Introduction to Narrative Literature

Comparative Studies and Historical Literature

Cultural studies from the ancient Near East can provide much information to fill in the background of the second and first millennia BC. Royal Inscriptions are particularly helpful as we try to reconstruct the political events that impacted the lives of the peoples of this period. Some actually refer to Israel or to various kings of Israel. Others give information about kings who interacted with Israel on various levels. Archaeological excavations help to reconstruct the daily life of the people. Biblical genres such as genealogies or conquest accounts can be explored profitably in relation to genres in the ancient Near East. Others try to establish lines of comparison between sections of the OT and ancient Near Eastern literary works such as the Middle Assyrian Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta.

Beyond the reconstruction of the events of ancient history and the study of the genres in which history is recorded, comparative studies can also help us to penetrate how people in the ancient world thought about history and what their values were in recording it (“historiography”). Studies in ancient historiography help us to assess how to read the literature in a way that will honor the ideas, intentions and values of the authors. Some of the conclusions from this sort of study alert us to important differences between the ancient and modern worlds. We learn that while our modern historians often ignore deity altogether, in the ancient world, one of the main values of history writing was to clarify what the gods were doing.

This radical difference can be explained when we understand that ancient historians were not recording events as much as they were interpreting outcomes. The truth of what “really happened” was not assessed by what the eyewitness saw, but by what the final outcome was. As a result they did not promote the role of the eyewitness as our history writing tends to do. Instead, the various subgenres of historiography promoted various people or ideas. Royal inscriptions characteristically promoted the king as they articulated what the gods were doing through his kingship. Biblical historiography often promoted the prophetic role to articulate what Yahweh was doing, particularly with regard to the covenant. This general survey indicates just a few of the ways that comparative and cultural studies will impact and illuminate our study of the historical literature in this volume. ◆