The Bible Unearthed. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts[1] is a 2001 book about the archaeology of Israel and its relationship to the origins of the Hebrew Bible. The authors are Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, a contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine. Methodology[edit] The methodology applied by the authors is basically historical criticism with an emphasis on archaeology. The authors describe their approach as one "in which the Bible is one of the most important artifacts and cultural achievements [but] not the unquestioned narrative framework into which every archaeological find must be fit. " Their main contention is that On the basis of this evidence they propose As noted by a reviewer on Salon.com[2] the approach and conclusions of The Bible Unearthed are not particularly new.
Content[edit] Ancestors and anachronisms[edit] Origin of the Israelites[edit] Mesha Stele. Testimonium Flavianum. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament edited by James B. Pritchard (1st ed. 1950, 2nd ed.1955, 3rd ed. 1969[1]) is an anthology of important historical, legal, mythological, liturgical, and secular texts from the ancient Near East. William W. Hallo, writing in the Journal of the American Oriental Society in 1970, described it as "a modern classic ever since its first appearance in 1950", because "for the first time it assembled some of the most significant Ancient Near Eastern texts in authoritative, generously annotated English translations based on the accumulated insight of several generations of scholarship scattered".[2] It is conventional to cite the work as ANET.[3] ANEP refers to a companion volume Ancient Near Eastern Pictures Relating to the Old Testament (1969), featuring 882 black and white designs and photos.[4] Publication[edit] The book was published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, in 1950.
Contents[edit] I. II. III. Also: Panbabylonism. Panbabylonism is a school of thought within Assyriology and Religious studies that considers the Hebrew Bible and Judaism as directly derived from Mesopotamian (Babylonian) mythology. Appearing in the late 19th century, it gained popularity in the early 20th century, advocated notably by Alfred Jeremias. The ideas presented within its framework still carry importance in mythological studies, due to similarities between myths in the comparatively young Bible and much older myths from ancient Mesopotamian mythologies. Creation myths[edit] Panbabylonists believe the creation myth in the Book of Genesis came from older Mesopotamian creation myths. The Mesopotamian creation myths are recorded in the Enûma Eliš (or Enuma Elish), the Atra-Hasis, the 'Eridu Genesis' and on the 'Barton Cylinder'. In the beginning of both myths the universe is shapeless and there is nothing but water.
In the Enûma Eliš there are six generations of gods, created one after the other. Cosmography[edit] Gods[edit] Asherah. Atra-Hasis. In 1965 W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard[2] published many additional texts belonging to the epic, including an Old Babylonian copy (written around 1650 BC) which is our most complete surviving recension of the tale. These new texts greatly increased knowledge of the epic and were the basis for Lambert and Millard’s first English translation of the Atrahasis epic in something approaching entirety.[3] A further fragment has been recovered in Ugarit. Walter Burkert[4] traces the model drawn from Atrahasis to a corresponding passage, the division by lots of the air, underworld and sea among Zeus, Hades and Poseidon in the Iliad, in which “a resetting through which the foreign framework still shows”.
In its most complete surviving version, the Atrahasis epic is written on three tablets in Akkadian, the language of ancient Babylon.[5] Synopsis[edit] Tablet III of the Atrahasis Epic contains the flood story. Atrahasis in History[edit] Literary inheritance[edit] See also[edit] Notes[edit] W.