scholarship to analyzing conflicts and identifying conditions for peace in the Middle East. The chapter concludes with observations about the persistence of imperial comparative religion.

This is the last of five chapters on the text of the Old Testament, and discusses Hebrew poetry in the context of the Hebrew (Old Testament) Bible. The introductory section looks at recent work on the discovery of the verse traditions of the ancient Near East, and discusses the difficulty of reading Hebrew poetry, the Hebrew poet's resources (tradition versus innovation) and the poet's voice and the lyrical first person singular (the lyrical ‘I’). The second section discusses the issue of differentiating between prose and poetry, the third discusses metre and rhythm, and the fourth discusses parallelism. Further sections discuss building blocks (line, half‐line, and couplet), the segmentation of poems, repetition, the exploitation of sound, figurative language, and poetic diction. The last section of the chapter looks at the matter of holding the reader's attention.

The chapter believes that Job is the most death-oriented book in the Bible making Job one of the most basic resources, with regard to death in the Ancient Near East. The poet of Job was able to use the theme of death conventionally but with a further purpose or serving parodistic ends. Joban depicts death as a place where all mortals eventually go (Sheol, “There”) or, simply put, the ultimate ending to mortals. In Job’s lament, the poet’s use of the death-motif showed a slight variation from the norm when not only Job wishes that he is at death’s door but that he might as well be already dead. In this point, Job is seen parallel to Jeremiah’s desires which proves that a sufferer so driven in despair feels moved to repudiate his very existence. The poet wants readers to see how things are not meshing together conventionally as Job wants to affirm his innocence and demand justice by asking to be dead. On the other hand, Job requests God for protection from the wrathful Deity who is the same God. Being popular endeavor for rulers in Ancient Near East, Job also wanted to make a stone inscription, leaving a memorial of how his Redeemer saved him through his resurrection. Nowadays, the resurrection in Job can be considered as his words of hope that endures all men who follow his path towards oblivion.

Serving as the volume introduction, Chapter 1 lays out the scope of the ancient Near Eastern canon as it has been understood since its inception. Situating the canon within Art History, Archaeology, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, this chapter raises an inquiry about the fluidity and staying power of its content. Through a case study of the ancient Near Eastern canon as it appears in college art history textbooks, we detect patterns in the canon, which remains a flexible but essentially conservative phenomenon. Nevertheless, the individual contributions in the volume’s four sections are shown here through chapter synopses to be historically grounded, theoretically provocative, and full of potential avenues for research and revision of the seemingly outmoded phenomenon of the canon. The chapter proposes that celebrating the longevity and future of the canon, rather than dismissing it, can allow today’s researchers to take the study of the ancient Near East to new levels and share it with expanded audiences.

The lack of a systematic account of marriage and divorce in biblical law means drawing on a wide range of legal materials in order to reconstruct what the typical practice might have been in biblical Israel. This includes evidence of local custom, shared ancient Near Eastern conventions, formal rules, and rabbinic traditions. Nevertheless, the typical marriage seems to have followed a conventional procedure and problems arose when this was subverted (e.g., such cases as the “rape” of Dinah, and Tamar). This chapter argues that, in some cases, what we call “sexual offences” are really deviations from what the biblical texts regard as the normal sequence of marital relations. Biblical law regulates the practice of divorce and sets limits to its operation. It also shows concern for issues of consent, equality, protection, gender, and heterosexual ideology, although these are expressed differently from similar interests in modern law.

The “Poem of Job” like Bontsye Shvayg maintains a sharply critical line against pietistic worldview that a poet like Perets wished to address. The chapter mentions that to understand fully the “Poem of Job,” one must see what the poet wished to turn inside out for purposes of parody, both in broad and small scale terms. Perets wanted the same thing on a whole array of Yiddish themes though it is not as easy as it is in Bontsye since it has a relative wealth of contemporaneous information while Job does not. The two reasons for such is Job, as a literary work, clearly stands within the “Wisdom” tradition and literature within the Ancient Near East is remarkably conservative. The basic structure of the “Poem of Job” is said to be parallel to the “Theodicity” or “Babylonian Theodicity” with the dialogue between Job and his friends as actually an appeal to his God. There is also similarity of Ludlul to the “Poem of Job” which is sometimes called the “Babylonian Job.” The Dialogue/Appeal was an excellent way to show the transition of Job into Anti-Job keeping in mind that the innocent victim must always keep his complains within the bounds of propriety, thus being a “Righteous Sufferer.” At the same time, issues of justice and righteousness do play a role in the standard Dialogue/Appeal though in the end things do turn around right for God acts decisively and dramatically to restore the victim.

James Henry Breasted developed a friendship with the world-renowned astronomer and scientific impresario George Ellery Hale, who was recruited by University of Chicago President William Rainey Harper as associate professor and as director of his observatory. Hale resigned from the university to direct the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1918 Breasted was elected president of the American Oriental Society, and delivered an address during its annual meeting the following year in which he offered a fresh look at the Middle East as a land of scholarly “responsibility” and “opportunity.” He lamented the disciplinary narrowness of scholars in classical and ancient Near Eastern studies. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Breasted founded an Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and promptly began to plan for expeditions in the ancient Near East that would take him to Iraq, Syria, Jerusalem, and Egypt.

On April 28, 1930, a new building for the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago was inaugurated. When James Henry Breasted first requested a new building in 1923, he saw the need to alleviate crowded conditions in the Haskell Oriental Museum, which shared space with the Oriental Institute, the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures, and Chicago's Divinity School. Completed in 1931, the design of the three-story Oriental Institute building reflects the theme “East Teaching the West,” hailing the ancient Near East as the wellspring of Western civilization, with pride of place going to Egypt and America. The facility opened on December 5, 1931, with Breasted, John H. Finley, and Raymond Fosdick delivering the dedication speeches. Most of the institute's growth came from field projects throughout the Middle East, including Egypt and Palestine as well as expeditions focusing on the Hittites, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.

This chapter shows that Dtr's bias against Jehu's heirs is part of a broader Deuteronomistic pattern of portraying dynastic successors negatively in order to subvert the monarchical status quo. After focusing on the specific members of the Jehu dynasty, both founder and heirs, in the previous chapters, it is necessary to broaden the focus to compare both the entire dynasty to other DH dynasties and Jehu's promise to other DH dynastic oracles. These comparisons confirm the hypothesis that Dtr views dynastic successors critically. The crucial question of why Dtr would give rulers dynastic promises if he is opposed to dynasty is also discussed.

In fall 1920, James Henry Breasted resumed regular work at the University of Chicago. Aside from continuing as chair of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures, he was now directing the Oriental Institute. Breasted's publications, expeditions, and popular lectures brought him not only a higher salary but also a measure of nationwide fame. Not long after his return from the Middle East, he delivered the university's fall convocation address, using the occasion to reiterate his desire to launch projects that spanned the ancient Near East, and cited recent discoveries in such fields as paleontology and geology, as well as archaeology and ancient languages. Breasted announced his plans in the Oriental Institute's inaugural publication, The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago: A Beginning and a Program, including the “Assyrian-Babylonian Dictionary” and “Coffin Texts” projects. Another initiative, the Epigraphic Survey, was part of his ultimate goal of compiling material for a comprehensive history of the ancient Near East.