Annotation A study of the phenomenon of prophecy as documented in ancient Near Eastern texts and the Hebrew Bible as well as Greek sources, from the twenty-first century BCE to the second century CE.

Many today find the Old Testament a closed book. The cultural issues seem insurmountable and we are easily baffled by that which seems obscure. Furthermore, without knowledge of the ancient culture we can easily impose our own culture on the text, potentially distorting it. This series invites you to enter the Old Testament with a company of guides, experts that will give new insights into these cherished writings. Features include • Over 2000 photographs, drawings, maps, diagrams and charts provide a visual feast that breathes fresh life into the text. • Passage-by-passage commentary presents archaeological findings, historical explanations, geographic insights, notes on manners and customs, and more. • Analysis into the literature of the ancient Near East will open your eyes to new depths of understanding both familiar and unfamiliar passages. • Written by an international team of 30 specialists, all top scholars in background studies.

Are the prophets speaking about their own times, about our present, or about some still-unrealized future? Applying his signature method, John Walton provides a clear, helpful guide to the nature of biblical prophecy and apocalyptic literature that will help us avoid potential misuse and reclaim the message of the prophets for our lives.

Many believers neglect to study the Old Testament because they find it confusing or because they assume that it is less important to the Christian faith than the New Testament. We cannot understand Jesus or His gospel without a proper grounding in the Old Testament Scriptures. Thus, we need to read and study the whole counsel of God. Let us not neglect the study of either testament. Unique among all books ever written, the Bible accurately foretells specific events in detail many years, sometimes centuries, before they occur. Approximately 2,500 prophecies appear in the pages of the Bible, about 2,000 of which already have been fulfilled to the letter—no errors. (The remaining 500 or so reach into the future and may be seen unfolding as days go by.) Since the probability of any one of these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance averages less than one in ten (figured very conservatively) and since the prophecies are for the most part independent of one another, the odds for all these prophecies having been fulfilled by chance without error is less than one in 102000 (that is 1 with 2,000 zeros written after it)! God is not the only one, however, who uses forecasts of future events to get people’s attention. Satan does, too. Through clairvoyants (such as Jeanne Dixon and Edgar Cayce), mediums, spiritists, and others come remarkable predictions, though rarely with more than about 60 percent accuracy, never with total accuracy. Messages from Satan, furthermore, fail to match the details of Bible prophecies, nor do they include a call to repentance. The acid test for identifying a prophet of God is recorded by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:21-22. According to this Bible passage (and others), God’s prophets, as distinct from Satan’s spokesmen, are 100 percent accurate in their predictions. There is no room for error. The New Testament indicates that what happened at the cross and on it was what the prophets had predicted would happen long before. Details of Jesus’ life and death were written in divine prophecy hundreds of years before He was born in Bethlehem. Throughout the Gospels, this amazing truth is emphasized. As Jesus and His apostles left the upper room for the Garden of Gethsemane, He said to them, “You will all fall away because it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered’” (Mark 14:27). After Judas’ betrayal, Jesus rebuked Peter for drawing his sword and cutting off the ear of Malchus and said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. . . How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?” (Matthew 26:52–54). On the cross Jesus waited until He saw that “all things had already been accomplished” before He uttered His only physical request, “I am thirsty” (John 19:28). Later, the spear was thrust into Jesus’ side, and blood and water came out. We read, “For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, ‘Not a bone of Him shall be broken.’ And again, another Scripture says, ‘They shall look on Him whom they pierced’” (John 19:36, 37). The angel who was at the tomb on the morning of the resurrection said, “. . . Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rises again” (Luke 24:6, 7). When Jesus met with the apostles and disciples Sunday evening, the same day He arose from the dead, He said to them, These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. . . . Thus, it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem (Luke 24:44–47). In Jesus’ affirmation to those Sunday night witnesses, He referred to all three divisions of the Hebrew Old Testament—the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms —as He described the prophecies that had been fulfilled in Him. It has been said that if one reads any part of the Bible and does not see Jesus in it, he should go back and reread it, for he has missed something very important! In Peter’s first gospel sermon on the Day of Pentecost, he declared that Jesus had been delivered into the hands of godless men to be put to death “by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). In his second sermon in Acts, Peter covered in one sweeping sentence the prophecies of the whole Old Testament, saying that Jesus’ sufferings on the cross fulfilled all that had been prophesied: “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled” (Acts 3:18).

Multifaceted insights into female life in prophetic contexts Both prophets and prophetesses shared God’s divine will with the people of Israel, yet the voices of these women were often forgotten due to later prohibitions against women teaching in public. This latest volume of the Bible and Women series focuses on the intersection of gender and prophecy in the Former Prophets (Joshua to 2 Kings) as well as in the Latter Prophets of the Hebrew Bible. Essays examine how women appear in the iconography of the ancient world, the historical background of the phenomenon of prophecy, political and religious resistance by women in the biblical text, and gender symbolism and constructions in prophetic material as well as the metaphorical discourse of God. Contributors Michaela Bauks, Athalya Brenner-Idan, Ora Brison, L. Juliana Claassens, Marta García Fernández, Irmtraud Fischer, Maria Häusl, Rainer Kessler, Nancy C. Lee, Hanne Løland Levinson, Christl M. Maier, Ilse Müllner, Martti Nissinen, Ombretta Pettigiani, Ruth Poser, Benedetta Rossi, Silvia Schroer, and Omer Sergi draw insight into the texts from a range of innovative gender-oriented approaches.

This book surveys the current landscape of Old Testament studies, offering readers a concise guide to contemporary academic discussions. Bringing together a diverse group of experts, it provides an informed introduction to the many fields of Old Testament research by recognized scholars, presents basic questions in each subfield, surveys the primary methods of answering these questions, engages prominent solutions, and evaluates relevant and up-to-date resources. It is an extensive guide to current research and an ideal supplemental textbook for a variety of courses on the Old Testament. Contributors include Samuel Boyd, Mark Brett, Aubrey Buster, M. Daniel Carroll R., Stephen Chapman, Stephen L. Cook, Matthew Coomber, Katherine Davis, Katharine Dell, Stephen Dempster, Christopher J. Fresch, Diedre Fulton, Rachelle Gilmour, Jamie Grant, H. H. Hardy II, Ralph Hawkins, Richard S. Hess, John W. Hilber, Brad E. Kelle, Will Kynes, David Lamb, Bo Lim, Drew Longacre, Tremper Longman III, Sandra Richter, Ken Ristau, Jordan Ryan, Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Jason M. Silverman, Brent A. Strawn, C. A. Strine, Heath Thomas, Daniel Timmer, and Eric J. Tully.

A new, expanded edition of a classic reference tool This volume of more than 170 documents of prophecy from the ancient Near East brings together a representative sample of written documents from Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Egypt dating to the second and first millennia BCE. Nissinen's collection provides nonspecialist readers clear translations, transliterations, and discussions of oracles reports and collections, quotations of prophetic messages in letters and literature, and texts that reference persons with prophetic titles. This second edition includes thirty-four new texts. Features: Modern, idiomatic, and readable English translations Thirty-four new translations Contributions of West Semitic, Egyptian, and Luwian sources from C. L. Seow, Robert K. Ritner, and H. Craig Melchert