Preliminary material /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- INTRODUCTION /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- CUNEIFORM LAW /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- CUNEIFORM PROLOGUES AND EPILOGUES TO LEGAL COLLECTIONS /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- THE PROBLEM OF PROLOGUE AND EPILOGUE TO THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT AND LEADING FEATURES OF BIBLICAL LAW /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- ANNOTATIONS TO THE LAWS OF THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- SUMMARY /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- VERSE ARRANGEMENT OF THE LAWS OF THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LEGAL FORMULATIONS /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- BIBLIOGRAPHY /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW -- INDEX OF SOURCES /Editors STUDIES IN THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM AND BIBLICAL LAW.

Major innovations have occurred in the study of biblical law in recent decades. The legal material of the Pentateuch has received new interest with detailed studies of specific biblical passages. The comparison of biblical practice to ancient Near Eastern customs has received a new impetus with the concentration on texts from actual ancient legal transactions. The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law provides a state of the art analysis of the major questions, principles, and texts pertinent to biblical law. The thirty-three chapters, written by an international team of experts, deal with the concepts, significant texts, institutions, and procedures of biblical law; the intersection of law with religion, socio-economic circumstances, and politics; and the reinterpretation of biblical law in the emerging Jewish and Christian communities. The volume is intended to introduce non-specialists to the field as well as to stimulate new thinking among scholars working in biblical law.

As one of the most prominent themes in Scripture, the covenant is crucial to all Christian theological systems, from dispensationalism to covenant theology to theonomy to liberation theology. One would think that by now all controversies have been exhausted, but an issue of this magnitude can never finally be laid to rest. Because disagreements persist, there is room for yet another attempt to study the covenant and improve our understanding of it. This book proposes that the path toward an evangelical consensus is not to be found in building another modified systematic theology, but in a biblical theology approach. Grounded in this approach, John Walton's perspective is that while the covenant is characteristically redemptive, formulated along the lines of ancient treaties, and ultimately soteric, it is essentially revelatory. This view in turn has implications regarding the continuity or discontinuity of the covenant phases, the conditionality of the covenant, and our understanding of the people of God. And this ultimately affects the way the Old Testament is preached and taught. Walton's thesis is an important contribution to the discussion of the covenant and the attempts to find common ground among evangelicals of diverse theological traditions.

How do we understand the characteristically extensive presence of imagery in biblical prophecy? Poetic metaphor in prophetic writings has commonly been understood solely as an artistic flourish intended to create certain rhetorical effects. It thus appears expendable and unrelated to the core content of the composition—however engaging it may be, aesthetically or otherwise. Job Jindo invites us to reconsider this convention. Applying recent studies in cognitive science, he explores how we can view metaphor as the very essence of poetic prophecy—namely, metaphor as an indispensable mode to communicate prophetic insight. Through a cognitive reading of Jeremiah 1-24, Jindo amply demonstrates the advantage and heuristic ramifications of this approach in biblical studies.

The remarkable discovery of ancient Near Eastern law collections or "codes," beginning with the Laws of Hammurabi and followed by many other collections in decades following, opened a new window upon biblical law. This volume seeks to examine within a single study all of the biblical laws that are similar in content with ancient Near Eastern laws from Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Hatti. The book also examines a small but important group of early rabbinic laws from postbiblical times that exhibit significant similarities with laws found in the ancient Near Eastern collections or "codes." This later group of laws, although absent from the Bible, are nevertheless of comparable antiquity. The presentation focuses on the actual law statements preserved in these ancient law "codes." The discussion then adds narratives, records, and reports of legal actions from ancient sources outside the laws-all of which relate to the formal law statements. The discourse is non-polemical in tone and does not seek to revisit all theories and interpretations. The format allows readers, including those who are new to the subject of biblical law, to engage the primary sources on their own.