Today’s Old Testament lectionary reading provides one of my favorite parallels between the Old Testament and other writings from the Ancient Near East. I am not sure why this one stands out to me in particular when there are a lot of other interesting parallels out there. I think that maybe it has to do with the fact that it is one of the more transparent parallels. The lectionary reading is the story of the Egyptian pharaoh seeking to kill the male children of the Israelites, particularly about how Moses escapes this fate by being placed in a basket/ark, which is then placed in a river. For this story, there is an Ancient Near Eastern parallel in the Legend of Sargon. For those unfamiliar with this text, you would do very well to read it. There is a free online translation of the text here.

I hope that you will use the link above as an opportunity to begin getting acquainted with Old Testament Parallels.  If you are interested in looking at more comparisons like this in more detail, you might check out these compilations of Ancient Near Eastern texts: