The Bible and the Ancient Near East

Program Overview

The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in The Bible and the Ancient Near East studies the world behind the Old Testament. Israel did not appear in a vacuum. Its neighbours wrote creation accounts, flood stories, law collections, treaties, royal inscriptions, laments, and wisdom literature, and the Hebrew Bible speaks with, against, and through those conventions. Reading Genesis or Deuteronomy or Psalms without that background leaves the reader guessing at what the text is doing. Students work with the primary material: Mesopotamian literature including Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, and Enuma Elish; the law collections of Hammurabi and his predecessors; Ugaritic texts and their bearing on Hebrew poetry and the divine council; Egyptian wisdom, hymns, and funerary literature; Hittite treaty forms and their relation to covenant; and the Levantine inscriptions. Method receives sustained attention: how comparison is done responsibly, how parallels are weighed without collapsing into either parallelomania or denial, and what genre and convention imply for interpretation. Archaeology, chronology, and the history of Israel within the region complete the picture, along with the specific controversies where comparative evidence bears on theological claims. The dissertation makes an original contribution comparing a biblical text or institution with its ancient Near Eastern setting. Graduates teach Old Testament and ancient history, contribute to commentary and reference work, and equip churches to read the Old Testament with historical imagination.

Core Courses

• ANE 801 — Comparative Method and the Ancient Near East (6 credits)
• ANE 812 — Mesopotamian Literature and the Hebrew Bible (6 credits)
• ANE 824 — Law, Treaty, and Covenant (6 credits)
• ANE 836 — Ugarit, Canaan, and Hebrew Poetry (6 credits)
• ANE 848 — Egypt, Israel, and the Levant (5 credits)
• ANE 860 — Comparative Research Design (4 credits)
• ANE 899 — Doctoral Dissertation in Bible and the Ancient Near East (24 credits)

Admission Requirements

• Master's degree in biblical studies, theology, history, or a closely related field
• Prior coursework in the biblical or historical languages the specialization requires
• Statement of purpose naming the research question you intend to pursue
• Academic writing sample, ideally an exegetical or historical research paper
• Current curriculum vitae
• Official transcripts from prior institutions when available