A few weeks ago I posted some tips for biblical scholars who wanted to integrate ANE material into their research and I mentioned that I would compile a bibliography as well. So, here is the first installment. Over the next few weeks I will post a short bibliography on various topics that tend to be significant to biblical scholars. At the end I will combine them all together into a pdf document which I will upload as well. This bibliography is not intended to be exhaustive, on the contrary, for each topic it will feature a couple to a handful of the most relevant sources, as I see it at any rate. The materials that I will include may not always be the most technical but that is not the point. I hope to provide entry-points for biblical scholars so books that are accessible and include a strong bibliography of their own will be preferred to more specialized or technical materials (with the understanding that in most cases these technical works will be included within the bibliographies of the books that make it into my list).

For the first installment I thought it might be nice to mention a few collections that could serve as the first place a biblical scholar could investigate if he or she is researching a particular topic or wants a greater general knowledge of the ANE:

Reallexikon der Assyriologie (RlA).This is basically the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary for ancient Near Eastern studies. This series was started in 1928 and some of the earlier essays are not as complete nor as helpful as some of the later ones. Note that you must look for the article under its German title.

Civilizations of the Ancient Near East includes 189 articles that cover a wide range of topics relating to the study of the ancient Near East written by some of the best scholars in those areas.

Piotr Bienkowski and Alan Millard edited the handy little Dictionary of the Ancient Near East which gives snapshots of topics.