WealthWarn

Book excerpt: Like the first volume in this series (WealthWatch, Pickwick, 2011) this book attempts to do two things: (a) examine the primary socioeconomic motifs in the Bible from a comparative intertextual perspective, and (b) trace the trajectory formed by these motifs through Tanak into early Jewish and Nazarene texts. Where WealthWatch focuses on Torah, WealthWarn focuses on the single largest section of the Bible—the Prophets. Where the ancient Near Eastern texts surveyed in WealthWatch include the Epic of Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, and the Epic of Erra, the texts examined here include Inanna's Descent, the Babylonian Creation Epic (enūma elish), the Disappearance of Telipinu, and the Ba`al Epic. Where the Jewish texts surveyed in WealthWatch include historical and sectarian texts, the texts studied here include Ezra-Nehemiah, the Epistle of Jeremiah and Tobit. Where the Nazarene texts in WealthWatch focus on the stewardship parables found in the Gospel of Luke, the texts examined here focus on several prophetic vignettes from the Gospel of Matthew and Acts of the Apostles.