The Hebrew Bible is filled with references to people, places, deities, customs, beliefs, practices and traditions of the ancient Near Eastern world. Egyptians, Assyrians, Canaanites, Hittites, and Babylonians appear as central figures in many biblical narratives. Thus it is fitting that students of the Bible turn to the literary remains of these civilizations to understand how they shaped the biblical world.
The Context of Scripture is an impressive three-volume collection of these ancient Near Eastern writings in English translations. Each translation is accompanied by cross references to related biblical texts, allowing users of the electronic edition to easily search for ancient writings that relate to a given passage. The translations also sport extensive notes and thorough bibliographies, to help the student understand the texts and provide avenues for further study.
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.