Old Testament Parallels (New Revised and Expanded Third Edition): Laws and Stories from the Ancient near East Book

Archeology uncovers many artifacts from all of the societies that occupied Canaan and the surrounding regions. Victor Matthews and Don Benjamin have combed through these artifacts and selected the texts that are similar in some aspect to the Old Testament. These similarities include literature genre, events, documents, customs, laws, literary style, and people. Their compilation of these texts in Old Testament Parallels span the entire Old Testament from the narratives, psalms, wisdom, and prophetic books and come from every region around Canaan including Egypt, Moab, Babylon, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Turkey, and Persia.
The translations supplied in this book are very easy to read and do not contain archaic vocabulary or awkward sentence structures. When there are especially long translations the authors did a nice job of condensing the material without losing the impact of the parallel account and where able to keep the material flowing smoothly. Although each text contained notations for the parallel location in the Old Testament, there where very few instances where the authors expounded on the significance of the parallel.
The authors stated on page xiii that they did not want to destroy the uniqueness of the Bible by overstating the similarities with the surrounding cultures; however, the more I read the book, the more I questioned the Bible's uniqueness. The Bible and its God, YHWH, are often presented and easily accepted as unique in western culture but when it is compared with other texts of similar culture, its content is not that unique after all. The presentation of this material must ultimately stress the uniqueness of the Bible's message otherwise the similarities of content with other cultures may reduce the scriptures to another product of mankind.

I gave the book three stars primarily due to the fact that the authors stated objective was not to destroy the uniqueness of the Bible and that is precisely what struck me in reading this book. The other drawback being the lack of assessment on the parallel accounts. If these guys study this material as much as it appears than I would have liked some input from them, even if it were a paragraph or two.