In Early Mesopotamian Divination Literature: Its Organizational Framework and Generative and Paradigmatic Characteristics, Abraham Winitzer provides a detailed study of the Akkadian Old Babylonian (ca. 2000-1600 BC) omen collections stemming from extispicy, the most significant Mesopotamian divination technique for most of that civilization's history. Paying close attention to these texts' organizational structure, Winitzer details the mechanics responsible for their origins and development, and highlights key characteristics of a conceptual framework that helped reconfigure Mesopotamian divination into a literature in line with significant, new forms of literary expression from the same time. This literature, Winitzer concludes, represents an early form of scientific reasoning that began to appreciate the centrality of texts and textual interpretation in this civilization's production, organization, and conception of knowledge.

This volume, in celebration of Peter Machinist, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, includes twenty-eight illuminating essays on ancient Near Eastern history and literature, which focus especially on the intersection of these fields. Contributors include one of Machinist’s teachers, several of his students, and numerous colleagues and friends. These essays probe topics for which Machinist’s work has often set new standards. And in the spirit of the honoree and his interests, these comparative studies encompass Babel, Bibel, and more. In them, Assyriologists contend with biblical cruxes and biblicists engage Assyriological research, while classicists and Hittitologists participate with considerations of their respective disciplines within a broad cross-cultural context. The volume is a must for anyone committed to the ongoing comparative study of the ancient Near East, and within that framework, the historical study of the Hebrew Bible.