Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book expresses that comparative methods used to illuminate the biblical text should include Greek literature and cultural institutions from the Classical and early Hellenistic Eras alongside those of the Ancient Near East. It presents a systematic comparison among biblical, Greek and Ancient Near Eastern legal traditions. The book focuses on striking parallels that exists between biblical and Greek constitutional and social institutions, laws, law collections and legal narratives. It also expresses that the Hebrew Bible as a whole was created in the third century under the influence of Plato's Laws, which featured instructions for creating a national library of approved texts with ethical content, and that the Jewish theocracy historically established in the early Hellenistic Era was directly patterned on the novel form of government under divine laws also laid out in Plato's Laws.