A thorough text for students of ancient Mesopotamian religion and the Hebrew Bible

Alan Lenzi places Akkadian prayers and hymns within both a religious studies perspective and a Mesopotamian studies perspective. Complete with vocabulary glosses, grammatical notes, literary commentary, and comparative suggestions to biblical material, this book provides a crucial tool for accessing ancient texts related to our understanding of the Hebrew Bible.

Features:

• Background essays
• Discussion of classes of Mesopotamian prayers and their comparative use in biblical studies
• Akkadian text, transliteration, translation, and commentary
• Notes on vocabulary and grammar

Alan Lenziis Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East at University of the Pacific. He is the author of Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel (Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project).

This volume presents the original texts and annotated translations of a collection of Mesopotamian wisdom compositions and related texts of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500–1200 B.C.E.) found at the ancient Near Eastern sites of Hattuša, Emar, and Ugarit. These wisdom compositions constitute the missing link between the great Sumerian wisdom corpus and early Akkadian wisdom literature of the Old Babylonian period, on the one hand, and the wisdom compositions of the first millennium B.C.E., on the other. Included here are works such as the Ballad of Early Rulers, Hear the Advice, and The Date-Palm and the Tamarisk, as well as proverb collections from Ugarit and Hattuša. A detailed introduction provides an assessment of the place of wisdom literature in the ancient curriculum and library collections.