Advances in Ancient, Biblical, and Near Eastern Research

Introduction

Andrew Tobolowsky — 2026-04-17

This special issue explores the topic of “tradition inheritance” in the ancient biblical and early Jewish worlds, providing a critical analysis of past scholarly assumptions about how stories and texts have been transmitted over time and fresh insights into how conservative approaches miss the reality of the fluidity of transmission over time. The authors approach the topic from a variety of standpoints, including the reconstruction of antecedents in biblical traditions, inherited models of violence in the Hebrew Bible’s description of foreign kings, an examination of the literary and material developments of traditions concerning the matriarch Rachel in early Judaism, and the intertwined histories of the Qur’ān and the Hebrew Bible. Taken together, the articles challenge scholars to consider what they think they know about how traditions change over time.

Rethinking Tradition Inheritance: Restoring the Individual

Andrew Tobolowsky — 2026-04-17

Abstract: This essay is an attempt to address the phenomenon of “tradition inheritance” as a whole, but especially in the ancient world. It argues that typical, more conservative models of what individual authors can do with inherited traditions are profoundly shaped by outdated, Romantic visions of the nature of the relationship between a people and their traditions. It offers a new metaphor for thinking about this relationship, that of a “natural language,” which would help account for why many of the same stories and story elements do reappear time and time again without denying the individual creativity of authors who redeploy them in new stories. Above all, it insists on the importance of recognizing that even ancient authors were fully realized individuals, with their own idiosyncrasies, and explores the ramifications of that recognition.

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale

Seth Sanders — 2026-04-17

This article argues that modern biblical studies has, for the most part, drawn explicitly or implicitly on one single underlying social theory. This theory argues that literary form flows from social form. Originally based in 18th-century Western European theories of social evolution from primitive tribal societies that used oral poetry to advanced bureaucratic societies that used written prose, reflected in work ranging from Gunkel and Cassuto to Cross, scholars continued to promote the theory even after its social evolutionism was more or less disproven. In its current form it assumes that the form of Hebrew literature flows from a scribal culture that is both poetic and prosaic, oral and literate. The article concludes by suggesting that the theory still holds some value if it is seen in terms of a more supple and historically specific relationship between form and content, and offers some proposals and examples for successful rethinking.

Foreign Kings as Theological Playthings within Biblical Explanations of Violence

Debra S. Ballentine — 2026-04-17

As a case of “tradition inheritance,” I consider select agents of violence, namely foreign kings as featured in the biblical anthology. This special issue inquires how inherited traditions are repurposed, and I address several aspects of such repurposing. First, Judean story-tellers participated in discourses that were common to the ancient cultural milieu, both contributing to socio-political discourses and incorporating themes, figures, and motifs from their surroundings. In the case of foreign kings, for example, Judean authors incorporated real, historical kings from neighboring states as well as larger empires into their stories, historiographies, prophecies, poetry, and theologies. In so doing, Judean authors also contributed to the reputations of Assyrian Sennacherib, Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, and Persian king Cyrus, the three kings of focus in this article, as well as other royals. To discuss a second sort of repurposing, I address how repurposing entails claims of “inheritance” as well as post-biblical modes of interpretive reuse that both generate and are built upon the concept that biblical phenomena are “inscriptured.” Judean treatments of Assyrian king Sennacherib, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and Persian king Cyrus exhibit dynamic and creative theological play, because when they appear as both aggressors and agents of Yahweh their violence is “sanctified.” In post-biblical interpretive contexts, how is the “inscriptured” paradigm of Yahweh utilizing foreign kings for his purposes reused in response to changing geopolitical events within new historical and confessional contexts? What power dynamics are at play? For whose enfranchisement? At whose expense? I propose that understanding of “tradition inheritance” within post-biblical contexts, whether at the start of the common era or in contemporary settings, ought to begin with analysis of the ancient data.

Amulets and Ancestors

Sari Fein — 2026-04-17

This article investigates a Jewish Aramaic incantation bowl from the fifth–eighth centuries CE which is currently housed at the Museu da Farmácia Lisbon (Inv. 10895). This study focuses on a biblical quotation, Gen 30:22, which is deployed on the bowl in the context of an incantation for fertility for a female client named Mihranahid. It locates this incantation within an inherited tradition of biblical matriarchs, such as Rachel, who were invoked in magical and non-magical settings in Late Antiquity because of the power they were understood to have as the ancestors of Late Antique Jewish women. The article argues that the use of this quotation exemplifies how some Jewish women utilized imitative magic in order to assert agency over their reproductive lives.

Why should a Biblicist Care about the Qur'ān?

Jill Stinchcomb — 2026-04-17

It is broadly accepted that the Qur’ān is a part of biblical tradition because it invokes biblical figures and narratives and fits within the range of normal late antique biblical interpretation seen in contemporaneous Jewish and Christian communities. Because the Qur’ān postdates the Bible, however, little attention has been paid to how the Qur’ān has influenced or shaped biblical tradition. This article argues that the Qur’ān is an integral part of biblical tradition not only because of its influence on the perception of the biblical past, but because the very form of the Hebrew Bible most used today, with Tiberian pointing and in codex form, is one informed by a post-qur’ānic milieu.