The Ugaritic Baal Cycle

This volume provides a lengthy introduction and detailed translation and commentary for the first two tablets of the Baal Cycle, which witnesses to both the religious worldview of Ugarit and many of the formative religious concepts and images in the Bible.

The Ugaritic Baal Cycle offers a translation and the first commentary on the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. The longest and most important religious text from ancient Ugarit, the Baal Cycle witnesses to both the religious worldview of Ugarit and the larger background to many of the formative religious concepts and images in the Bible. The volume treats introductory matters such as date, order and continuity of the tablets, the history of interpretation, and finally a new proposal for the interpretation of text drawing on the insights of previous views as well as newer evidence. The commentary proper provides bibliography, text, textual notes, literary structure and detailed commentary for each column in the first two tablets.

The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Volume II provides a new edition, translation and commentary on the third and fourth tablets of the Baal Cycle, the most important religious text found at Ugarit.

The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Volume II provides a new edition, translation and commentary on the third and fourth tablets of the Baal Cycle, the most important religious text found at Ugarit.

Baal and the Politics of Poetry provides a thoroughly new interpretation of the Ugaritic Baal Cycle that simultaneously inaugurates an innovative approach to studying ancient Near Eastern literature within the political context of its production. The book argues that the poem, written in the last decades of the Bronze Age, takes aim at the reigning political-theological norms of its day and uses the depiction of a divine world to educate its audience about the nature of human politics. By attuning ourselves to the specific historical context of this one poem, we can develop more nuanced appreciation of how poetry, politics, and religion have interacted—in antiquity, and beyond.