Against the Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament

Explores the relationship between the Old Testament and other Ancient Near Eastern Literature.

What is the relationship between the Old Testament and other writings from the world of the Ancient Near East? The answer: complex. It is difficult for us to imagine that the writers of the Old Testament composed their books in a world where there were contentious disagreements about the nature of the divine. Yet, not only where their disagreements about the identity and nature of God, there were disagreements about what he did and how he behaved and what it meant. The Old Testament came about in this kind of polemical context, and its authors intended to assert the Hebrew view of God as the correct and true one while identifying other nations' gods as false.

In Against all Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament scholar John Currid examines various pieces of ancient literature and compares them to their biblical counterparts. He shows both how they differ and are similar to the biblical books while maintaining the authority and distinction of the biblical accounts.