This Congress Volume comprises not only the main lectures of the XVIth I.O.S.O.T. Congress, held in Oslo 1998, but also the interventions at the two panels on "Intertextuality and the Pluralism of Methods" and on "The Hebrew Bible and History." Both the main lectures and the panelists' interventions focus on current methodological problems and study central questions in the present study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in its environment.

The twenty articles collected in this volume cover a wide range of subjects concerned with the Old Testament: religion (the divine name Shaddai; dominant religious ideas between 1500 and 600 B.C.; exclusiveness; the kingship of God), The Pentateuch (Genesis xviiii-xix; Og's iron bed; laws in Deuteronomy and Middle Assyrian laws; the Pentateuch, The Deuteronomist and Spinoza), the historical books, history and archaeology (Ugarit and Israelite origins; Arameans; the system of the twelve tribes of Israel; the text of the historical books; 1 Kings xiii; places for women in Israelite cities), the prophetical books (Amos and Hosea; Isaiah), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (Women in Ecclesiasticus and Judith; the origin of evil in apocalyptic and the Dead Sea Scrolls), and literary conventions (the explicit and the implicit; proleptic summaries). The articles (in English, French or German) were written by scholars with varying religious backgrounds from various countries, and were originally read at a Congress in Paris of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament in 1992.

This volume publishes the papers given by invitation at the 17th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, which was held in Basel from 5-10 August 2001. It presents a state of the art of the current exegesis of the Hebrew Bible, taking into account the latest research in general linguistics and semitic philology, as well as textual criticism (Massora Magna, Septuagint, Qumran manuscripts), ethno-sociology and archaeology. Feminist biblical studies are duly represented as well as the last research on literary criticism on the Pentateuch, especially in its relation to other ancient Near Eastern texts (Neo-assyrian and Aramaic inscriptions). Finally, two contributions throw light on the problem of religious interpretation of the Bible (Resurrection of the Dead and Biblical Theology).

This volume publishes the papers given by invitation at the fifteenth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, which was held at Cambridge in July 1995, under the Presidency of J.A. Emerton. The articles cover a wide range of subjects relevant to the study of the Old Testament, and reflect the ongoing debate on a variety of themes among the world's leading contemporary Old Testament scholars.

This Congress Volume comprises not only the main lectures of the XVIth I.O.S.O.T. Congress, held in Oslo 1998, but also the interventions at the two panels on "Intertextuality and the Pluralism of Methods" and on "The Hebrew Bible and History". Both the main lectures and the panelists' interventions focus on current methodological problems and study central questions in the present study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in its environment.