ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a survey of comparative topics and emerging trends during the biblical period. It focuses on publications from the past decade as well as on the most impactful scholarly works, with emerging trends. The chapter introduces the major methodological issues arising from using the Bible for historical reconstruction of ancient Israel. It focuses on specific areas of comparative study: comparative literature, archaeology, textual history, and literary exegesis. Any historical reconstruction requires sources: literary and non-literary, primary and secondary. Literary sources include the biblical texts and inscriptions. Textual artifacts from the Ancient Near East are numerous and come in many forms and genres, such as monumental inscriptions, canonical compositions, and archival documents. Archaeology of ancient Israel, or Syro-Palestinian archaeology, is not a subfield of biblical studies, but its own independent field of study. Through the mid-twentieth century, the interpretive methods and studies of biblical scholars and biblical archaeologists overlapped substantially.
