Old Testament times
Palestine, when Abraham arrived there in response to God's command, was already an important land bridge which linked together the various cultural and political centers of the time. To the northwest was the ancient Hittite empire, and to the southwest lay the power of Egypt. Babylonia was located east and south of Palestine, while to the northeast were located most of the important cities in the Assyrian empire. The Israelites thus found themselves in a geographically strategic position in which it was impossible for them to remain isolated from their neighbors. Because of this geographic and political interdependence, the world of the Old Testament described in the Bible was coextensive with that of the ancient Near East, and the people and the times of the Old Testament cannot and must not be studied in isolation from the larger Near Eastern background. Whatever information can be discovered about the history, religion, languages, literatures, and cultures of the ancient Oriental peoples will necessarily have an important bearing upon our understanding of the people of God who were their contemporaries. Old Testament Times deals in an untechnical manner with the broad social and cultural context in which the events recorded in scripture took place. Particular attention has been given to the light that recent archaeological discoveries shed on the Old Testament narratives, and certain of the more problematic issues of Old Testament history have been examined in outline. Designed to complement Merrill Tenney's well-known New Testament Times, the present volume contains more than one hundred photographic illustrations, as well as helpful appendixes, indexes and a select list of books for further reading. - Jacket flap
Print Book, English, ©1970
Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., ©1970