The Old Testament was not written in a vacuum. It was written inside a world. A world of clay tablets and cuneiform, flood epics and creation myths, law codes carved into stone centuries before Moses climbed the mountain. Dr. Joshua Bowen has spent his career decoding that world. And what he found does not diminish Scripture. It puts it in focus.

Dr. Bowen holds a Ph.D. in Assyriology from Johns Hopkins University and is the founder of Digital Hammurabi. He reads Sumerian, Akkadian, and Biblical Hebrew, and has spent years working the primary cuneiform sources that form the ancient backdrop of the Hebrew Bible. In this conversation, we cover the Mesopotamian parallels to Genesis, the flood traditions that predate Noah, the law codes that share striking overlap with the Torah, and the theological genius behind how Israel reworked those traditions to say something no surrounding culture was saying about God.

In this episode you will learn:

- Why the ancient Near East is essential background for anyone who takes the Bible seriously
- How the Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 interact and what that interaction actually means
- What the Gilgamesh Epic reveals about the biblical flood narrative and why borrowing an earlier story does not undercut the theology
- How the Laws of Hammurabi, Ur-Namma, and Eshnunna relate to the legal material in the Torah
- Why the goring ox law appears in nearly identical form across multiple ancient law collections
- How Israel used surrounding mythology as a polemic, arguing theologically through the very stories the surrounding nations told
- What Genesis 1 is doing in response to the Enuma Elish and why Yahweh does not even have to fight
- How the Babylonian exile shaped Israelite identity and the final form of the Hebrew Bible
- Why understanding these ancient texts deepens rather than destroys a serious reading of Scripture


Get Dr. Bowen's book:

Did the Old Testament Endorse Slavery?: https://www.amazon.com/Did-Old-Testament-Endorse-Slavery/dp/1734358629

Explore Digital Hammurabi:
https://www.digitalhammurabi.com

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