Wenamun’s Prophetic Mission

Theocratic Rhetoric in Egypt and the Hebrew Bible

The Story of Wenamun is an Egyptian travelogue from the early first millennium BCE that is enlivened by visits to exotic ports of call, piracy, intrigue, and attempted murder. It is also an underappreciated example of the intercultural exchange of theological ideas in the early Iron Age.

In Wenamun’s Prophetic Mission, Christopher B. Hays identifies striking similarities between theological rhetoric in the ancient Egyptian Story of Wenamun and that of the Hebrew prophets. Hays challenges scholars of the ancient Mediterranean to reimagine the cultural milieu that gave rise to Iron Age Yahwism and ultimately to “biblical monotheism,” arguing that the Hebrew Bible’s theocratic and monotheizing rhetoric owes more to the influence of Egypt than is often recognized. Along the way, Hays makes Wenamun accessible to biblical scholars and non-Egyptologists with the clarity of presentation that his acclaimed sourcebook, Hidden Riches, brought to other ancient Near Eastern texts. This volume includes a thorough survey of past scholarship on Wenamun as well as an introduction to the historical situation of Egypt, the Levant, and the Mediterranean at the beginning of the first millennium BCE.

This provocative new study makes an important contribution to academic discourse on ancient Near Eastern prophecy and will appeal to scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Mediterranean.

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