This chapter discusses social concepts, notions and assumptions that prevailed in the ancient Near East concerning human sexuality. Its introduction supplies chronological, geographical, and cultural definitions to explicate what is meant by the term ‘ancient Near East’, and expands on the sources of information used in the chapter, their contributions and limitations. The introduction also elaborates on the categories and aspects of human sexuality discussed in the chapter. Subsequently, the chapter is organized thematically. Each theme focuses on a specific category of sexuality, which is discussed according to the pertinent sources of information available to us, including legal, literary, cultic, and others. The categories surveyed in the chapter are: Sex and Reproduction, Sex and the Body, Gender Norms and Inequality, Sex and Marriage, Sex and Slavery, Sex and Politics, Sex and Religious and Cultic Practices, and Sex and Criminal Law. The chapter demonstrates how different textual genres reflect the role of sexuality in ancient Near Eastern societies: official law regulated sexual behaviour, literary texts echoed social norms, and cultic texts related to a variety of matters that involved human sexuality. The chapter highlights topics such as male privilege and gender inequality, social hierarchy, and cultural differentiation.

The introduction presents key ideas and terminology and answers several questions that will help readers understand the other chapters in the volume. It also explains important distinctions around the concept of biblical law and the pitfalls of reading it from a modern perspective.

150 words: The books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah contain oracles that address problems in and around ancient Judah in ways that are as incisive and critical as they are optimistic and constructive. Daniel C. Timmer’s The Theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah situates these books in their social and political contexts and examines the unique theology of each as it engages with imposing problems in Judah and beyond. In dialogue with recent scholarship, this study focuses on these books’ analysis and evaluation of the world as it is, focusing on both human beings and their actions and God’s commitment to purify, restore, and perfect the world. Timmer also surveys these books’ later theological use and cultural reception. Timmer also brings their theology into dialogue with concerns as varied as ecology, nationalism, and widespread injustice, highlighting the enduring significance of divine justice and grace for solid hope and effective service in our world.

50 words: This volume examines the powerful and poignant theology of the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Daniel C. Timmer situates these books’ theology in their ancient Near Eastern contexts and traces its multifaceted contribution to Jewish and Christian theology and to broader cultural spheres, without neglecting its contemporary significance.

20 words: This volume draws out the theology of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, attending to their ancient contexts, past use and reception, and contemporary significance.

This chapter concludes the argument of the book with a final comparison to Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology; challenges to theologians, philosophers, and biblical scholars; and suggests further avenues for research.

This chapter surveys the rise of the Abbasid family as a branch of the Prophet's Hashimite clan, and the background of discontent against the Umayyads. After focusing on the Abbasid revolution in Khurasan-Transoxiana (747-750), the chapter surveys the consolidation of Abbasid rule under the caliph al-Mansur, and the establishment of a new capital at Baghdad in 762. The transition to the reign of al-Mahdi shows the first signs of Abbasid bureaucracy with the Barmakid ministers, and the emergence of an Islamic ideology, with an emphasis on patronizing the 'ulama and supporting the pilgrimage to Mecca.

This chapter considers how to separate scholarly, speculative, and philosophical works in the literary traditions a thousand years prior to Greek philosophy. By wrestling with the muddled definitions of philosophy today, we ask why the biblical literature would not also count as philosophy and examine the ancient Near Eastern and Asian philosophical scholarship that might support the its inclusion.

Chapter 6 offers summary reflections on the conclusions and contributions of the present work, including its findings for the study of the royal palms, the study of Syro-Palestinian inscriptions, Hebrew Bible theology, and the history of Israelite religion. In addition to proposing a new analytic for royal psalms (i.e. psalms of defeat), the book adds depth and specificity to previous scholarship on the theology of the royal psalms. It draws in sharper silhouette the animating commitment of royal psalms: Yhwh’s loyalty to his one individual client king. The book also calls attention to the non-narrative and lyric qualities of inscriptions, and it emphasizes the rhetorical centrality of their closing curse sections. For the study of Hebrew Bible theology, the present work holds up the important and distinctive theological offer of royal psalms. Historically, Levantine memorial inscriptions reflect an earlier engagement with Neo-Assyrian royal ideology and its monuments than scholars have argued heretofore, and a deeper indigenization.

What were the sources for the ethnographic knowledge of Bardaisan of Edessa (active c. 200 CE) and his literary circle? This chapter maintains that such ethnographic knowledge, as exhibited by Bardaisan’s surviving historical fragments and the Syriac Book of the Laws of the Countries, was much more indebted to intertextual engagements with Greek and Latin material available to a contemporary Roman readership than to information collected from ‘eastern’ contacts and connections, as scholars sometimes surmise. Roman imperial networks in fact enabled the circulation of ethnographic information that served the authorial strategies of Bardaisan’s literary circle. Yet, Bardaisan’s circle attributed such knowledge, whether implicitly or explicitly, to eastern literary and oral sources and thus framed themselves as ‘eastern’ experts for both local Edessene and broader Roman audiences. In this way, they navigated the intricate space between ‘Roman’ and ‘Other’.

Narrative poems from the Ancient Near East are diverse in language, script, traditional tales, structure, mythic themes, length, and diffusion. They drew, however, from a pool of traditional themes and compositional devices also evident in Greek epic to a degree that intertextual comparison advances understanding of the possible worlds of epic, not just the worlds of Homer.