Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative Studies on Narratives in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Hebrew Bible

by Simon Parker

This book compares a variety of biblical narratives with the stories found in several Northwest Semitic inscriptions from the ancient kingdom of Judah and its contemporary Syro-Palestinian neighbors. In genre, language, and cultural context, these epigraphic stories are closer to biblical narratives than any other ancient Near Eastern narrative corpus. For the first time, Parker analyzes and appreciates these stories as narratives and sets them beside comparable biblical stories. He illuminates the narrative character and techniques of both epigraphic and biblical stories and in many cases reveals their original social context and purpose. In some cases, he is able to shed light on the question of the sources and composition of the larger work in which most of the biblical stories appear, the Deuteronomistic history. Against the claim that the genius of biblical prose narrative derives from the monotheism of the authors, he shows that the presence or absence of a divine role in
each type of story is consistent throughout both biblical and epigraphic examples, and that, when present, the role of the deity is essentially the same both inside and outside the Bible, inside and outside Israel.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

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Reviews

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The primary purpose of this book seems to be to compare certain types of narratives in the Hebrew Bible (mostly, but not entirely, about war and diplomacy) with non-canonical documents during the years of the First Temple (mostly, but not entirely, from pagan societies).

Parker focuses on the similarities between Hebrew narratives and pagan documents, writing that "the presence or absence of one or more gods in a story is a function of the type and purpose of story, not of whether the story is in Hebrew prose." I don't know enough about history to know whether this is an earthshaking insight; nevertheless, it was sort of interesting to find out that while David and Hezekiah were ruling Jerusalem, other states left behind records of their victories and defeats- records that sometimes mentioned the Hebrew kingdoms of that period.