Jason Colavito has an interesting piece about "rows of teeth" and ancient giants supposedly supported by the Talmud. It's really about a plagiarized reference, but giant fans (no World Series pun intended there) will find it interesting. I left a comment that should...
Ancient Near East
Genesis 1-2 as Polemic
Cris Putnam, the force behind the Logos Apologia website, has recently blogged about how the creation stories of Genesis 1-2 target ancient Egyptian creation myths. The impetus behind Cris' efforts is a recent book entitled, In the Beginning... We Misunderstood:...
Just in Time for Christmas: David C. Brown’s Catalogue for Books in Egyptology and Other Ancient Near Eastern Studies
David C. Brown / Oxbow Books is perhaps the "go to" site and catalog for finding books related to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian, Israel, and other civilizations of the ancient Near East. They have hundreds of titles in each area -- lots of stuff you won't find anywhere...
Critical Edition of the Gilgamesh Epic Available Online
This is a steal, folks - especially if you can work in Akkadian. But even if not, Andrew George's magisterial work on the Gilgamesh Epic is a must. It's the most current scholarship on the original cuneiform text. The file features tablet transcriptions,...
Hebrew, Ugaritic, and ANE Archaeology Titles That Need Some Love
As readers know, every once in a while some items that we're working on at Logos Bible Software are in need of a a little push to get them into production. There are hundreds of such items on the Logos website, but these are near and dear to someone like me. I'm...
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 023: Legal Genre
In the last episode of our series on studying the Bible, we transitioned to an important area of study: learning to read the Bible in terms of the various types of literature found in its pages. Our first example concerned reading narrative, where I...
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 20
I've talked in previous episodes about how the best way to understood the original context of the biblical writers is to immerse yourself in the worldview of the civilizations with which the biblical writers had regular contact. Weve already spent several episodes...
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 018: Ancient Near Eastern Texts in Translation
The last episode of the podcast dealt with the need to tap into the intellectual output of the ancient Mediterranean world -- the Bible's own context -- in order to start thinking the thoughts of the biblical writers. This episode takes this recommendation further by...
Naked Bible Podcast Episode 017: Taking the Bible’s Own Context Seriously
In this second episode of the series on Bible study, I discuss what interpreting the Bible "in context" really means -- taking the Bible's own primitive context seriously. Rather than filter the Bible through creeds dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, or even the...
On Using Rabbinic Material to Interpret the New Testament
I'm still in the process of getting things together for the posting of my ETS papers (both of which were well received). I'll have that ready by the end of the weekend. However, I decided to post something else that I have recently run into. I'm not sure why it hasn't...
All Commentaries are Not Created Equal, Part 4
This is actually a short follow-up to Part 3, where I recommended some commentary sets. In that post I had two links to web pages on the Denver Seminary website to their own commentary recommendations. I have gone through that site and highlighted the volumes I have...
Genesis & Creation – Class 4 of 4
Editor's note: Replaced original link; here is the fourth/ final in the series of lectures on creation that Dr. Heiser gave at Grace Church Bellingham from September to October 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=589NDmbH9nk
Genesis & Creation – Class 3 of 4
Editor's note: Original link replaced, and added the previous class of this series where Dr. Heiser spoke at Grace Church Bellingham on the creation of Genesis 1 in light of the ancient Near East. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOWTdhAFEh4...
Genesis 1 and Its ANE Polemic, Part 2
Here's a recent article by John Walton on this issue. it is more up-to-date than Hasel. You'll notice that he cites Tsumura and others in objection to seeing tehom as the primeval opponent. Tsumura favors a Genesis polemic that more or less has Canaanite, not...
Genesis 1 as a Polemic Against Ancient Near Eastern Religious Cosmologies
We might as well jump into this. As a way to get everyone into the conversation, here is an article to read. It's by Gerhard Hasel and entitled, "The Significance of the Cosmology in Genesis 1 in Relation to ANE Parallels."