It took some mental flexibility to get my brain back from postmodern philosophy to the Ancient Near East. But that is where Kenton Sparks goes next in God’s Word in Human Words.
He has a chapter called “Historical Criticism and Assyriology”. (My idiot spellchecker wants to keep changing Assyriology to Astrology.) He gets a little distance from the Bible and talks about how we now know a lot of things that we did not used to know because of the methods of historical critics.
He tells the very interesting story of how the Akkadian cuneiform writings were deciphered and how historical critical methods opened a door to a better grasp of ancient history. Once they translated the Gilgamesh Saga scholars went to work trying to figure out how it cameabout. They discovered a complex history of composition and transmission.
Scholars also used the old Assyrian Annals and Babylonian Chronicles to…
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