This is a readable introduction to the religious traditions of the ancient Israelites, the people of the Hebrew Bible. It sets forth the biblical and extra-biblical evidence concerning their beliefs, myths, and ritual practices.

The broad spectrum of the Mari documents provides innumerable opportunities for comparative research into Early Israel, the Bible and Biblical Hebrew. The present volume utilizes these possibilities to obtain a new perspective on Early Israelite times. In 1936, a French archaeological expedition to Mari, the capital of a kingdom on the Middle Euphrates in Syria, began uncovering a vast archive of some 25,000 cuneiform tablets. This huge corpus of Old Babylonian documents, mostly from the Mari palace - a unique royal complex of the eighteenth century BC - is slowly revealing a vivid picture of Mesopotamia at the time when the Israelites were in their earliest formative stage. One most fascinating facet of the archives is the light they shed on the early phases of Israelite socio-history. Indeed, the Mari archives now comprise the prime extra-Biblical source for this period, for they reflect a West Semitic population analogous to the so-called `Patriarchs'. The broad spectrum of the Mari documents, from exotic prophecies to political intrigue, provides innumerable opportunities for comparative research into Early Israel, the Bible, and Biblical Hebrew. The present volume utilizes these possibilities to obtain a new perspective on Early Israelite times.

The origins and development of the Church in Egypt remain one of the vexed problems of early Christian history. In his Schweich Lectures, delivered in 1977, Dr C. H. Roberts examines the evidence of the Christian papyri discovered in Egypt to see what light they cast on the problems and how far they support statements in our ancient authorities or the theories of modern scholars. Among matters discussed are the influence of Judaism and whether Gnosticism was really as powerful in the first three centuries in Egypt as is sometimes thought; particular attention is paid to the historical significance in these early manuscripts of the nomina sacra, the abbreviations of the divine names.

As the leading figure in the New Archaeology, David Rohl has been at the forefront of the movement to discover the archaeological evidence for events described in the Old Testament which we have come to think of as myths. His previous books, The Test of Time and Legend presented the arguments and counter-arguments. In From Eden to Exile this discursive approach is replaced by historical story-telling, which follows the sequence of events from the rise of Neolithic civilisation in a region now part of Iran which inspired the story of the Garden of Eden, through Noah, Abraham and the sojourn in Egypt, to the fall of Jericho, the dual kingdoms of the Promised Land and lastly, the exile in Babylon, where the stories of the Old Testament were collated into something very like their present form.

This volume contains first and second century documents in Aramaic and Greek said to come from Nahal Se'elim and now generally held to be from Nahal Hever (the provenance of the Babatha Archive and the Bar Kokhba documents). The transitional stage of the Aramaic language is documented here for the first time. The Greek language and script closely resembles that of the Greek papyri from Egypt. The legal documents in the archive of Salome Komaise, daughter of Levi from Mahoza (a village in the Roman province of Arabia), and similar documents from Judaea published here, like those of the Babatha archive, constitute the most authentic evidence for certain legal and social aspects of the life of Jews at the time. The evidence of assimilation of non-hellenized Jews to their environment contrasts with and complements that contained in contemporary and later Rabbinic sources.

This definitive scholarly edition continues the publication of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran Cave 4. It contains thirty-three manuscripts of the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets, antedating previous Hebrew texts by a millennium. The scrolls are valuable witnesses to the pluriform nature of the ancient biblical text and have been used for recent revised translations of the Bible.

This volume contains a collection of Jewish works composed during the intertestamental period linked to biblical texts through characters, themes, or genre. Some of these were known previously as part of the Pseudepigrapha, while others were not previously known. They should all enhance our understanding of the phenomenon of pseudepigraphy (writing in the name of a famous biblical or religious character) and of biblical interpretation during the Second Temple period.

In this long awaited edition Baumgarten presents all the known Qumran Cave 4 manuscripts of the Damascus Document on the basis of J. T. Milik's original transcriptions. These eight manuscripts antedate the two medieval Cairo Geniza texts (CD) by more than a millennium and are indispensable for all future literary and historical studies on one of the major foundational works of the Qumran community. For the first time we have the paraenetic beginning and ending of the work, as well as major additions to the legal corpus found in one of the medieval texts. The laws of this corpus and the historical identification of the Jews who formulated them were earlier in this century the subject of much controversy, but have since been largely ignored in Qumran scholarship. Some even suggested that they were not an integral part of the Damascus Document. It is now apparent from the expanded corpus that the interpretation of biblical law was a central concern of the Qumran community. Among the new subjects treated are such matters as the ethical arrangement of marriages, the role of women in the sect, and the legal status of fetal life. These laws are found side by side with allusions to the cosmic conflict of light and darkness and a view of history in which periods of wrath are ordained to precede the end of days.

From two leading Christian apologists, here is a fascinating survey of the most important Old and New Testament archaeological discoveries through the ages.

Biblical archaeology has always stirred excitement among believers and curiosity among unbelievers. The evidence dug up with a spade can speak volumes?and serve as a powerful testimony of the reliability of Scripture.

Norm Geisler and Joe Holden have put together an impressive array of finds that confirm the biblical peoples and events of ages past. In a user-friendly format written in popular style, they?

• examine the latest finds and explain their significance
• include dozens of photographs
• provide an instructive chart of artifacts (along with fast facts)
• sample a variety of finds?papyri, inscriptions, scrolls, ossuaries, and more

If readers are looking for just one book to cover this topic both concisely and comprehensively, this is it!

Originally published in 1968, this volume is being reissued to make the entire series available to students and scholars of biblical and post-biblical Judaism and early Christianity.

This volume contains a collection of previously unknown compositions from Cave 4 at Qumran. These compositions, written during the Second Temple period, use specialized terminology that allows them to be classified as sapiential (or instructional) literature. As such, they are part of the larger genre of wisdom literature, common in the ancient Near East, which includes other collections of sayings and instruction such as the Book of Proverbs, Ben Sira, and the Epistle of James. The documents published here include Mysteries (a manuscript of which was also found in Cave 1), several Meditations on Creation, an Admonitory Parable, Work Concerning Divine Providence, Ways of Righteousness, a number of small sapiential texts, and one text written in the script known as Cryptic A Words of a Sage to All Sons of Dawn. These compositions enhance our understanding of the keen interest in theological and ethical issues (such as God's omnipotence, justice, creative power and design, and man's moral and ethical responsibility to his Creator and fellow men), both of the Qumran community specifically and of Second Temple period Judaism in general.

This volume continues the publication of the series of biblical Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It contains twenty-four Hebrew manuscripts of the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and Kings. These texts antedate by a millennium those that had previously held the title of the earliest surviving Hebrew biblical manuscripts. They document a pluriformity acceptable in the ancient biblical textual tradition before the text became standardized later in the Christian and Rabbinic period.

Ancient Israel did not emerge within a vacuum but rather came to exist alongside various peoples, including Canaanites, Egyptians, and Philistines. Indeed, Israel's very proximity to these groups has made it difficult-until now-to distinguish the archaeological traces of early Israel and other contemporary groups. Through an analysis of the results from recent excavations in light of relevant historical and later biblical texts, this book proposes that it is possible to identify these peoples and trace culturally or ethnically defined boundaries in the archaeological record. Features of late second-millennium B.C.E. culture are critically examined in their historical and biblical contexts in order to define the complex social boundaries of the early Iron Age and reconstruct the diverse material world of these four peoples. Of particular value to scholars, archaeologists, and historians, this volume will also be a standard reference and resource for students and other readers interested in the emergence of early Israel. "Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)"