Even when a biblical text engages in polemic or offers critiques of the larger culture, to do so its authors must be aware of and interact with current thinking and literature. When we compare the literature of the ancient Near East with the Bible, we are ultimately trying to recover aspects of the ancient cognitive environment that may help us understand the Israelite perspective a little better. By catching a glimpse of how they thought about themselves and their world, we sometimes discover ways that the Israelites would have thought that differ totally from how we think.
