The Bible and the Ancient Near East

The motif of a weeping God in Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar I's Elamite crisis, and the unsettling question of whether God lies: J. J. M. Roberts reads the Hebrew Bible alongside the wider literature of the ancient Near East, and these collected shorter writings show how much each sheds light on the other. The essays move across the environment and literature of the region, the old argument of myth versus history, the lament tradition, the hand of Yahweh, and Job's place within Israelite religious tradition.

Roberts has long been one of the more innovative scholars working on this comparative ground, and gathering his pieces in one volume lets the threads between them show. For students, clergy and serious general readers who want the Old Testament set firmly within the ancient world that shaped it.