An Introduction to the Old Testament

Exploring Text, Approaches And Issues

John Goldingay

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780281075362
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Bibles

Built on decades of studying and teaching the Old Testament, this introduction is unusual in setting out background information, noting interpretative possibilities, raising questions and suggesting approaches. It operates more like a workbook, with the aim of encouraging students to investigate the Old Testament, both critically and prayerfully, for themselves.

Part One

Introduction

101	Approaching the Old Testament
102	The Old Testament as Scripture
103	Reading the Old Testament as the Word of God in Its Own Right
104	The Books in the Old Testament
105	How Did Old Testament Books Get Written?
106	Old Testament Story and Old Testament History
107	A Timeline for the Old Testament
108	Fact and Truth in the Old Testament
109	When the Old Testament Is Parable Not History
110	Reading the Old Testament Premodernly, Modernly and Postmodernly
111	The Geography of Canaan
112	The Geography of the Middle East
113	How Did the Old Testament Come to Be the Old Testament?
114	How Old and How Reliable Is the Old Testament Text?
115	Old Testament Translations and the Name of God in Translations
116	Israelites, Hebrews, Jews; Israel, Judah, Ephraim
117	New Testament Lenses for Looking at the Old Testament
118	The Apocrypha or Second Canon
119	Web Resources

101

Approaching the Old Testament

The “Old Testament” is the Christian term for the collection of scrolls in Hebrew and Aramaic that the Jewish community accepts as its Scriptures, and to which it often refers as the “Torah [or Law], the Prophets and the Writings,” or “Tanak” for short (from the initial letters of the three Hebrew nouns “Torah,” “Nebi’im,” “Ketubim”). Scholars often refer to them as the “Hebrew Bible.” The books were written at different times between about the eighth century and the second century B.C. We don’t know when they became a defined collection, when they became the “Scriptures.” From a Christian viewpoint, it’s significant that as far as we can tell, it’s the collection of Scriptures that Jesus and his first followers would have recognized; most of the books are quoted in the NT.

Nearly half the OT comprises narratives telling the story of the world’s creation and then the story of Israel over the centuries. Incorporated into the first part of this narrative are substantial swathes of instructions about how Israel should live. The OT goes on to include a collection of works preserving the messages of some prophets and a collection of poetic and prose works offering teaching about sensible ways to live everyday life and examples of praise and prayer for people to use.

The OT refers to other historical records, prophets and teachers that are not included in the OT; we have examples of such works from other Middle Eastern peoples contemporary with Israel. The ones in the OT are the examples that Israel preserved as having permanent significance for the people of God. There are also many other Jewish works from the centuries just before or just after Christ, some of which came to be used in the church along with the works in the OT. They are referred to as the “Apocrypha” (the “hidden” books) or as the “Deuterocanonical Writings.” The latter of these two terms is clumsier but more appropriate. The word “canon” means “ruler,” and “deutero” means “second”; the OT (the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings) are the primary canon, and these are a second canon. As far as we know, these books never were regarded as Scripture by the Jewish community, and they are not quoted in the NT. (The NT does quote from Enoch, which is not part of most versions of the Apocrypha, though the Ethiopian Church did come to recognize it, perhaps because it is quoted in the NT.) See further 118.

What’s the appropriate way to go about studying the OT? It’s tricky discussing that question at this point because you can really answer it only by getting involved in doing the study. So what I am doing here is giving you conclusions that I have come to.

1. I read these books as the church’s Scriptures, the canon or ruler for my thinking and life. As we often put it, they are “the Word of God.” I therefore need to study them self-critically. Where they say something different from what I’m inclined to think, I assume that I’m the one who’s wrong. As people often put it, I accept the authority of the Scriptures.
2. In addition, they are works of literature, the products of Israel’s history, created through human processes, emerging from their Middle Eastern context. So I seek to understand them as human, historical, contextual documents, and not read into them meanings that would be alien to their writers and their first readers. That principle includes not reading NT ideas into them. Their being human and contextual doesn’t mean that they are limited because they came into being before the modern age and before Jesus, that they are bound to contain mistakes. It does mean that we have to understand them in their context.
3. In this connection, I use the methods of biblical criticism, not to criticize the text, but to understand it. Over time, “biblical criticism” came to be understood as criticizing the Bible, but it started off as a commitment to asking questions about the way church leaders and scholars interpreted the Bible, so as to let the Bible speak for itself. It’s that use of biblical criticism that interests me.
4. Because most church leaders and scholars in the West have been middle-aged white men, being critical also includes seeking to study the OT from perspectives other than those of middle-aged white men. Since I’m one of those, do read books about the OT by other kinds of people.

102

The Old Testament as Scripture

Students sometimes ask how I got interested in the OT. There are some jokey or superficial answers to the question. My theology degree program required Greek, whereas Hebrew was optional; but I had already studied Greek, so I could fit in Hebrew. The OT came first in the program; if church history had come first, I would have fallen in love with that instead. Further, I undertook my undergraduate study at a time when scholarly OT study was going through what seemed a positive and confident phase, and OT study felt exciting in that respect. More seriously, I had two outstanding OT mentors: John Baker, who modeled how you could undertake university academic study of the OT and also be a priest, and Alec Motyer, a seminary teacher and priest who was a great preacher on the OT.

Yet these considerations from years ago are not the reasons why I am passionate about the OT now. My enthusiasm issues from my ongoing involvement with it. I love the stories about Israel’s ancestors, about the leaders in Judges, about Jonah and Esther. I love the boldness of the prayers and praises of the psalms. I love the way the prophets confront Israel with challenges to faith and to faithfulness. I love the courage with which Job and Ecclesiastes raise questions. Indeed, it’s the facing of questions that I love as much as anything. The OT is relentlessly realistic about human beings and about life, but it never steps away from staying in conversation with God about such matters.

I also continue to be enthusiastic about getting at the OT’s own meaning in its context. I want to see things through the eyes of Genesis or Isaiah or Lamentations. My Christian faith will sometimes enable me to perceive things in the OT that I might otherwise miss; it will give me ways into the OT. But I want to see what’s there, and I want the OT to correct my Christian assumptions when they need correction. And I’ve proved for myself that when I can work out what these books would mean for the Israelites for whom they were written, there’s a good chance that I can find my way to what it might mean for me.

I make the assumption that where the OT says something scandalous, it’s more likely to be right than I am. I sometimes get the impression that students assume that a professor’s job is to reassure them that the Bible says nothing different from what they believe already. After all, the students are good Christian people, and they ought to be able to trust their worldview and presuppositions. I think that it’s wiser to assume that we are decisively shaped by the culture in which we live, and that we are likely to be quite wrong in some of our beliefs and presuppositions. Thus, when I see the Bible saying something different from what I think, that’s a moment when studying the Bible becomes especially interesting. So you won’t find this book doing much to make the OT more comfortable to read.

Is this passion of mine simply my peculiarity, like my enthusiasm for jazz? There are two sorts of reasons for Christians to see if they can share this involvement. One is that Jesus and the NT writers shared it. For them, the OT simply was the “Scriptures,” given for them to benefit from and be shaped by (2 Tim 3:14-17). It was vital for them to see that their faith was in keeping with these Scriptures. The other is that as a consequence the church accepted them and has passed them on to us as part of the church’s heritage and rule for life and thinking.

The trouble is that the OT isn’t what we would expect. We would expect God’s revelation to be nice, so that its stories would give us examples of people living good lives with God. But the Bible makes clear at many points that to be the Word of God, Scripture does not have to be nice or to make us feel good. We would expect biblical history to give us examples of people living faithful lives and to make it very clear what was their message. Joshua, Judges and Samuel don’t do so. So we may have to change our views on what God would want to give us and ask why God wanted to give us what he did. It is these nasty stories (e.g., the Levite’s concubine) as well as the nice stories (e.g., Hannah) that are designed to change our thinking, our lives and our relationship with God.

103

Reading the Old Testament as the Word of God in Its Own Right

1. The NT encourages us to get wisdom for life from the OT. These writings are able to teach us and train us in righteousness (2 Tim 3:14-17).
2. However, it’s not true that the NT lies hidden in the OT, and that the OT is revealed in the NT. The OT tells us how God really related to people and really spoke to them. God did so in ways that were designed for them to understand; they were not obscure. The NT then tells us that the OT is the inspired and authoritative Word of God, which we should therefore take with absolute seriousness. It doesn’t need decoding.
3. The OT thus isn’t a sneak preview of Jesus. Jesus isn’t all God has to say; God has lots of other things to say, and he has said lots of them in the OT. If we narrow the OT down to what the NT says, we miss these things. It is the case that lenses provided by the NT sometimes help us see things that are there in the OT. But if we want to understand what God wants us to understand from the OT, we do best not to think too much about the NT because that tends to narrow our perspective.
4. It’s not true that the OT God is a God of wrath, and the NT God a God of love. In both Testaments, God is one who loves to love people, but who is prepared to be tough when necessary.
5. It’s not true that the OT offers a partial or incomplete or imperfect revelation. Or rather, there is one thing that the OT doesn’t tell you but the NT does. That thing is (amusingly) the fact that some people are going to hell. Neither hell nor heaven comes in the OT. But the NT does also tell you that it’s possible to enjoy resurrection life: that because Jesus rose, we will rise.
6. It’s not true that the OT is a religion of law, and the NT a religion of grace. Because of this misunderstanding I don’t follow the practice of referring to the opening books of the OT as the “Law.” I rather keep the Hebrew word “Torah” (which means “teaching”). In both Testaments, God relates to people on the basis of grace but then expects them to live a life of obedience.
7. It’s not true that the OT is a book of stories about people who are meant to be examples to us. You only have to read the stories to see this point. Both Testaments are books of stories about what God did through people, often despite who they were not because of who they were. If anyone is an example to us in the...