The Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Old Testament
Wendy Johnsen

Just as the contexts of the global village and modern science inform the 21st century worldview, so the context of the story of the people of God in the OT was the culture and worldview of the Ancient Near East, that part of the world that stretched from Mesopotamia to Egypt. We will look at what the ANE thought about deity, the origin and operation of the cosmos, and the roles of human beings, and see how the God of Israel communicated with his people in language and concepts that were culturally familiar to them while teaching them that he, and his relationship with them, was very different.