Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament Quotes

“the book of Job argues pointedly against the theodicy philosophies in the ancient world and represents an Israelite modification. This modification, rather than offering a revised theodicy, seeks to reinterpret the justice of God from something that may be debated to something that is a given.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“This last element is what distinguishes the theodicy literature in the Hebrew Bible from that in the ancient Near East. The sufferer in the ancient Near East, lacking revelation of the nature of deity, would have little way of knowing what his or her offense might have been.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“as the king compiled these lists of examples of “wise justice,” he was legitimating his kingship,21 not necessarily trying to impose legislation on society but guiding lesser officials and future kings in maintaining stability and order in civilization.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“the mode of thinking was that principles are to be inferred from examples, not from abstractions.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“We know that for the kings of the ancient Near East, the highest value was the legitimation of their reign (much in the same way that in American politics the highest value is often reelection).”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“Today we think of justice as that which conforms to the law. For them justice was that which conformed to traditions reflected in the paradigms. Bottéro concludes that the “code” of Hammurabi “is clearly centered upon the establishment, not of a strict and literal justice, but of equity that inspires justice but also surpasses it.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“In the ancient world, legacy is more important than history, and history is seen primarily through the eyes of legacy.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“Mesopotamia the cosmos functions for the gods and in relation to them. People are an afterthought, seen as just another part of the cosmos that helps the gods function. In Israel the cosmos functions for people and in relationship to them. God does not need the cosmos, but has determined to dwell in it, making it sacred space; it functions for people.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“Israel’s ideas of human composition express most centrally the individual’s relationship to God in life and dependence on God for life.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“If ontology in the ancient world is function oriented, then to create something (i.e., bring it into existence) would mean to give it a function or a role within an ordered system.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“we are to understand ancient views about bringing the cosmos into existence (creation cosmogony/cosmology), it is essential that we understand ancient views about what constitutes existence (creation ontology).”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“In Israel it was not performance of the cult that was the essential expression of belief, but adherence to the covenant, which included cultic performance but was not dominated by it.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“The shape of one’s belief was less significant in the ancient world. It was not belief that counted, but performance of the cult.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“the ancient Near East at large, the performance of the cult was central and foundational to religion. It was the principal responsibility and superseded the element of belief (the mental affirmation of doctrinal convictions).”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“People in the ancient world found their own identity in their community. Since they tended to think of the gods as being similar to them in many ways, they believed that the gods also found their identity in community. It was therefore essential that there be a community of the gods. Without a community, where would the gods find identity?”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“In the ancient world something came into existence when it was separated out as a distinct entity, given a function, and given a name.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“Identification of differences should not imply ancient inferiority. Our rationality may not be their rationality, but that does not mean that they were irrational.9 Their ways of thinking should not be thought of as primitive or prehistorical. We seek to understand their texts and culture, not to make value judgments on them.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“We need to read the Old Testament in the context of its own cultural river. We cannot afford to read instinctively because that only results in reading the text through our own cultural lenses. No one reads the Bible free of cultural bias, but we seek to replace our cultural lenses with theirs. Sometimes the best we can do is recognize that we have cultural lenses and try to take them off even if we cannot reconstruct ancient lenses.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“widespread attention was attracted by the series of lectures presented in 1902 under the auspices of the German Oriental Society and attended by Kaiser Wilhelm II. What the Scopes trial was to the discussion of evolution, these lectures were to comparative studies.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“These points of continuity and discontinuity should have an important role in our interpretation of the Bible, and knowledge of them should guard against a facile or uninformed imposition of our own cognitive environment on the texts of ancient Israel, which is all too typical in confessional circles.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“Though we recognize distinct cultural differences across time and place, the commonalities warrant our attention. To think about how these ancient commonalities need to be differentiated from our modern ways of thinking, we can use the metaphor of a cultural river, where the currents represent ideas and conventional ways of thinking. Among the currents in our modern cultural context we would find fundamentals such as rights, privacy, freedom, capitalism, consumerism, democracy, individualism, globalism, social media, market economy, scientific naturalism, an expanding universe, empiricism, and natural laws, just to name a few. As familiar as these are to us, such ways of thinking were unknown in the ancient world. Conversely, the ancient cultural river had among their shared ideas currents that are totally foreign to us. Included in the list we would find fundamental concepts such as community identity, the comprehensive and ubiquitous control of the gods, the role of kingship, divination, the centrality of the temple, the mediatory role of images, and the reality of the spirit world and magic. It is not easy for us to grasp their shape or rationale, and we often find their expression in texts impenetrable.
In today’s world people may find that they dislike some of the currents in our cultural river and wish to resist them. Such resistance is not easy, but even when we might occasionally succeed, we are still in the cultural river—even though we may be swimming upstream rather than floating comfortably on the currents.
This was also true in the ancient world. When we read the Old Testament, we may find reason to believe that the Israelites were supposed to resist some of the currents in their cultural river. Be that as it may (and the nuances are not always easy to work with), they remain in that ancient cultural river. We dare not allow ourselves to think that just because the Israelites believed themselves to be distinctive among their neighbors that they thought in the terms of our cultural river (including the dimensions of our theology). We need to read the Old Testament in the context of its own cultural river. We cannot afford to read instinctively because that only results in reading the text through our own cultural lenses. No one reads the Bible free of cultural bias, but we seek to replace our cultural lenses with theirs. Sometimes the best we can do is recognize that we have cultural lenses and try to take them off even if we cannot reconstruct ancient lenses.
When we consider similarities and differences between the ancient cultural river and our own, we must be alert to the dangers of maintaining an elevated view of our own superiority or sophistication as a contrast to the naïveté or primitiveness of others. Identification of differences should not imply ancient inferiority. Our rationality may not be their rationality, but that does not mean that they were irrational. Their ways of thinking should not be thought of as primitive or prehistorical. We seek to understand their texts and culture, not to make value judgments on them.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“A modern empiricist historian’s response to ancient (especially Israelite) transcendent historiography might be: “It has not provided information that is reliable since it is so full of deity.” The ancient historian’s response to modern empiricist historiography might be: “It has not provided information that is worthwhile since it is so empty of deity.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“In Israel people also believed that they had been created to serve God. The difference was that they saw humanity as having been given a priestly role in sacred space44 rather than as slave labor to meet the needs of deity.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“These points of continuity and discontinuity should have an important role in our interpretation of the Bible, and knowledge of them should guard against a facile or uninformed imposition of our own cognitive environment on the texts of ancient Israel, which is all too typical in confessional circles. This recognition should also create a more level playing ground as critical scholarship continues to evaluate the literature of the ancient world.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“The following brief treatment of a few of the categories of wisdom literature has a single purpose for the scope of this study. Both the instructions of Egypt and the proverbs of Mesopotamia stand as further examples of the idea that wisdom compilations were used widely in the ancient world as a means of offering principles that could serve as guides for living. These principles are in effect mandated in the pursuit of wisdom if order is to be maintained in society. Unlike the treatises considered above (judicial, medical, and divination), these wisdom literatures do not characteristically introduce situations that undermine order, though such situations are often addressed. Instead, they tend to anticipate situations that will be faced and offer advice so that order will not be undermined, and in so doing they frame the values of society.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“In Israel the sections of the Pentateuch that have in the past been considered as laws could now be considered as not carrying the obligatory force of legislation (if it is true that in conjunction with the literature from the ancient Near East these are not laws or legislation). They nevertheless do carry obligatory force for Israel as stipulations of the covenant.[1]”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“that material like Hammurabi’s stele imposed no obligations on society or the courts. It did not represent at any level the “law of the land,” and there is no call to obey. This assessment is confirmed by the fact that it does not serve as a reference in the judicial system, which is illuminated for us through thousands of court documents.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“From all of the above neither the king nor the deity is seen as lawgiver (especially given the current consensus that these are not laws). No such abstraction as “law” exists in their minds, only the practical need to administer justice. Nevertheless, the king was the primary source for legislation, typically through decrees.[22]”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“When the legal treatises are viewed in this light, one can propose that these are not laws, but exemplary verdicts that can serve the intended didactic function.[9] It is in this sense that they offer model justice. To go the next step, one can infer that not only is what we find in documents such as Hammurabi’s stele not a “code,” it is not even “law.” These are not legislative documents. They report verdicts, they do not prescribe laws.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible

“In the ancient world the king stood between the divine and human realms mediating the power of the deity in his city and beyond. He communed with the gods, was privy to their councils, and enjoyed their favor and protection. He was responsible for maintaining justice, for leading in battle, for initiating and accomplishing public building projects from canals to walls to temples, and had ultimate responsibility for the ongoing performance of the cult.”
― John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible