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A Reader of Ancient Near Eastern Texts: Sources for the Study of the Old Testament. By Mi- chael D. Coogan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, xiv + 214 pp., $29.95 paper.
Michael Coogan has provided an excellent service to students of the literary, social, and commercial environments that both precede and accompany the compi- lation of the OT. His anthology includes a fairly comprehensive list of primarily extrabiblical texts recently discovered among the archeological finds of ANE socie- ties extant from the third until the mid first millennium BC. He collates his own translations with the works of several other translators of nearly a dozen or more ANE scripts. He then organizes them according to period, genre, subject matter, region, and language. While generally allowing the texts to speak for themselves, he prefaces many of the entries with a brief synopsis of their content and background.
Many of the myths and epics, whether of Ugaritic, Hittite, Egyptian, Akkadian, or Sumerian origins (e.g. the Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh epics), are drawn from the pre-Abraham era (i.e. the third millennium BC) and depict parallel creation and deluge accounts. While including alternate and highly embellished versions of al- most all of the biblical narrative, they also add, in many cases, fascinating details. The vivid and terrifying descriptions of the all-enveloping and piercing blackness augmenting the burying shroud of storm clouds, the howling winds, and the persis- tently pounding downpour that ultimately swept away and extinguished every breath of life evokes emotions...