Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East.
Klein, Ralph W.
Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew
Bible and the Ancient Near East. By Christopher B. Hays. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 2014. ISBN: 978-0-66423701-1. xxvi and 425 pages.
Paper. $45.
Serious readers of the Old Testament have long used compendia of
Ancient Near Eastern writings, such as ANET and COS, to learn more about
the Bible's world and culture. In general, however, those
collections leave readers on their own to figure things out, often a
daunting task.
Hays presents modern translations of a smaller number of ancient
texts but provides interpretations of these texts and how they are
similar to or different from their biblical parallels. The discussion of
each text ends with reflection questions (often quite challenging) and a
bibliography for further reading.
He identifies four goals of his book: to make intelligent
comparison between biblical and Ancient Near Eastern texts possible; to
give a wider view of the texts themselves (discussions of genre or the
meaning of the whole text when a text has been excerpted); to provide
starting points for analysis and comparison; and to open up avenues for
motivated readers to explore further. The author does not take a strong
ideological stance so that users who use critical methods of Bible study
and those who do not can both profit from this book.
The twenty-five major categories of documents are arranged
according to the Pentateuch, Former Prophets, Latter Prophets, and
Writings. They include familiar texts like the Babylonian creation and
flood stories, the Code of Hammurabi, and ancient treaties/covenants,
but also parallels to prophetic symbolic actions and oracles against
foreign nations, prayers, hymns, and laments. Photographs of eight Near
Eastern images that enhance our understanding of the Bible are included
as well. Some texts, of course, have opposite readings of history, such
as Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem in 701 as reported in his
royal annals and the quite opposite outcome of that battle in the Bible.
I would have been a bit more forthright about the contradiction between
these texts, but the approach of Hays will keep the discussion going,
and he concedes that this event remains subject to critical judgment and
that readers need to wrestle with such texts and clarify methods and
presuppositions.
This will be a wonderful textbook, but it will also benefit all
readers who want to go deeper into the meaning of the Old Testament in
its ancient context.
Ralph W. Klein
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
