Readers of biblical commentaries will have heard of many of the works contained in this set already. Commentaries on Genesis frequently make reference to the Babylonian creation and flood stories found in the Enuma Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Commentaries on the other Pentateuch volumes often draw comparisons with early law codes, like the Laws of Hammurabi, or with the Hittite suzerainty treaties. The Song of Songs is often compared with Egyptian love poems, as Proverbs is with works of Egyptian wisdom literature, like the Instruction of Any and The Instruction of Amenemope. The Ugaritic Baal cycle is a treasure trove of information on Canaanite religion as well as containing enlightening linguistic parallels to biblical Hebrew, and makes regular appearances in the biblical commentaries. Commentaries on Chronicles and Ezra point to the edict recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder, which contains a striking parallel to Cyrus’ edict contained in the biblical text, and so on.

How does Context of Scripture compare to the classic work in this area: Pritchard's Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament? As the following quotation from RBL indicates, Context of Scripture is intended to advance biblical studies and contains a number of new and revised texts that were not in the older work.

The Context of Scripture fulfills some of the same desiderata fulfilled by [Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament] but moves significantly beyond the older publication. Like ANET, this compendium contains both newly recovered or newly (re-)edited texts and well-known older stand-bys. But the editors have also given preference to texts that can be presented in their entirety; to well-preserved rather than fragmentary texts; and to texts whose relevance for biblical studies, by way either of comparison or of contrast, has been demonstrated or argued in the secondary literature.
—Review of Volume 1 in Review of Biblical Literature

Benefits of the Logos Bible Software Edition

The Logos Bible Software edition includes a data type for handling citations to Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, a smaller, older, but very popular collection of ancient Near Eastern writings so that in the future, Logos books that cite ANET can link to the Context of Scripture where the two collections overlap.

The electronic edition of Context of Scripture also links to several other books already available in the Libronix Digital Library System, such as the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, the Amarna Letters, Lichtheim’s 3-volume Ancient Egyptian Literature, and the Anchor Bible Dictionary, many of which can be unlocked from the CD-ROM.

Print Edition Back Cover

The Context of Scripture illuminatingly presents the multi-faceted world of ancient writing that forms the colorful background to the literature of the Hebrew Bible. Designed as a thorough and durable reference work for all engaged in the study of the Bible and the ancient Near East, and involving approximately 90 of the world's outstanding scholars in the field, it provides reliable access to a broad, balanced and representative collection of Ancient Near Eastern texts that have some bearing on the interpretation of the Bible. Translations of recently discovered texts are included, alongside new translations of better-known texts and in some cases the best existing translations of such texts.

The substantial three-volume work, with its specially designed page layout and large format, features full cross-referencing to comparable Bible passages, and new, up-to-date bibliographical annotations with judicious commentary. Its many distinct advantages over other collections will ensure the place of The Context of Scripture as a standard reference work for the 21st century.

Volume I, Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, is devoted to 'literary' texts: those responses to the world about them by which the creative minds of antiquity sought to come to terms with their environment, real or imaginary.

Volume II, Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World, is devoted to building and votive inscriptions, seals, weights, treaties, collections of laws, and other genres originally inscribed on durable mediums or in multiple copies for long-term survival. Many are royal inscriptions, and nearly all are crucial to the reconstruction of the history of the Biblical world.

Volume III, Archival Documents from the Biblical World, provides a generous selection from the vast number of legal, commercial and private documents preserved from pre-classical antiquity. These courtcases, contracts, accounts and letters, so often slighted or underrepresented in older anthologies, throw a bright light on the daily life of ordinary human beings as recorded by their contemporaries. In addition, exhaustive indices to all three volumes identify and classify all proper names and many of the themes struck throughout the work.

Praise for the Print Edition

Now that it is complete, this major publication project will clearly replace James B. Pritchard's long-standard Ancient Near Eastern Texts. The three volumes of The Context of Scripture offer improved renderings of familiar texts, introduce more recently published texts to a wider audience, and shed new light on the Bible by means of detailed introductions and copious annotations. Yet one can happily read the texts without ever consulting the footnotes. The Context of Scripture will no doubt stimulate the reading of the Bible in its ancient context, resulting in a better understanding of what Israel shared with her Near Eastern neighbors, and how she differed from them.
—Alan Millard, Biblical Archaeology Review, 2004.

All students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East will be grateful for this impressive and authoritative work. It is wonderful to have so much of ancient Near Eastern literature in one collection, translated by the best scholars in the field.
—Ronald S. Hendel, Bible Review, 1998.

…this volume will prove an indispensable tool for all who seek to intepret the Old Testament within its cultural and linguistic environment.
—Daniel L. Block, Review and Expositor.

…the three volumes in COS will be reliable and frequently used companions of Old Testament scholars in the next fifty years. Biblical commentaries and journal articles will regularly refer to them.
—Ralph W. Klein, Currents, 2001.

…an up-to-date and indispensable collection of Near Eastern literature.
—William M. Schniedewind, Religious Studies Review, 2001.

Given the high quality of this compendium, one of the editors' hopes for this series would seem to be well founded, namely, that The Context of Scripture will become a standard reference work in college, seminary, and university libraries well into the twenty-first century.
—Gary N. Knoppers, Review of Biblical Literature, April 2000

About the Editors

William W. Hallo is the William M. Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature and Curator of the Babylonian Collection at Yale University. He holds degrees from Harvard, Leiden, and Chicago. He is author or co-author of Seals and Seal Impressions (2001), The Ancient Near East: a History (1998, 1971), Origins (1997), The Book of the People (1991), Scripture in Context (4 vols. 1980-1991), Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (2 vols. 1984), The Tablets of Ebla (1984), Sumerian Archival Texts (1973), The Exaltation of Inanna (1968), and Early Mesopotamian Royal Titles (1957).

K. Lawson Younger, Jr., Ph.D. (1988) at the University of Sheffield is Professor of Old Testament, Semitic Languages and Ancient Near Eastern History at Trinity International University -- Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. He is the author of Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (1990), co-editor of Mesopotamia and the Bible (2002), as well as numerous scholarly articles and reviews.

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