Professor Albright speaks to a new generation of scholars through this reprint of his classic work contrasting Israelite and Canaanite religions. The five chapters were originally presented as seven lectures and discuss Poetry and Prose, the Patriarchal Background, Canaanite Religion in the Early Bronze Age, the Struggle between Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, and the Religious Cultures of Israel and Phoenicia.
This masterly book is the climax of over twenty-five years of study of the impact of Canaanite religion and mythology on ancient Israel and the Old Testament. It is John Day's magnum opus in which he sets forth all his main arguments and conclusions on the subject. The work considers in detail the relationship between Yahweh and the various gods and goddesses of Canaan, including the leading gods El and Baal, the great goddesses (Asherah, Astarte and Anat), astral deities (Sun, Moon and Lucifer), and underworld deities (Mot, Resheph, Molech and the Rephaim). Day assesses both what Yahwism assimilated from these deities and what it came to reject. More generally he discusses the impact of Canaanite polytheism on ancient Israel and how monotheism was eventually achieved.
Did God condone genocide in the Old Testament? How do Christians harmonize the warrior God of Israel with the God of love incarnate in Jesus? Christians are often shocked to read that Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, commanded the total destruction--all men, women, and children--of the ethnic group known as the Canaanites. This seems to contradict Jesus' command in the New Testament to love your enemies and do good to all people. How can Yahweh be the same God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? What does genocide in the Bible have to do with the politics of the 21st century? Show Them No Mercy explores the Old Testament command of God to exterminate the Canaanite population and what that implies about continuity between the Old and New Testaments. The four views presented are: Strong Discontinuity – emphasizes the strong tension, regarding violence, between the two main texts of the Bible (C.S. Cowles) Moderate Discontinuity – provides a justification of God’s actions in the Old Testament with strong emphasis on exegesis (Eugene H. Merrill) Eschatological Continuity – a reading of the warfare narratives that ties them contextually to the book of Revelation and the Second Coming (Daniel L. Gard) Spiritual Continuity – incorporates the genocidal account into the full picture of the Old and New Testaments (Tremper Longman III) The Counterpoints series presents a comparison and critique of scholarly views on topics important to Christians that are both fair-minded and respectful of the biblical text. Each volume is a one-stop reference that allows readers to evaluate the different positions on a specific issue and form their own, educated opinion.
In this groundbreaking book, Barker claims that pre-Christian Judaism was not monotheistic and that the roots of Christian Trinitarian theology lie in a pre-Christian Palestinian belief about angels derived from the ancient religion of Israel. Barker's beliefs are based on canonical and deutero-canonical works and literature from Qumran and rabbinic sources.
Annotation The essays contained in this book are preliminary studies directed toward a new synthesis of the history of the religion of Israel. Each study is addressed to a special and, in the authors view, unsolved problem in the description of Israel's religious development.
In this history of the development of monotheism, the author explains how Israel's religion evolved from a cult of Yahweh as a primary deity among many to a fully defined monotheism with Yahweh as sole god. Repudiating the traditional scholarly premise that Israel was fundamentally different in culture and religion from its Canaanite neighbors, he shows that the two cultures were fundamentally similar.
This richly illustrated, non-technical reconstruction of "folk religion" in ancient Israel is based largely on recent archaeological evidence, but also incorporates biblical texts where possible.
The Bible says that YHWH alone is God and that there is none like him—but texts and artwork from antiquity show that many gods looked very similar. In this volume, scholars of the Hebrew Bible and its historical contexts address the problem of YHWH’s ancient look-alikes, providing recommendations for how Jews and Christians can think theologically about this challenge. Sooner or later, whether in a religion class or a seminary course, students bump up against the fact that God—the biblical God—was one among other, comparable gods. The ancient world was full of gods, including great gods of conquering empires, dynastic gods of petty kingdoms, goddesses of fertility, and personal spirit guardians. And in various ways, these gods look like the biblical God. Like the God of the Bible, they, too, controlled the fates of nations, chose kings, bestowed fecundity and blessing, and cared for their individual human charges. They spoke and acted. They experienced wrath and delight. They inspired praise. All of this leaves Jews and Christians in a bind: how can they confess that the God named YHWH was (and is) the true and living God, in view of this God’s profound similarities to all these others? The essays in this volume address the theological challenge these parallels create, providing reflections on how Jews and Christians can keep faith in YHWH as God while acknowledging the reality of YHWH’s divine doppelgängers. It will be welcomed by undergraduates studying religion; seminarians and graduate students of Bible, theology, and the ancient world; and adult education classes.
In this comprehensive study of a common deity found in the ancient Near East as well as many other cultures, Green brings together evidence from the worlds of myth, iconography, and literature in an attempt to arrive at a new synthesis regarding the place of the Storm-god. He finds that the Storm-god was the force primarily responsible for three major areas of human concern: (1) religious power because he was the ever-dominant environmental force upon which peoples depended for their very lives; (2) centralized political power; and (3) continuously evolving sociocultural processes, which typically were projected through the Storm-god’s attendants. Green traces these motifs through the Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Syrian, and Levantine regions; with regard to the latter, he argues that Yahweh of the Bible can be identified as a storm-god, though certain unique characteristics came to be associated with him: he was the Creator of all that is created and the self-existing god who needs no other.
