Michael P. O'Connor

Piety and Politics

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“The oldest kings whose stories we know well are the kings in the Old Testament and in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Launderville here carefully explores the rhetorical basis of royal authority and power in these works. He also studies the kings of Hammurapi's Babylon, in the process revealing patterns of archaic political thought shared by the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds.”