This is not to impress you with what I know, but to entice you into what you can know.
Before actually starting to type the text, I had gone back and reacquainted myself with an awful lot of ANE stuff I hadn’t seen in years. I am still fascinated by the Hittite Empire and how it figures large, yet generally off-screen in the Bible narrative. Then there are a handful of smaller powers in history, some completely different civilizations, the study of which helps to show a very broad array of what has been that virtually no one in the West can imagine.
But none of them directly affect the outcome of the story I’m trying to tell. This is not a survey of ancient civilizations nor precisely a Bible Study. The purpose of the study was to indicate the bare bones of how we got where we are, compared to where we should be. In the process, it’s important to explain how the first century Christians got where they were, but also just where it was they stood in relation to the question of worldview. For a long time I’ve been asserting these things without showing how I got them.
That’s what started this project. I kept getting requests for background. I can’t write out or point you to everything in my head, but I can offer enough to help you see some of what I went through. I’ve introduced the wider world of ancient civilizations. And for some, maybe it will help them to see why I have no fear of modern pagan religion and their sacred texts. A true mystic isn’t an eclectic gourmet; a true mystic knows first of all to what they are committed and which of the numerous claims to truth actually apply to them. If I can discern the thread of how major biblical figures were exposed to the ancient stuff and still recognized what was true versus what was false, you and I can do the same.
The whole point is trusting the God who brought you this far.
