In modern literary studies intertextuality is at the centre of interest. Although the relationship between texts has always been an important aspect of Old Testament studies, especially in literary criticism, the scale of comparison has broadened, including for example the interrelationships between the First, Second and Third Isaiah, or the whole Book of the Twelve. These relatively new approaches raise a number of methodical questions which were addressed at the Tenth Joint Meeting of the British Society for Old Testament Study and the Dutch 'Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap', held at Oxford, 22nd to 25th July 1997. Did the ancient authors have a well-defined concept of a book? How did they relate to the literary work of their predecessors and contemporaries? Can we trace the theological motifs behind their use of other literary compositions? What does an ancient version reveal about the way it interpreted its source text? One of the problems confronting biblical scholars in this kind of research is the lack of controllable models. Therefore it is useful to study the work of the Ugaritic chief priest Ilimilku whose three major literary compositions provide us with a unique possibility to monitor intertextual relationships in the work of one and the same ancient author. Ugaritic and other ancient Near Eastern parallels help us to understand how the Priestly writer re-interpreted the Yahwistic account of the creation of mankind. Apparently intertextuality in Israel is a phenomenon which cannot properly be understood without taking other literature from the ancient world into account.

In this volume the presupposition is investigated whether women in a polytheistic society had a better position than women in a monotheistic society. To this end the social and religious position of women in Ugarit according to its literary texts is compared to that of women in Israel according to the Hebrew Bible, while the wider context of the ancient Near East is also taken into consideration. After an overview of feminist biblical exegesis, the book discusses the roles of women in the family and in society. It also provides an analysis of the roles of women as religious specialists and as worshippers. Finally, the data on the position of women in the literary texts is compared to that in non-literary texts.

The basic questions underlying the study are the following: 1) How do the concepts of drought, death and the sun relate to each other in the Ugaritic religious literature; how are these concepts used as metaphors to express basic tenets of Ugaritic myth and theology? 2) How are these concepts and their uses reflected in the literature and religion of Ancient Israel? How can the identification of these ancient reminiscences of a shared Northwest Semitic religious background help shed light on the interpretation of various difficult passages in the biblical text and on the relationship between Old Testament theology and that of the surrounding Northwest Semitic cultures?

This book explores various aspects of intertextuality in the LXX Twelve Prophets, with a special emphasis on Hosea, Amos and Micah. Divided into five parts, the first introduces the topic of intertextuality, discusses issues relating to the Twelve Prophets and their translator and concludes with various methodological considerations. Chapter two deals initially with the lexical sourcing of the prophets in their Hellenistic milieu and tests proposed theories of influence from the Pentateuch. The rest of the book examines specific cases from the books of Hosea, Amos and Micah. The third chapter deals with standard expressions used by the translator, even in places where the Hebrew does not correspond. The fourth chapter investigates the use of catchwords that the Greek translator identified in his Hebrew Vorlage and that function for him as links between two or more texts. Finally, the fifth chapter examines cases where the translator understands the text to be alluding to specific biblical stories, events and characters of particular interest in Hellenistic Judaism.

In the spring of 1928, a Syrian farmer was plowing on the Mediterranean coast near a bay called Minet el-Beida. His plow ran into a stone just beneath the surface. When he examined the obstruction, he found a large man-made flagstone that led into a tomb, in which he found some valuable objects that he sold to a dealer. Little did he know what he had discovered. In April of 1929, C. F. A. Schaeffer began excavation of the tombs, but a month later he moved to the nearby tell of Ras Shamra. On the afternoon of May 14, the first inscribed clay tablet came to light--thus the beginnings of the study of Ugarit and the Ugaritic language. Seventy-five years have passed, and the impact of this extraordinary discovery is still being felt. Its impact on biblical studies perhaps has no equal. In February 2005, some of the preeminent Ugaritologists of the present generation gathered at the Midwest Regional meetings of the American Oriental Society to commemorate these 75 years by reading the papers that are now published in this volume. The first five essays deal with the Ugaritic texts, while the last three deal with archaeological or historical issues.