Walter R. Bodine* Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn. —Isaiah 51:1 The Sumerians are the only one of the thirteen groups to which a chapter of this volume is devoted who are not mentioned in the Bible.1 Yet their influence on ancient Israel, as well as the rest of the ancient Near East, is as fundamental as that of most of the other peoples discussed