About the series

The Ancient Near Eastern World and the Bible Elements series explores the field of ancient Near Eastern studies and its developments in an approachable, holistic, and integrated way, focusing on intersections with the Bible and biblical studies. The ancient Near East (ANE) encompasses a vast temporal and geographical terrain, including the peoples and cultures, history and religion that gave rise to and shaped the biblical texts. The ANEWB series explores these areas, providing thorough overviews and introductions to a host of ANE topics, organized into four major streams that include “Peoples and Empire,” “Social History,” “Religion,” and “Texts,” with the primary focus on those materials that are of greatest significance to understanding ancient Israel and the biblical world. In the series, scholars make the latest and best scholarship available in highly accessible ways, introducing readers to the essentials of the topic in question while also conveying distinctive viewpoints and capturing new developments.

About the Editors

Christopher B. Hays is D. Wilson Moore Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, and a Research Associate of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He has served as the U.S. State Department Educational and Cultural Affairs Annual Professor at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and as President of the Pacific Coast Region of Society of Biblical Literature. Hays is the author of Hidden Riches: A Textbook for the Comparative Study of the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East (Westminster John Knox, 2014), The Origins of Isaiah 24-27 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2019), and Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 79; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). The latter won the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2013. He holds a PhD in Hebrew Bible from Emory University, and an MA in Egyptology from UCLA, and an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary. 

Contact: hays@fuller.edu

Kristine Henriksen Garroway is Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. She is the author of Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household (Eisenbraums 2014) and Growing Up in Ancient Israel: Children in Material Culture and Biblical Texts (Society of Biblical Literature 2018), which won the Biblical Archaeological Society's 2019 Publication Award for Best Book Relating to Hebrew Bible. Her latest book is The Dying Child: The Death and Personhood of Children in Ancient Israel (Oxford 2025). She also co-edited three volumes and two special journal issues, and contributed widely to academic and public-facing scholarship.

Contact: kgarroway@huc.edu

Brent A. Strawn is D. Moody Smith Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Professor of Law at Duke University. He has edited over twenty-five volumes to date, including the award-winning The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law (2015), and has authored over 250 articles, essays, and contributions to reference works, as well as six books, most recently The Incomparable God: Readings in Biblical Theology (2023). He sits on several editorial boards and served as translator and editor for the Common English Bible (2011) and the New Revised Standard Version updated edition (2022). In 2023 Strawn was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Contact: bstrawn@div.duke.edu