Posts tagged with "Oxford History of the Biblical World"

Oxford History of the Biblical World – Chapter 1

I posted earlier a quote that I liked by Michael Coogan about Old Testament parallels; however, I must admit that I was a little disappointed with the first chapter of this book.  From the preface and list of authors, it seems like this will be an excellent volume.  In particular, I normally like Coogan.  I find his Old Testament volume in the Oxford University Press Very Short Introduction series to be an outstanding attempt to introduce the Old Testament in a minuscule amount of space.  I also enjoy Carol Meyers whose Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context is a classic study.  Yet I wish that Coogan would not have gone so much into pre-history here.  In the preface, he notes that choosing where to begin and end is difficult, and I agree.  This is one of those places that I simply would disagree with the author’s choice.

In addition to the quote I posted earlier, there were one or two other quotable sections in chapter one.  The chapter’s bibliography also seems like it would be helpful.  One title that piqued my interest was:

Clifford, Richard J. Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible. The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series, 26. Washington, D. C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1994.

But overall, I felt like the chapter left a lot to be desired.  It was nearly the end of the chapter when Coogan finally got into the first part of Genesis.  I do have high hopes for the rest of the text though.  I will keep you posted on other chapters that I find interesting.

Michael Coogan on Old Testament Parallels

I started reading The Oxford History of the Biblical World tonight. Here’s an interesting quote from Michael Coogan found in the first chapter. He suggests that parallels between Biblical literature and the literature of the Ancient Near East are ubiquitous, though direct parallels are difficult to point out:

It is rarely possible to establish a direct link between a specific nonbiblical source and a part of the Bible, both because of the random nature of discovery and because of the complicated processes of composition, editing, and collection that finally produced the Bible. Still, the cumulative evidence shows that most biblical genres, motifs, and even institutions have ancient Near Eastern parallels.

Michael D. Coogan, ed., The Oxford History of the Biblical World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) 21, Questia, 2 Sept. 2009 <http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=104292118>.