Marcus Meade

The Old Testament is a fierce battleground for atheists and Christian apologists, with each side accusing the other of taking challenging and troubling passages out of context. In this handbook, Joshua Bowen not only provides the background to the Old Testament and the ancient Near East, but engages with hotly contested topics like slavery, failed prophecy, and the authorship of debated Old Testament books.

Dr. Joseph Elias Hayne (1848-1911) was a physician and minister of the American Methodist Episcopal Church. He was one of a number of early black writers who challenged white racist theories that demeaned people of African origin. In his book The Negro in Sacred History (1887), he sought to refute all prejudices against black people by tracing the descendants of the biblical Ham with reference to archaeological and historical scholarship. Hayne argued that Ham was Noah’s favorite son and identified the Mediterranean deity Jupiter Ammon as a representative figure of Ham.