In modern times, the separation of Church and State is a defining characteristic of western political and religious thought however this distinction does not truly appear until the Enlightenment. In the ancient Near East there was no clear separation between religion and politics. Kings were divine or divinely appointed, representing the will of the gods. What we today refer to as religious institutions played a key role to legitimize the authority of the king.

Also, in the ancient Near East, history was not understood as linear as we understand history today but cyclical [1]. In the linear concept of time, history has a defined beginning, unfolding purpose, and ultimate conclusion. Cyclical time is a pattern of eternal return. Events such as creation, kingship and fertility were ritually reenacted to ensure the continued stability of the cosmos and society. Astrology is born in the concept of cyclical time. 

It was the king’s divine mandate to uphold order and to ward off the forces of chaos that threatened to undo creation. This eternal struggle is known as Chaoskampf [2] defined as the “struggle against chaos”. In Egypt, this responsibility was celebrated through the Sed Festival [3]. This was a jubilee of royal renewal that emphasized the pharaoh’s vitality and Egypt’s fertility. The Opet Festival also reaffirmed the king’s divine authority, especially through the cult of Amun-Ra. These festivals could be viewed as a cosmic reset.

Pharaoh Amenhotep IV would rename himself Akhenaten in his fifth regnal year however before he changed his name, he held his first Sed Festival. This would have been his third regnal year. The break with tradition may have raised the eyebrows of traditional Egyptian elites as in Egypt this festival was typically held around the thirtieth regnal year. The events organization was likely seen as a disruption in both political and religious norms. Hittite delegates were present at the time [4] but there is no direct evidence of their response. It’s possible that this spectacle influenced their decision to expand their empire. It may have reassured them that Egypt was distracted by internal upheaval but this remains speculative.

An example of cyclical kingship is found in the reliefs of Medinet Habu, where Rameses III presents himself as the divine defender of order. He boasts of defeating the invading Sea Peoples who were portrayed as agents of chaos [5]. His victories are depicted as both a military triumph and a sacred act that renewed the cosmic balance as was the defeat of the Hyksos centuries before them.

Even today, we observe cyclical traditions: birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, national holidays. Each New Year’s Eve reminds us with the familiar image of an old man handing off time to a toddler. But in the modern world, these cycles are symbolic. In the ancient Near East, they were essential. Failing to reenact creation could invite disaster. Without ritual renewal, the cosmos itself might unravel. The Book of Jeremiah [6] warns of this unraveling for lack of covenantal fidelity and in turn, back to the pre creation state of chaos.

Among the Canaanites, the Baal Cycle was reenacted to ensure the return of fertility and rain. In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians held seasonal rites such as the Tammuz ritual, Dumuzi in Sumerian, which mourned the death of the vegetation deity and enacted their return, marking the renewal of life and fertility.

In spring, the New Year festival of Akītu dramatized the creation myth of the Enūma eliš, [7] symbolizing the renewal of cosmic order and reaffirming the king’s divine mandate. While the exact practices of Akītu are not fully known, the festival’s central themes are well established.

And even though the ancient Akītu festival is no longer practiced, a modern cultural variation known as Kha b-Nisan, or the “First of Nisan”, continues to be celebrated, especially among Assyrian and some Aramean communities.

In the Hebrew calendar, Nisan marks the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, which begins with Passover. This is distinct from the civil new year, which begins in the month of Tishrei, the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year, typically falling between September or October [8].

The Assyrian Christians still celebrate this modern variation but sadly the indigenous Assyrians Christian [9] are persecuted in the homeland of northern Iraq, northern Syria, northwest Iran and southeast Turkey, as are the followers of John the Baptist, the Mandaeans [10] living in southern Iraq and Iran. Both groups are persecuted for their religious identity as are other religious minorities along with women and girls.

While there is no evidence to indicate the Bible was the first to conceive of linear time, it is the earliest known text to portray history as beginning at a specific point and moving forward in a generally non-repeating direction. However, it does preserve some cyclical elements in its rituals and theology, especially in its covenantal themes. This can be seen in the warnings of Jeremiah as previously mentioned. Still, this conceptual shift towards linear history laid the foundation for how many in the west understand time and historical progression today. This remains true even though many of the Bible’s historical claims do not withstand archaeological scrutiny.

Early books of the Bible such as Genesis and Exodus adopt the shared stories of the region from the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Canaanites and sometimes Egyptians. Creation and flood are retold with new themes, sometimes these stories are told more than once, and sometimes they contradict. These contradictions are problematic for religious fundamentalists who though their attempts to maneuver around them ultimately create logical incoherence in an attempt for resolution. When seen through the eyes of the ancient Near East, these contradictions are far less problematic as the writers were not attempting to invoke a detailed literal history as we understand. Especially in the perspective of cyclical time.

Later books like Deuteronomy through Kings were shaped by the political realities of empires such as Assyria. Assyrian influence is deeply embedded in the Bible’s worldview. Sections of Leviticus, Numbers, and even parts of Genesis and Exodus may reflect a response to rival traditions. The book of Daniel was shaped by the experience of exile in Babylon. In Egypt, military campaigns into Nubia and Canaan often involved the forced relocation of local populations. These actions served multiple purposes including supplying labor for royal building projects, preventing rebellion by removing potential threats, and fulfilling the ideological goal of maintaining divine order and playing their role in Chaoskampf. For many in the ancient Near East, war and heavy taxation were unavoidable realities and in some parts of the world, they still are. Some had enough and turned to banditry. Others, quite literally, ran for higher ground in the Canaan highlands where they built a new life. We know this through the material culture. Slavery was common practice and occasional famine would strike the people of the region. The biblical text captures all of this and more, retelling experiences through the new identity of the Israelites.

But what is the Bible? It has been categorized as fiction by some, but that’s superficial and reflects a lack of serious engagement with the text and its historical context. And a lack of serious engagement while simultaneously holding a critical position of the text, in my view, justifies lack of serious engagement with the critic.

The Bible has been categorized as a library and anthology, both of which are far closer to correct but too technical to capture its essence. Probably the best description comes from Dr. Michael Shermer. The Bible is “Epic Story Telling”. It contains cultural memory informed by legend and folklore. There is myth. Polemics are not just critical of other nations and their practices; they are also self-critical. Truths and history are wrapped in allegory. Poetry, including love poetry, celebrates and laments. Why we suffer is asked a few times and possibly answered satisfactorily for the audience of the time, but these answers are insufficient today. Of all the prose and poetry on suffering my personal favorite is Ecclesiastes.

Sometimes the Bible is propaganda that justifies the actions of its characters and the biblical god. Other times, the main actors are exposed with their flaws. Cain killed his brother Able out of jealousy despite the warning. Jacob trades his brother’s birthright for a bowl of stew. Later, his mother Rebekah assists her favorite son in deceiving his father Isaac so Jacob receives the blessing intended of his brother Esau. Noah is a temperamental drunk. Samson is lustful and impulsive. Saul’s paranoia and jealousy are murderous. David has an adulterous affair then has her husband killed to cover it up. Sometimes, as with the case of David, a price is extracted. The Bible does not portray perfect people to emulate; it portrays flawed individuals who sometimes wrestle with their own personal demons and sometimes with God himself.

This blog, which I intend to turn into a video series, introduces a series exploring how the Bible was formed and what it meant to the people who wrote, edited, and preserved it. Through literary, historical, theological, and archaeological analysis, I approach the Bible with a critical eye and not with devotional belief. It will not be evaluated with dismissive arrogance or superficial comparisons but as a collection of ancient traditions worthy of our understanding, and as product of human experience within its own time and place in human history.

The series draws on the work of scholars such as Richard Elliott Friedman, William G. Dever, Jesse Millek, Guy Middleton, Frank Moore Cross, Trevor Bryce, Stephanie Dalley, Mark Smith, Christine Hayes, Eric Cline, Nahum Sarna, and others. The primary Biblical text will be the Jewish Publication Society’s TANAKH (1985 edition), with occasional reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint where relevant.

But before Biblical text can be understood we need to explore the origins of Israel. We cannot understand the stories in the Bible without knowing the cultures and experiences that brought it into being and what the beliefs that informed it were. Regardless of how the formation of Israel came, whether from social revolution, an exodus from a foreign land, or as a survivor of the Late Bronze Age collapse, understanding Israel’s origins as demonstrated through archaeology and the textual evidence from both Israel and its contemporaries is essential to grasp how the biblical traditions took shape. This is now more important than ever in today’s world where political and sectarian views demand the elevation of one set of beliefs in our western secular society, not just over, but to the suppression of others.

Sometimes speculation will be required due to limited evidence, but speculation will always be grounded in scholarly research, historical context, and archaeological evidence, not in wild conjecture or outdated assumptions.

The purpose is not to judge the Bible by modern moral standards although on occasion it will be unavoidable. I do not excuse or justify many of the values and institutions in the Bible and as human history has shown, ethical frameworks change, and in some cases, improve. But we must put our personal feelings about its content aside, remembering that many cases, the stories are not historical facts.

This series avoids viewing the Bible through a scientific lens. Its authors had no knowledge of chemistry, genetics, or plate tectonics, and they envisioned the world as flat and surrounded by water. They did not understand evaporation or the water table, something most of us learned by middle school, and from their perspective, all cardinal directions led to water. There was no other conclusion to draw. It wasn’t until after the composition of most, if not all of Genesis, that Greek thinkers began to consider a spherical Earth. We should be forgiving of the ancient Israelites’ ignorance; this was the limit of what could be known in their time with the available tools.

Instead, when necessary, it will focus on the natural forces that shaped their world such as storms, droughts, fertility, harvest, the phenomena that was central to life it the ancient Near East. I will, at times, examine modern claims that attempt to explain biblical texts with scientific models, especially when those interpretations conflict with the literature or tradition itself.

Naturalistic readings separate the Bible from its roots. Attempts to fuse science with biblical miracles amount to having it both ways, accepting science when convenient, ignoring it when it is not, and stretching the text to fit the evidence. This often leads to finding God in the “gaps,” a strategy that has always failed. Likewise, arguing against the Bible strictly through scientific reasoning misses the point: the Bible is not a scientific text and should not be treated as one. The methodology of scientific inquiry is incompatible with the methodology of religious belief, and presenting them as otherwise is textbook equivocation.

This does not mean science has no role in biblical study. Archaeological evidence is essential, for it reveals the material reality of how people lived and died. It can both support and challenge the biblical narrative, but more often it complicates it. Genetics, too, can illuminate the movements and origins of peoples, though it must be handled carefully to avoid slipping into racial essentialism.

Also, there is no attempt to directly refute creationism. As already indicated, these views misrepresent both the biblical texts and the scientific record. It projects ahistorical and unscientific assumptions into ancient literature. Instead, the focus is on text, history and archaeology. Through this we can see how Bible developed, layer by layer, over centuries.

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[1] Ian Shaw, ed., The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), epilogue, p. 437.

[2] Karen Sonik, “Creation and Chaos: A Reconsideration of Hermann Gunkel’s Chaoskampf Hypothesis,” in Creation and Chaos: A Reconsideration of Hermann Gunkel’s Chaoskampf Hypothesis, ed. JoAnn Scurlock and Richard H. Beal (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 1–2.

[3] Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 182.

[4] Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 173.

[5] Redford, Donald B. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

[6] Jeremiah 4:23–26, The Jewish Study Bible, 2nd ed., ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

[7] Julye Bidmead, The Akītu Festival: Religious Continuity and Royal Legitimation in Mesopotamia (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2002), 4, 19-20.

[8] Esther 3:7, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985).

[9] European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), Country Guidance: Iraq, section “Christians” (last updated June 2022), accessed via EUAA website, available at https://euaa.europa.eu/country-guidance-iraq-2021/2153-christians.

[10] Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Vulnerable Citizens at Risk,” Human Rights Watch, February 21, 2011, accessed [date you accessed it], https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/02/21/iraq-vulnerable-citizens-risk.