A survey of the worldview and literature of Sumeria, Babylonia and Assyria. It focuses on creation stories, wisdom literature, literature that indicates royal ideology and ritual texts. It analyzes the literature to provide a thick description that the student can use to understand the larger culture in which Ancient Israel emerged as a society, and with which it shared numerous institutions, literary genres and elements of worldview.
1) Students gain an understanding of a major culture with which Ancient Israel had interaction. 2) The analytical skill gained provides a model for an analysis of the Hebrew Bible as contextual theology in an ancient Near Eastern context. 3) The comparison and contrast with the Hebrew Bible allows students to gain a sense of what is cultural and what is an enduring part of the biblical witness essential to the Gospel.
God is continually at work in societies and desires them to come to him. The analysis of similarities and differences between the Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamian thought and literature helps the student identify bridges between contemporary societies and the Gospel.
The course examines Mesopotamian thought and literature and compares and contrasts it with the Hebrew Bible.
The study is missionally-driven by its goal to explore how Mesopotamia and its neighbors shared similar ideas and institutions that would allow meaningful communication of the worship of Yahweh between them.
Israel and Mesopotamia emerged and existed in a similar cultural and historical context that makes it plausible that meaningful communication of ideas concerning God, worship and ethics was possible. The course explores that context and the ideas and institutions that the entities in that context shared.
Mesopotamia shared a number of commonalities with Ancient Israel. As Mesopotamian culture is better understood than Ancient Israel’s, it can serve as a model for a better understanding of Israel’s culture.
Students gain a comprehensive overview of the Mesopotamian worldview and literature with which to compare similar worldview and literature from the Bible.
Students are measured on their ability to articulate the worldview of the ancient Mesopotamians through an analysis of their literature. Students write review essays of literature and a paper which compares a chosen body of literature and theme from the Mesopotamian worldview with the Hebrew Bible.
