Othmar keel biography of albert

Introduction: Othmar Keel, Iconography, and the Old Testament Brent A. Strawn In order to fully appreciate the contributions of Othmar Keel, one must set him and his work in context.1 Prior to Keel, there were, of course, archaeologists at work throughout the ancient Near East, as well as art historians who specialized in the most ancient periods, and also biblical scholars, a goodly number of whom paid attention to archaeology, at least on general matters if not also on specific artifactual and artistic remains.

Indeed, no fewer than two collections were published in the twentieth century that attempted to integrate ancient Near Eastern images (iconography) and the Bible: Hugo Gressmann’s Altorientalische Bilder zum Alten Testament (ABAT2) and James B.

Pritchard’s The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament (ANEP).2 And yet, 1. Part of this introduction was given as a lecture at the University of Zür