Endnote 10 – The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History?

The essential facts are set out in Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament (London: Tyndale Press, 1966), pp. 90–102; The Bible in Its World (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1977), pp. 79–85; and “The Fall and Rise of Covenant, Law and Treaty,” in Tyndale Bulletin 40 (1989), pp. 118–135. See also J.H. Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), pp. 95–109. The supposed “historical prologue” in the Assurbanipal-Qedar treaty is, given its position, not a prologue at all; the only blessing in the first millennium group (Sfire I) relates to respect for the actual stela, not for the treaty provisions.