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Hittitology, Importance for Biblical Interpretation

Prior to the restoration of the Hittites to their proper place in world history, a process

begun in the nineteenth century, they were known only through scattered biblical

references, which mostly identified them as a people living in Palestine. Unraveling the

puzzle of who these Iron Age “Hittites” were and how they might be related, if at all, to

the Hittites who ruled a Late Bronze Age empire, has been an ongoing process that has

had as a side benefit the illumination of the biblical text itself. Hittitology moreover, has,

and continues to, offer a rich repository of data that enrich our understanding of the

origins of the Bible as a book and the Israelites as a people.

Definition. Hittitology is the study of the ancient civilization of the Hittites, their

languages, scripts, history, religion, and culture, through their texts and material remains.

The Hittites established hegemony over much of the peninsula of Anatolia (currently

occupied by the Republic of Turkey) sometime in the seventeenth century B.C.E. (the

Middle Bronze Age), and during their heyday in the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1400–1180

B.C.E., they ruled a network of vassal states in the west and southeast that together

formed the Hittite Empire. Thus, Hittitology as a field of study also encompasses those

cultures and languages with which the Hittites were in intimate contact, including

Hattians, Palaians, Hurrians, and Luwians, as well as the study of Sumerian and

Akkadian, languages that feature prominently in the Hittite textual corpus.

The collapse of the Hittite Empire at the end of the Bronze Age initiated a new era

in which small independent kingdoms were formed out of the territories once controlled

by the Hittite ruling house. In some cases, the rulers of these kingdoms were a part of the

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Hittite royal line. This coterie of states have been labeled in modern parlance the Neo-

Hittite kingdoms (mid-twelfth through early-seventh centuries BC). Though politically

distinct entities, they shared cultural and historical ties. In terms of biblical interpretation

they are especially significant because they were contemporary with, and geographically

adjacent to, Israel in the monarchic period.

History of Hittitology. With the dissolution of the Neo-Hittite states at the hands of the

Assyrians, the Hittites faded from historical memory, and the process of rediscovering

them would not begin for another 2500 years.

Rediscovery. The Hittites finally achieved an identity independent of the biblical text

with a lecture delivered by Assyriologist Archibald Henry Sayce in 1880 to the Society

for Biblical Archaeology in London declaring that the monumental carvings and

hieroglyphic inscriptions that had been discoved throughout Anatolia and northern Syria

in recent decades should be attributed to the Hittites. This was soon followed by the

publication of The Empire of the Hittites (1884) by the missionary William Wright

(1837–1899), which introduced the Hittites to the broader public and in which he asserted

that the Hittites had ruled an Empire. The first Hittite cuneiform tablets to come to light

were two letters from the king of Arzawa that were among the cache of Amarna tablets

found in 1887. J. A. Knudtzon was able to identify the language of these two letters as

Indo-European already in 1902, however his discovery seemed too far fetched and failed

to find acceptance. In the meantime, tablets written in the same language had recently

been found during test diggings at the village of Boghazköy in north-central Anatolia and

excavations began at the site in 1906 under the auspices of the German Oriental Society

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and the direction of the Assyriologist Hugo Winckler (1863–1913). More than ten

thousand cuneiform tablets were discovered in the first year of excavation and it quickly

became clear to Winckler that this site was the capital of the Hittite Empire (ancient

Hattusa). With the conclusive decipherment of the language of the cuneiform tablets by

the Czech scholar Biedrich Hrozný in 1915, Hittitology became its own distinct field of

study.

The Twentieth Century and Today. The Boghazköy archives have now produced more

than thirty thousand cuneiform tablet fragments, and the enormous task of publishing

copies of these documents is only now coming to a conclusion. Copies of the tablets

excavated in the initial excavations of Theodor Makridi and Hugo Winckler were

published in the first six volumes of the series Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi (KBo). The

modern excavation of the site began in 1931 under the direction of Kurt Bittel, only to be

discontinued in 1939. The tablets recovered in these years were published in the series

Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi (KUB; complete at 60 volumes). Excavations were

picked up again in 1952 and have continued without break until today. To accomodate

the tablets found in the postwar excavations, the old series KBo was revived and now

contains xx volumes. Additional volumes contain miscellaneous collections of text

copies, and only a small number of the tablets from Boghazköy remain unpublished.

Most of the published cuneiform texts have been translated and analyzed in one

form or another, although only small percentage are published in a form or venue that is

accessible to a nonspecialist audience. The entire Iron Age hieroglyphic corpus, on the

other hand, is now available, thanks to the massive three-volume undertaking, The

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Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions, by J. David Hawkins of the School of

Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

A field once dominated by German scholars (Hans Ehelolf, Emil Forrer, Johannes

Friedrich, Albecht Goetze, and Ferdinand Sommer), Hittitology today is truly

international. Scholars not only in Germany, England, and the United States but also in

the Netherlands, Italy, France, Israel, Japan, and, of course, Turkey are contributing

significantly to reconstructing the language, culture, and history of the Hittites. Our

knowledge of the Hittites is no longer limited to the capital city and the early excavations

at Karkamis, Alaca, and other cities. Modern excavations conducted at Hittite sites like

Ortaköy-Šapinuwa, Maşat-Tapikka, and Kuşaklı-Šarissa, among others, are not only

enlarging the corpus of Hittite cuneiform texts, but are also providing data about life on

the plateau inaccessible to us prior to the application of modern excavation techniques.

Among the many resources being made available through the open-access initiative,

Hethitologie Portal Mainz, are digital photographs and modern transliterations and

translations of the texts.

Biblical Interpretation. Scholarship was slow to recognize the potential of Hittitology

for biblical interpretation, but once the door was opened, the flow of comparative studies

was steady and continues to this day. The question of the identity of the “Hittites” named

in the Bible does not necessarily have a bearing on Hittitology’s importance for biblical

interpretation, however this could not be assumed at first, and discussions of connections

have rarely been undertaken without some consideration given to the biblical Hittites.

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Hittites in Palestine? Sayce himself was among the first to address the question of the

Hittites in the Old Testament in an article in 1928 that attempted to align the Hittite

evidence to the biblical text (see also Hoffner 2002, xxix). Like his contemporaries, he

assumed that the Hittites of the Hebrew Bible were the same as the Hittites of Anatolia.

Only in the 1930s did the work of the Hittitologists Emil Forrer (1936 and 1937) and

Louis Delaporte (1936–38) advance the discussion. Both pointed out that the label

“Hittite” had multiple applications historically; it did not only apply to the Anatolian

Bronze Age empire. Thus, not all of the biblical references to “Hittites” were necessarily

to the same group. Both also suggested a migration to explain the presence of Hittites in

Iron Age Palestine. Forrer was the first to put forward historical evidence, in the form of

an historically attested migration of people from Anatolia to Palestine in the reign of

Mursili II (1321–1295 BCE). This ingenious theory continues to receive the attention of

scholars (see, e.g., Singer 2006, 730–32), although it is pure conjecture.

From the biblical side, F. F. Bruce, in a published lecture (The Hittites and the

Old Testament. London: Tyndale Press, 1947), assessed possible theories to explain

Hittites living in Palestine, based on a literal understanding of biblical chronology. He

also advocated, following Franz Böhl (1916 and 1930) for the identification of King

Tidal of Goiim (Gen 14) with one of the Hittite kings bearing the name Tudhaliya. Up to

this point, the search for parallels was not a priority on the agenda of scholars from either

side. Although certain shared Kulturwörter had in fact been acknowledged since the

beginning of the century, and Forrer saw in the Hittite custom of “drinking the deity” a

forerunner of the Christian Eucharist (1940), it was not until 1954, when biblical scholar

George Mendenhall put forward a compelling case for the dependence of the biblical

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covenant on the Hittite treaty form, that the potential of the Hittite material for

elucidating the world of the Bible was recognized. Since then, several biblical scholars,

among them, Milgrom, Weinfield, and Moyer, have drawn attention to significant

parallels, especially in the religious sphere (see below).

Among Hittitologists, the pursuit of parallels at this time was limited primarily to

the work of Harry A. Hoffner, Jr. (summarized in his 1969 and 1973 articles, and most

recently 2002). Having argued against a direct connection between the Palestinian and

Anatolian Hittites, Hoffner also downplayed the importance of the question for

appreciating the significance of Hittitology for biblical studies.

Tackling the question from the perspective of archaeology, Aharon Kempinski

returned to the idea of a migration as a way to account for Hittites in Palestine, this time

focussing on the possibility that refugees from Anatolia could have penetrated deep into

Palestine following the collapse of the Hittite Empire. He assessed architectural, artistic,

and funerary evidence that document the presence not only of trade but of influence on

Syria-Palestine in the period prior to the collapse. Following on the work of Kempinski,

Itamar Singer has focused attention on the various seals and objets d’art of Anatolian

provenance or style that have been unearthed in Palestine, all or most bearing testimony

to the period of intensified contact in the period of the Egypto-Hittite Peace. Singer also

theorized as to the identity of the Hittites in the Bible (2006), offering two possible

explanations: the first allows for the possibility that Hittites from Anatolia migrated into

Palestine following the Empire’s collapse, adapting to the local culture so thoroughly that

the biblical writers disregarded their Anatolian origins. His second proposal is that the

biblical writers inherited the use of the term “Hittite” from Neo-Assyrian and Neo-

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Babylonian usage, wherein it served as a synonym for “Canaanite” and “Amorite,” and

thus the biblical Hittites have nothing to do with the Anatolian Hittites.

Most recently, Collins has argued that the biblical Hittites are connected to the

second-millennium Hittites by means of the merging of threads of literary tradition and

rejects the notion that a group of Hittites might have lived in Palestine in the biblical

period. Beyond those references to Hittites that are generally agreed to correspond to the

Neo-Hittite states of the early-first millennium (1 Kgs 10:29 || 2 Chr 1:17; 2 Kgs 7:6; 1

Kgs 11:1; Josh 1:4; Judg 1:26), two threads of tradition can be traced. First is the lists of

nations, which includes the Hittites with the Canaanites, Jebusites (an Amorite tribe?),

Hivites (Cilicians), Amorites, Perizzites, and Girgashites (see, e.g., Deut 20:16–17).

Although incorporated into the biblical text only later, these lists retain a historical

memory of the earlier period, which was preserved in the Canaanite traditions upon

which the Israelites were later heavily to depend.

The rhetorical and ideological use of “Hittites” that appears in Ezek 16:3 (“your

mother was a Hittite”) and elsewhere, on the other hand, draws on the Assyrian rhetoric

of Sargon II against the Neo-Hittite cities of northern Syria (he calls them “evil Hittites”

repeatedly in his inscriptions). When the Assyrians destroyed Samaria, Israelite refugees

moved to Judah. These northerners, who had presumably been exposed both to

Canaanite historical memory of Hittites and other groups who had inhabited the

territories to their north and also to the more contemporary anti-Hittite Assyrian rhetoric,

may have carried both of these traditions with them. The two threads merged and the

Hittites became, along with the Jebusites, Hivites, Amorites, and so on, a convenient

“Other” imagined as living in the Hill Country for the “newly arrived” Israelites to

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conquer. In other words, the Jerusalem-based biblical authors of the late-eighth century

incorporated the Hittites and other groups into their foundational story of Israelite origins.

The presence of the Hittites in the narratives of Israelite beginnings is thus rhetorical and

ideological rather than historical. At the same time, however, a kernel of historical

memory is reflected in the lists of nations, so that the Hittites of Palestine, although a

literary construct, can nevertheless be connected to the Hittite Empire of the Late Bronze

Age.

Despite the dearth of corroborating evidence—archaeological or otherwise—to

support a literal interpretation of the biblical references to Hittites living in the Hill

Country of Judah, some biblical scholars continue to take the biblical references at face

value.

Influences: Key Issues and Assumptions. Compared with Assyriology, the pursuit of

biblical parallels in Hittite texts has not been a quest for relevance. Considered a subfield

within Assyriology, Hittitology has largely flown under the radar of the Babel-Bible

controversy. Unlike in Mesopotamia, discoveries in Anatolia did not impact the veracity

of the Bible. Indeed, if anything, Hittite studies suffered a backlash from the pan-

Babylonian movement of the early-twentieth century. In his initial publication describing

the Hittite origins of the Sinai covenant form, George Mendenhall wrote: “The writer has

no intention of beginning a “pan-Hittite” school of biblical interpretation: he would

maintain that in most if not all cases, the Hittite materials simply happen to be the source

from which we know customs which were to a large extent common property to many

cultures of Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, many of which are also attested or indicated

in the Amarna Letters” (1954, 54, n. 11). The geographical, chronological, and cultural

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remoteness of the Hittites from Israel have been taken as insurmountable barriers to any

direct influence between the Hittites and Israelites.

Although early practitioners like Sayce and Wright had a clear religious

orientation, Hittitology as a distinct field was pursued from a secular perspective. The

work of Forrer and Delaporte notwithstanding, the Bible was not a focal point for the

field. The great controversy of the early years (and indeed still today), was the so-called

Ahhiyawa Question, which focused the attention of Hittitologists on the West. To this

day, few Hittitologists have an interest in biblical connections and fewer still are familiar

enough with the biblical material and languages to pursue such connections (see Hoffner,

2002, xxix). By the same token, biblical scholars are not always aware of the work of

Hittitologists. As Hoffner laments, this is in large measure a failure on the part of

Hittitologists, who have been slow in making the texts available to non-specialists. This

is changing slowly with the publication of several anthologies, most notably, The Context

of Scripture (Brill) and the Writings from the Ancient World series (Society of Biblical

Literature) and its counterpart Texte aus der Umwelt des alten Testaments (Gütersloher

Verlagshaus).

Methods and Payoff. Within biblical studies, there has been a shift away from a

diachronic focus on origins and development in favor of a synchronic approach that seeks

to understand the meaning of phenomena within their immediate biblical context, or,

alternatively, to understand ancient phenomena through the application of modern theory.

Some argue that the quest for the origins of the biblical text is missing the point; what is

significant is not a ritual’s (for example) original intent—what it might have meant or

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how it might have been introduced originally—but what it means in its present context.

Hittitologists are perhaps more likely than biblical scholars to focus on origins, as a

means of adding value to a field of study whose significance is often overlooked.

Despite changing scholarly fashions, many compelling parallels and similarities

have been put forward over the past six decades, especially in the legal, literary, and

religious spheres.

International Law and Legal Procedures. The most celebrated and discussed

parallel was put forth in 1954 by the biblical scholar George E. Mendenhall, who noted

that the biblical covenant between Yahweh and Israel followed the model of the Hittite

vassal treaties, including (in order) a historical prologue that reviews past relations

between the parties to the agreement, stipulations of the obligations of both parties,

instructions for the deposition of the agreement, a list of witnesses, and the issuance of

blessings and curses. In addition, both the biblical covenant and the Hittite treaties

presuppose the willing participation of the subordinate partner. A further corollory are the

detailed descriptions of the borders allotted to the subordinate party, which were used as

a means of reward and punishment and which only the suzerain had the right to alter.

Several stipulations in the Hittite Laws have parallels in biblical law, for example,

a case of murder by an unknown assailant (HL §6 and Deut 21:1–2), compensation for an

incapacitated person as the result of assault (HL §10 and Exod 21:18–19), levirate

marriage (HL §§192–193 and Deut 25:5–10), the determination of rape or adultery (HL

§197 and Deut 22:23–27), and sexual relations with animals (HL §§187, 199 and Lev

18:23–24). Unlike the treaty form, these parallels are likely to be a manifestation of a

common Near Eastern legal tradition.

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Literature. Herbert M. Wolf in a 1967 Brandeis dissertation directed by Harry A.

Hoffner Jr. was the first to suggest direct literary influence of the Apology of Hattusili III

on the story of David’s rise to power (1 Sam 16–2 Sam 6), a theme that Hoffner himself

pursues in “Propaganda and Political Justification in Hittite Historiography” (1975). The

two accounts share several significant themes, among them the king’s utter blamelessness

in his dealings with his predecessor as his path to the kingship is ineluctably smoothed

for him by popular support, the trust of the royal family, and the favor of the deity. Both

stories also incorporate a contest of champions. Hoffner shies away from suggesting a

direct link, prefering to attribute the similarities to the sharing of “a certain loose literary

form.” His caution is applauded by McCarter in his analysis of the story of David’s rise

(1 Sam 16–2 Sam 5), which he too places in the genre of political self-justifications, a

genre that for him was a part of the “general cultural milieu” at the time that the story of

David’s rise was composed. Still, given the interest that Hattusili III had in advertising

his legitimacy and that of his line, and the close ties that his admiinistration enjoyed with

the Levantine coast during the peace with Egypt, we cannot rule out the possibility that

copies of this text were circulating in Palestine at the end of the thirteenth century, where

they could have been absorbed into the local literary tradition. This text also belies the

distinction that some have made between the historia sacra of Judeo-Christian tradition,

which encompasses the idea of a divine plan in history, and polytheistic systems, in

which history was allegedly just a field of possible interventions by the gods, favorable or

punitive. However, the role of the goddess Shaushga in shaping the events in Hattusili’s

life suggests that a divine plan was at work in Hittite history.

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There are also Hittite analogues to biblical stories. The Zalpa Legend about the

queen who gives birth to thirty daughters and thirty sons has echoes in Judg 10:3–4 and

Judg 12:8–9. The Appu Myth recalls the patriarchal narratives with the childless couple,

the appearance of the deity as a human, and the feud between two brothers (cf. Appu

[Abu] and Abraham). And the topos of the potter and his clay creation (Isa 29:16, 45:9;

Jer 18:6; Rom 9:20–21) has an antecedent in the parable of the coppersmith and the cup

that curses its maker in the Hittite-Hurrian Song of Release. Note also the theme of the

divine destruction of the city of Ebla for failure to manumit its slaves, which has been

compared to Yahweh’s destruction of Judah for failure to observe the sabbatical years (2

Chr 36:17–21).

Official Religion. Numerous correspondences in the realm of official religion

have been noted. Jacob Milgrom has compared the division of roles within the Hittite

guard (temple servants and keepers) with that between the priests and Levites as

described in the Priestly Code. David Wright has pointed to the similarity of the

placement of the hand(s) on the sacrificial animal in Hittite and Israelite sacrificial ritual,

as either conferring authorization on another to act on behalf of the one making the

gesture or to attribute the offering to the one making the gesture. Although the idea of

kingship was borrowed from Mesopotamia and Egypt, the practice of anointing kings

may have come from the Hittite world, perhaps via the Hurrians in the second

millennium or the Neo-Hittite states in the first. Finally, the biblical notion of guilt

passing from one generation to the next has analogues in Hittite prayers and treaties.

Hoffner suggests a connection between the biblical term kõmer referring to pagan

priests and Hittite kumra-, which he suggests is the Hittite reading of GUDU12, one of the

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main classes of priest in the Hittite priesthood. He further suggests this class of priest,

originating in Anatolia, was active in Syria-Palestine, and thus offers a possible conduit

for cult influences. One the other hand, his attempts to find correspondences in the area

of divination—specifically the proposed connections between Hurrian api-, a ritual pit

used to communicate with the deities of the underworld, with Hebrew ’ôb (in, e.g., 1 Sam

28; Isa 29:4) and Hittite tarpi- with Hebrew teraphim—have met with strong criticism

from biblical scholars.

Personal Religion. In the area of ritual power, the best-known parallel is that

between the Hittite rituals attributed to Ashella and Uhhamuwa and the biblical scapegoat

rite described in Lev 16. Both the Hittite and biblical rites have as their goal the

elimination of pollution from the community by means of a scapegoat sent into the

wilderness or the enemy camp; in the case of Ashella’s ritual, several scapegoats (rams)

are used, along with a woman. Just as the Azazel rite is balanced with sin offerings to

Yahweh (Lev 16:11–19), Ashella’s ritual complements the scapegoat rite with sacrifices

performed for the god who caused the plague on the third day of the four-day ritual (§7).

This ritual has its roots in a north Syrian tradition.

The episode of the Philistines and the ark of the covenant described in 1 Sam 5–6

draws comparison to two separate Hittite rituals. The ritual attributed to Ambazzi uses

two mice, one a “scapegoat,” the other an offering, and may explain the mice sent along

with tumors as a guilt offering when the Philistines returned the ark to the Israelites. The

Ritual of Samuha affected the removal of curses by sending a model boat laden with gold

and silver images of the oaths and curses down the river to the sea as propitiatory gifts for

the offended deity. The shaping of the offerings in the form of the calamities is a striking

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parallel to the mice and tumors of the Philistine ritual. Thus 1 Sam 5–6 may reflect

Anatolian practices introduced by the Philistines whose origins, some assert, were in

Anatolia.

The Hittite texts attest to the use of blood as a means of expiation, purification,

and consecration, a rite (called zurki-, after the Hurrian word for blood) that parallels the

biblical sin offering in both its procedure and goals (e.g., KUB 9.22+ and Lev 14). Feder

argues that, just a with the scapegoat rite, this practice stems from a common tradition

with its roots in Syria (whether of Hurrian or Semitic origin). Also a part of this common

tradition was the double ritual, comprising both burnt and wellbeing offerings, which

appears in Hurro-Hittite and Syrian ritual texts and the Bible.

Among the various means of disposing of impurity, the Hittite rituals attest to the

placing of evils and contaminated materials in containers sealed with lids of lead that

were then symbolically deposited in the underworld or beneath the sea. This theme

reemerges in Zech 5:5–11 and in the Greek myth of Pandora.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that the Hittite evidence can be used to illuminate

the Bible even when no specific parallel is at issue. The prohibited acts in Isaiah 66:3 are

best understood as oblique references to ritual traditions that were widespread in the

eastern Mediterranean, including the sacrifice of dogs and pigs, to which discussion the

Hittite texts contribute a great deal.

Channels of Influence. There are many routes by which the Hittite world might

have influenced the biblical. Some correspondences may be areal phenomena, others a

function of the fact that the Hittites and Israelites are both a part of the greater cuneiform

culture of Mesopotamia. But others no doubt have a more direct connection. In the Iron

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Age, the Neo-Hittite cities and the Sea Peoples diaspora may both account for the

conveyance of some Anatolian ideas and practices to Palestine.

For the Bronze Age, Singer has convincingly advocated for the period of the

Egypto-Hittite Peace at the end of the thirteenth century as a fertile ground for contacts

between Hittite officials and functionaries who were among the diplomatic core operating

in the region and the inhabitants of Palestine. Further, Collins has argued, building on the

recent work of biblical scholars, that the timespan between the Hittite collapse to the

composition of the relevant sections of the biblical text is bridged by historical memory

and scribal continuity over the centuries. Syria undoubtedly provided the context for the

exchange of ritual traditions, while the biblical covenant form and the story of David’s

rise to power were almost certainly borrowed directly from the Hittite imperial records.

Impact and Relevance. While scholars do not hesitate to see direct borrowing from Neo-

Assyrian treaties in Deuteronomy, most have been hesitant to draw such connections with

the Hittite treaties, to which the covenant form bears a closer resemblance, preferring to

understand the Hittite treaties as a cross-cultural phenomenon, representative of a form of

political discourse that was de rigeuer throughout the Near East. (The Anchor Bible

Dictionary’s discussion of covenant refers to “Late Bronze Age treaties” even though the

evidence it adduces is all Hittite.) A similar reluctance to consider the possibility of direct

influence has dominated the discussion of literary parallels, as noted above. The distance

in time is compounded by the date of the biblical text itself, and P in particular, which

many maintain is quite late. This presumption, however, is not uncontested.

The reluctance to see the Hittite data as anything other than phenomenological

ignores the political and cultural impact of the Hittite Empire on the Near East, and

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especially on Syria, which was an integral part of that empire. By the same token,

privileging Mesopotamian evidence however ill-fitting as preferable to a Hittite origin

serves to trivialize the contribution of the Hittite sources. Until scholarly consensus

moves forward to remove these methodological obstacles, the full impact and relevance

of Hittitology for biblical interpretation will remain unacknowledged and underexplored.

Future Prospects. Despite the challenges, the potential of Hittitology for biblical

interpretation has not diminished. Recent contributions by a new generation of scholars,

some of whom are trained both in Hittite and in Biblical Hebrew, indicate that much

more remains to be discovered.

Billie Jean Collins

Word count: 4605

Bibliography

The works listed here between them include all of the relevant bibliography on topical

studies.

Berman, Joshua A. “God’s Alliance with Man.” Azure 25 (2006): 79–113. Seeks to

resituate the modern discussion of covenant in its proper ancient Near Eastern

(specifically Hittite) context to answer the question what is the original, biblical

meaning of covenant.

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Cancik, Hubert. Grundzüge der hethitischen und alttestamentlichen

Geschichtsschreibung (Weisbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976). A systematic attempt to

demonstrate important similarities between Israelite and Hittite historiography.

Collins, Billie Jean. The Hittites and Their World. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,

2007. A comprehensive survey of the contributions of Hittite studies to biblical

interpretation. It represents the first attempt to collect in one place all of the

parallels that have been proposed over decades of research. The chapter “Hittites

in the Bible,” details the author’s theory as to how “Hittites” came to appear in the

Bible and an epilogue discusses the various possible channels of influence.

Feder, Itzhaq. Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual: Origins, Context, and

Meaning. WAWSup 1. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.

Demonstrates the shared tradition of biblical and Hittite blood rites.

Forrer, Emil. “The Hittites in Palestine, I.” PEQ 68 (1936): 190–203; “The Hittites in

Palestine, II.” PEQ 69 (1937): 100–115. The first and most influential attempt to

address the question of the identity of the Hitties in the Bible. Part I investigates

the identity of the Hittites in Palestine. Part II offers a theory as to how they might

have arrived there.

Hoffner, Harry A. Jr. “Some Contributions of Hittitology to Old Testament Study.”

Tyndale Bulletin 20 (1969): 27–55. A summary of what was known to date about

the Hittites in Palestine and Hittite materials that could elucidate the Hebrew

Bible.

———. “Hittite-Israelite Cultural Parallels.” In The Context of Scripture. Vol. 3:

Archival Documents, edited by William H. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger Jr.,

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xxix–xxxiv. Leiden: Brill, 2002. A brief and current overview of the history of

investigation into the subject with a review of the most significant parallels drawn

to date.

Janowski, Bernd, Klaus Koch, and Gernot Wilhelm, eds. Religionsgeschichtliche

Beziehungen zwischen Kleinasien, Nordsyrien und dem Alten Testament. OBO

129. Freiburg; Göttingen: Universitätverlag; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993. A

collection of essays by both biblical scholars and Hittitologists investigating

specific points of correspondence, including the scapegoat tradition (Janowski and

Wilhelm); the Hurrian ritual KUB 9.22+ and Lev 14 (Haas); and cult steles and

baityloi (Hutter); among others.

Kempinski, Aharon. “Hittites in the Bible: What Does Archaeology Say?” BAR 5 no. 4

(1979): 21–44. Approaches the question of the identity of the Hittites in the Bible

from the perspective of the archaeological and iconographic evidence.

McCarter, P. Kyle, “The Apology of David.” JBL 99 (1980): 489–504. Building on the

work of Wolf and Hoffner, an analysis of the narrative of David’s rise to power in

light of the Apology of Hattusili III.

Mendenhall, George E. “Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition.” BA 17 (1954): 50–76.

The seminal discussion of the dependence of the Israelite covenant tradition on

the Hittite treaty formula.

Mendenhall, George E., and Gary A. Herion, “Covenant.” ABD 1:1179–1202. Detailed

and current examination of the nature of the biblical covenant and its connection

to ancient Near Eastern (specifically Hittite) covenant traditions.

Milgrom, Jacob, “The Shared Custody of the Tabernacle and a Hittite Analogy.” JAOS

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40 (1970): 204–9. A topical study of one of the more important parallels that has

come to light and which has withstood scrutiny.

Moyer, James C., “Hittite and Israelite Cultic Practices: A Selected Comparison,” in

Scripture in Context, vol. 2, edited by Hallo, James C. Moyer, and Leo G. Perdue,

19–38. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983. A summary and evaluation of

proposed parallels to date.

Singer, Itamar. “The Hittites and the Bible Revisited” In “I Will Speak the Riddle of

Ancient Times”: Archaelogical and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar

on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de

Miroschedji, 723–756. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006. A comprehensive

presentation of the question of the identity of the biblical Hittites, with a detailed

discussion of the historical, archaeological, and philological evidence for a Hittite

presence in and influence on Palestine, as well as a brief survey of the most

significant parallels.

Wazana, Nili. “Border Descriptions and Cultural Barriers.” In Akten des IV.

Internationalen Kongresses, edited by Gernot Wilhelm, pp. 696–710. Wiesbaden:

Harrassowitz, 2001. With Feder and Yakubovitch, this article offers a recent

addition to the growing list of parallels, testifying to the continuing contribution

of Hittitology of biblical interpretation. Wazana deftly demonstrates the

conceptual and literary similarities between the Syro-Anatolian steles and biblical

sources to Late Bronze Age Hittite border descriptions, providing further

evidence of continuity and transformation.

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Yakubovitch, Ilya. “Where Hittite Kings Divinely Anointed? A Palaic Invocation to the

Sun-God and Its Significance for Hittite Religion.” JANER 5 (2005): 122–37. An

intriguing discussion of the evidence for the anointment of Hittite kings, offering

a response to Ernst Kutsch (Salbung als Rechtsakt im Alten Testament und im

alten Orient (Berlin 1963), and a possible context for the importation of the

anointment ritual by the Israelites.