The ancient Israelites lived among many nations, and knowing about the people and culture of these nations can enhance understanding of the Old Testament. Peoples of the Old Testament World provides up-to-date descriptions of the people groups who interacted with and influenced ancient Israel.
Detailed accounts by specialists cover each group's origin, history, rulers, architecture, art, religion, and contacts with biblical Israel.

This remarkable true story recounts one of the great discoveries of the century: finding a 2000-year-old boat from the Sea of Galilee. Shelley Wachsmann, a respected nautical archaeologist, shares the joy and drama he felt in discovering and excavating the first ancient boat from this biblical location. Through his perceptive eyes, we experience the adventure of a lifetime as he offers his personal account of first setting eyes on and then preserving this unique treasure. Wachsmann is a master storyteller, interweaving his own unforgettable story of this challenging excavation with the writings of the past. Jews and Christians alike will be captivated by his search for the boat's identity. Wachsmann - like a detective - hunts down clues that will reveal the boat's actual history. Since the boat turns out to be a 2000 year old craft, he carefully examines the Gospels for passages that will shed light on this wondrous vessel. This ever-curious author also traces Jewish historical texts to discover that the Sea of Galilee, during the boat's vibrant past, was the setting for one of the most tragic massacres of Jews - the Battle of Migdal. During this sea battle, we learn, Roman soldiers mercilessly slaughtered Jews as they attempted to escape in boats like this one, turning the Sea of Galilee into a sea of crimson. The saga of tenderly extracting this extraordinary boat from the earth, protecting its timbers, and restoring it to health is a compelling tale on its own. Wachsmann impresses us with the dedication and creativity of his makeshift team in improvising answers to the seemingly impossible logistic problems that dog them every step of the way. Still, generosity abounds and actual rainbows appear as scores of volunteers pull together to save this singular monument of the past. Wachsmann punctuates the absorbing details of preserving this artifact with the rich history that surrounds the Sea of Galilee, making this a uniquely enduring and personal work.

The timeless message of the New Testament applies to people of every culture and generation. Yet there is great value in understanding the world in which that message was first revealed - its social manners, politics, religious customs, and culture. Exploring the New Testament World, written by classics and Bible scholar Dr. Albert A. Bell, Jr., illuminates the living context of the New Testament, immersing its readers in the intriguing world of Jesus and the early church.

An authority on ancient Greek and Roman language, culture, and history, Dr. Bell writes in a readable style that is accessible and enjoyable to any reader - an uncommon accomplishment among New Testament scholars today. Surveying Jewish factions of the era, the social and political structure of the Roman Empire, and the philosophies and religions that surrounded the early church, Dr. Bell helps his readers learn to think like first-century Jews, Greeks, and Romans, illuminating puzzling New Testament passages for clear understanding. Comprehensive Scripture and Subject Indexes make this volume even more useful as a "manners and customs" Bible companion.

This authoritative guide receives high praise from college professors and Sunday school teachers alike, proving its appeal to both popular and academic audiences. A "must-have" reference for every pastor and an indispensable resource to any Bible reader.

The synthesized prehistory of South-West Asia, from the cultural emergence of modern humans as sophisticated and mobile hunter-gatherers in South-West Asia around 50,000 years ago, to the time when a dense population of villagers and mixed farming economies existed throughout the region around 8,000 years ago. It is the story of the momentous transformation of human society and culture; after the seemingly endless millennia of small-scale, mobile, hunting and gathering peoples there emerged a way of life that we can recognize as the foundations of our own. It is an account of the emergence in our human ancestors of an understanding and articulation of their world and their place in it.

The publication of the final reports of the late Dame Kathleen Kenyon's excavations of ancient Jerusalem takes a significant step forward with the appearance of this volume. It concentrates on finds outside the walls of the Iron Age city, of which the most important are the enigmatic deposits in Caves I and II on the south-east hill. Itzak Eshel's study provides detailed comparative analysis of the large quantity of pottery found in them, as a basis for establishing their date and purpose. Supplementary studies of the pottery and other material from these caves, not least variations between the deposits found in them, throw further light on their function. Among the varied information on extramural cemeteries assembled here, the late third millennium cemetery on the Mount of Olives, first discovered over a century ago, particularly adds to our knowledge of Jerusalem in antiquity. This book is intended for students and scholars of the ancient history and archaeology of the Middle East; Biblical and religious scholars.

This book makes available to scholars for the first time transcriptions of 313 clay tablets preserved in the Yale Babylonian Collection. The tablets date from the reign of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, who presided over the destiny of the Neo-Babylonian empire from 556 B.C. until its conquest by the Persians in 539 B.C. Representing a significant addition to the body of primary sources that illuminate the social and economic history of this transitional era, these clay documents include mainly administrative records and legal transactions, along with a few letters.

Each tablet was written in the Akkadian language using the cuneiform script invented in Mesopotamia at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. Paul-Alain Beaulieu's transcriptions of the tablets are presented in autographed facsimile copies. The author also provides an introduction to the volume, a register and descriptive catalogue of the texts, and indexes of personal names, geographical names, and names of gods and temples appearing in the texts. This outstanding collection affords important new access to the history of Mesopotamian civilization during its last phase as an independent political and cultural entity.

"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."--Edward B. Garside, "New York Times Book Review"
Ancient Mesopotamia--the area now called Iraq--has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East.
Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun.
"To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."--Leonard Cottrell, "Book Week"
"Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."--Samuel Noah Kramer, "Archaeology"
A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the "Assyrian Dictionary" of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.

Located in a strategic position on the southern flank of the Ammonite hill country, overlooking the Madaba Plain, the earliest settlement at Tall Jawa dates to the Iron I period (1100-900 BC). This settlement was redesigned during Iron Age II (900-600 BC), and consisted of a walled town, surrounded by a casemate style fortification system and a multi-chambered gate complex. Major buildings, standing to the second storey, are described in detail with their furnishings and contents. A marked change in architecture, ceramic technology, and high status artefacts mark the high point of Tall Jawa during the period of the Assyrian empire (730-600 BC). The major features of each structure are illustrated both in the text and on a CD-ROM.
This volume presents the final report of six seasons of excavations at Tall Jawa in central Jordan. The particular focus of this report is the architecture and stratigraphy of the settlements which occupied the site during the Iron Age (1100-600 BC).

The Ugaritic ritual texts provide the only extensive documentary data for Late Bronze cultic practice in the greater Syro-Palestinian region. These texts, in a West-Semitic language that belongs to the same family as Hebrew and Aramaic, reflect the actual practice of a sacrificial cult in the city of Ugarit in the late twelfth-early eleventh centuries B.C.E. Based on new collations of the tablets, these texts and translations provide ready access to this direct witness to the form taken by one of the predecessors of the biblical sacrificial cult. In addition to the narrowly ritual texts, which were composed in prose and in a very laconic form of expression, a number of poetic texts are presented that reveal the ideological link that existed between cultic practice and the concept of royalty. While the prose ritual texts document a regular system of offerings to the great deities of the pantheon, related directly to the lunar cycle and less directly to the solar year, some of the poetic texts reveal the desire on the part of the kings of Ugarit to maintain ties with their departed ancestors. The kings saw their effective power as consisting of a continuum from the royal ancestors through to the reigning king and the passage of this power as being effected by ritual practice. More mundane concerns were also addressed ritually, such as protecting horses or other equids from snakebite, finding a cure for a sick child, or defending people from attack by sorcerers. The practice of divination at Ugarit is documented by other texts, both in the form of "manuals," collections of omens from past practice, and in the form of accounts of real-world consultations of a divinatory priest by someoneseeking guidance. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

This six-volume set incorporates early contributions to the understanding of the history, religion and languages of the Ancient Near East. Tiele's "Comparative History of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian Religions" , translated from Dutch, examines literature and religion from Ancient Egypt to the time of the Persian conquest. Long's "Eastern Proverbs and Emblems" provides an interesting insight into proverbs and how they differ among the different regions. Budge's "History of Esarhaddon" includes a transliteration of Assyrian signs, as well as a detailed history of the reign of Esarhaddon.

The Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia covers one of the oldest civilizations in history. Providing comprehensive coverage of significant persons, places, events, and institutions that influenced and shaped Mesopotamia's history. For the scholar and general reader alike, this guide provides a ready reference for the history of a civilization for which there are many gaps in the data.