This present study seeks to clarify the character and functions of the Neo-Babylonian empire in its relationship to subjugated populations, and in particular to the population of Judah.

Vanderhooft reverses the usual focus within biblical studies by asking not how the Neo-Babylonian dynasty of about 605-539 BCE influenced Judah or particular biblical writers, but how the biblical texts illuminate the phenomenon of Babylonian imperialism. He focuses on the character and functions of the empire in its relations to the population of Judah and other subjugated peoples, and on what the responses of those populations can reveal about the empire. The treatment began as a doctoral dissertation for Harvard University in May 1996. This volume is in a series formerly distributed by Scholars Press, but now distributed by Eisebrauns. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This volume is the outcome of an international conference held at Tel Aviv University, May 29-31, 2001. The idea for the conference germinated at the fifth Transeuphratene colloquy in Paris in March 2000. The Tel Aviv conference was organized in order to encourage investigation into the obscure five or six decades preceding the Persian conquests in the latter part of the 6th century. The essays here are organized in 5 parts: (1) The Myth of the Empty Land Revisited; (2) Cult, Priesthood, and Temple; (3) Military and Governmental Aspects; (4) Archaeological Perspectives on the 6th Century B.C.E.; and (5) Exiles and Foreigners in Egypt and Babylonia. Contributors: H. M. Barstad, B. Oded, L. S. Fried, S. Japhet, J. Blenkinsopp, G. N. Knoppers, Y. Amit, D. Edelman, Y. Hoffman, R. H. Sack, D. Vanderhooft, J. W. Betlyon, A. Lemaire, C. E. Carter, O. Lipschits, A. Zertal, J. R. Zorn, B. Porten, and R. Zadok.

The all-too-frequent disregard of historical and social contexts by many wisdom scholars often leads to the distortion of this literature and transforms its teachings into abstract ideas lacking any incarnation in the social and historical world of human living. Leo Perdue here argues from a sociohistorical approach that the proper understanding of ancient wisdom literature requires one to move out of the realm of philosophical idealism into the flesh and blood of human history. Arguing that wisdom was international in practice and outlook, Perdue traces the interaction between both ruling and subject nations and their sages who produced their respective cultures and their foundational worldviews. While not always easy to reconstruct, he acknowledges, the historical and social settings of texts provide necessary contexts for interpretation and engagement by later readers and hearers. Wisdom texts did not transcend their life settings to espouse values regardless of time and circumstance. Rather, they are located in a variety of historical events in an evolving nation, reflecting a vast array of different and changing moral systems, epistemologies, and religious understandings.

In Judeans in Babylonia, Tero Alstola presents a comprehensive investigation of deportees in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. By using cuneiform documents as his sources, he offers the first book-length social historical study of the Babylonian Exile, commonly regarded as a pivotal period in the development of Judaism. The results are considered in the light of the wider Babylonian society and contrasted against a comparison group of Neirabian deportees. Studying texts from the cities and countryside and tracking developments over time, Alstola shows that there was notable diversity in the Judeans’ socio-economic status and integration into Babylonian society.

This authoritative volume brings together a team of world-class scholars to cover the full range of Old Testament backgrounds studies in a concise, up-to-date, and comprehensive manner. With expertise in various subdisciplines of Old Testament backgrounds, the authors illuminate the cultural, social, and historical contexts of the world behind the Old Testament. They introduce readers to a wide range of background materials, covering history, geography, archaeology, and ancient Near Eastern textual and iconographic studies. Meant to be used alongside traditional literature-based canonical surveys, this one-stop introduction to Old Testament backgrounds fills a gap in typical introduction to the Bible courses. It contains over 100 illustrations, including photographs, line drawings, maps, charts, and tables, which will facilitate its use in the classroom.

Tribal biblical interpretation is a developing area of study that is concerned with reading the Bible through the eyes of tribal people. While many studies of reading the Bible from the reader's social, cultural and historical location have been made in various parts of the world, no thorough study that offers a coherent and substantive methodology for tribal biblical interpretation has been made. This book is the first comprehensive work that offers a description of tribal biblical interpretation and shows its application by making a lucid reading of Matthew's infancy narrative from a tribal reader's perspective. Using reader-response criticism as his primary method, Zhodi Angami brings his tribal context of North East India into conversation with Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus. Since tribal people of North East India see themselves as living under colonial rule, a tribal reader sees Matthew's text as a narrative that actively resists and subverts imperial rule. Likewise, the tribal experience of living at the margins inspires a tribal reader to look at the narrative from the underside, from the perspective of those who are sidelined, ignored, belittled or forgotten. Tribal biblical interpretation presented here follows a process of conversation between tribal worldview and Matthew's narrative. Such a method animates the text for the tribal reader and makes the biblical narrative not only more intelligible to the tribal reader but allows the text to speak directly to the tribal context.