Old Testament

Song of solomon Two commentaries both incorporate measures of the sublime and the ridiculous. In terms of weight, first mention goes to Marvin H. Pope’s Song of Songs (Doubleday). It is a marvel to reflect on what has happened to the originally simple format of the Anchor Bible series. In this latest offering a Yale professor takes 743 pages to try to show that the Song is rooted in the fertility religion of the ancient Near East with its sacred marriage rites. Everything from women’s liberation to Indian love poetry is covered with an extensive bibliography and copious notes. As a work of scholarship, Pope’s volume will rank high, though its eccentricities will keep it from becoming a standard work. For those who are not satisfied that Solomon was originally an ancient fertility worshiper. Joseph C. Dillow’s Solomon on Sex (Nelson) gives the option of seeing him as a modern American businessman. Troubled by all the sexual temptations of modern youth, Solomon holds out until marriage only to find that the battle continues. Keeping her husband away from such temptations is the job of Shulamith (Solomon’s wife), and this she does by turning herself into what we might call a “total woman.” Everything you ever wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask is covered in this book.

PSALMS The three-volume Psalms (Cambridge) by J. W. Rogerson and J. W. McKay, part of the Cambridge Bible Commentary, offers much help to the average Bible student despite its brevity. While thoroughly conversant with critical studies of the Psalms, both authors are also convinced that the Psalter remains for the Christian today a valuable book of worship and devotion. More of a how-to book, dealing with twelve selected psalms, is Stuart Briscoe’s What Works When Life Doesn’t? (Victor). Briscoe has discovered, as have others through the ages, that the psalms speak to our deepest emotions, those of death, depression, and fear. In Praying the Psalms (Fortress), the African bishop Leslie E. Stradling examines three categories of psalms: prayers of praise, prayers in time of stress, and prayers for others. He looks at them in the light of the coming of Christ and the problems faced by Christians today. Also from Fortress is a short study book by Roland E. Murphy, Backgrounds to Both Psalms and Job.

PENTATEUCH Two major volumes shed light on Pentateuchal themes. The noted Catholic scholar Bruce Vawter has put us in his debt with On Genesis (Doubleday), a major handbook to all aspects of Genesis study. A discussion of theological themes, various kinds of critical study, and the meaning of Genesis for the church today precedes a line-by-line commentary on the book itself. Both layman and scholar will find something here. A slightly less ambitious work. Theology as Narration (Eerdmans) by George A. F. Knight, expounds the Book of Exodus under the theological theme of revelation. Already well known for his Christian Theology of the Old Testament, Knight has given us another fine study. In what is more a scientific than a biblical treatise. Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth (InterVarsity). Robert C. Newman and Herman J. Eckelmann try to retain a literal interpretation of the language of Genesis while finding room for a much older universe than militant creationists usually permit. The solution: the days of Gnesis one are twenty-four-hour days, but each “day” introduces a new and much longer creative period.

THE PROPHETS The long announced Hermeneia series on the Old Testament continues with a second volume, also from the hands of H. W. Wolff, who earlier did Hosea.Joel and Amos (Fortress) presents the best of German form-critical scholarship and is destined to become a standard in its field. Joel is set in the first half of the fourth century. It is seen to have a dual thrust concerning the day of Yahweh as both judgment and salvation and to represent the threshold between prophetic and apocalyptic eschatology. Amos, by contrast, is seen as the earliest of Hebrew prophets and as a book formed from an initial prophecy of doom that was supplemented by new materials all the way down to post-exilic times. The author stands in wonder before the message of Amos. In his foreword he confesses, “Only with trepidation does an exegete direct his attention to the man from Tekoa.” While it is true that Wolff has left unanswered many of the great questions surrounding the solitary figure from the eighth century, his book does communicate something of the spirit in which one must approach this magnificent piece of literature. A second book on Amos, The Farmer From Tekoa by Herman Veldkamp (Paideia. [P. O. Box 1450. St. Catherines. Ontario]), is not so much a commentary as a series of messages from the prophet. The spirit of Amos is captured beautifully and clearly in these messages, and we welcome for the first time in English dress the writings of this Dutch divine.

Jeremiah (Word) by Andrew W. Blackwood. Jr., is a model of what a homiletical commentary should be. Fully aware of modern scholarship. Blackwood avoids technicalities and brings out the message of the prophet for both his own time and ours. Solid help on the text is combined with work on the structure and literary nature of the oracles, so that the reader upon finishing this commentary feels he really knows Jeremiah and his world.

In the category of small paperback studies of the prophets. 1977 produced some gems. Allan A. MacRae in The Gospel of Isaiah (Moody) sees Isaiah of Jerusalem writing for a situation in exile 150 years later and his own contemporaries so gripped by the message that they themselves could feel the situation even before it happened. The rest of the book is a kind of homiletical commentary on chapters 40–56 of Isaiah. Aiming for the same audience, Terence E. Fretheim in The Message of Jonah (Augsburg) finds the key to the book in the man Jonah as a “run-away believer.” Jonah is seen as a short story based on the theological conflict that arose in Jonah’s mind when he realized that God’s ability to change his mind about punishing the guilty extended even to a city like Nineveh. How God met his errant prophet in those circumstances is then the theme of the book. More homiletical and less theological is Can You Run Away From God? (Victor), a series of messages on Jonah by James M. Boice. In the same genre. All Things Weird and Wonderful (Victor) by Stuart Briscoe shows how Ezekiel and his mysterious book of whirling wheels can communicate with our generation.

Four short paperbacks briefly survey various prophets. David Allan Hubbard applies the teaching of each of the minor prophets to present social problems in twelve radio sermons published as Will We Ever Catch Up With the Bible? (Regal). Similar in format but less exegetical is John E. Hunter’s Major Truths From the Minor Prophets (Zondervan). Nine magazine articles are brought together in Prophets and Prophecy (Fortress) by F. H. Seilhamer, while Six Prophets for Today (Augsburg) by W. A. Poovey offers dramas suitable for church use on Jonah, Obadiah, Habakkuk, Hosea, Micah, and Amos. The final book in this category is The Prophets and the Powerless by James Limburg (John Knox). Responding to speculation on ancient astronauts and on the approaching demise of our planet, Limburg contends that the true biblical spirit of prophecy is to be found not in apocalyptic visions but in the solid message of God’s advocacy for the powerless.

HISTORY The big news in this category is a massive volume in Westminster’s Old Testament Library entitled Israelite and Judean History, edited by John H. Hayes and J. Maxwell Miller. With the passing of Martin Noth. Roland de Vaux, William F. Albright, and Gerhard von Rad, a new generation of scholars will have to come forward to fill the gap. In this book, fourteen European. Israeli, and American scholars have come together to produce a comprehensive survey of biblical history from early times to the Roman era. Given the varied backgrounds, the book has a remarkable degree of homogeneity. Extensive bibliographies cover each period, and the major lines of debate are clearly set forth, including options argued by conservatives such as Kenneth Kitchen. This is not just a history of Israel and is not designed to take the place of any standard history. It will, however, function as a resource for all who seek to write biblical history in the coming days.

Much shorter and designed to unravel a complicated subject for a lay audience is a small paperback entitled A Chronology of the Hebrew Kings (Zondervan) by Edwin R. Thiele. The author’s The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings is well known as the most creative approach to Hebrew chronology in recent years, and this little book will be welcomed by laymen who have neither the time nor the energy to plow through the larger work.

THEOLOGY In recent years those feeling the crisis of biblical authority have tended to look back to the canon as a normative beginning point for those who wish to retain the Bible in the life of the church. It comes as no surprise, then, to find two books on Old Testament theology that focus on the process of canonicity. In Canon and Authority (Fortress), edited by George W. Coats and Burke O. Long, ten leading Old Testament scholars turn away from the question of how the text came to be to discuss instead what it means in its present form. Everything from the creation story to elements of later prophecy is covered in these theological essays. In Prophecy and Canon (Notre Dame) the Notre Dame scholar Joseph Blenkinsopp focuses his attention on how the Hebrew canon came to be. He senses a tension among the three major sections of the Jewish scriptures and views the final product as a resolution of these tensions within the Judaism of the second-temple period. By avoiding a christological approach to canon, Blenkinsopp hopes to speak as vividly to Jews as to Christians.

Two additional volumes deal with Israel’s understanding of the future in a prophetic context, in Covenant and Promise (Westminster) John Bright begins with the question of why Jeremiah and his opponents could harbor such radically different understandings of God’s covenant and its implications for the future of the nation. Tracing one stream of thought back to the absolute promises of God’s election and the other stream back to the conditional elements of God’s commandments, Bright brings together the elements of the conflict and shows how they were resolved within the religion of Israel. In a more narrowly focused book, Thomas M. Raitt sketches a Theology of Exile (Fortress). For him, the key problem of late Judean history is how to explain the impending disaster, given the covenant promises of God. Using form-critical means to separate Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s oracles of judgment from their oracles of deliverance and emphasizing the shift involved, Raitt concludes that these two prophets were able to provide a new theological foundation for Judah that dealt with the problem of despair in a way that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar tried to do for Job but failed.

Finally, two collections of essays with theological themes add to the feast. In Tradition and Theology in the Old Testament (Fortress), editor Douglas A. Knight brings together older and younger scholars to discuss how “tradition history” influenced the theological development of the Old Testament. Scripture in Historyand Theology (Pickwick [5001 Baum Blvd., Pittsburgh, Pa. 17213]), edited by A. L. Merill and T. W. Overholt, includes eighteen widely ranging essays in honor of J. Coert Rylaarsdam, a former Chicago professor.

SURVEYS A landmark in interpreting the simple stories of the Bible is the publication of volume one of S. G. de Graaf’s Promise and Deliverance (Paideia). The late author, an Amsterdam minister, spent much of his life teaching teachers how to communicate theologically to a wide variety of audiences. The first of his works to appear in English translation takes the biblical story from Genesis to the conquest of Canaan and will be an invaluable resource for teachers, ministers, and parents.

Of a very different order is Let the People Cry Amen (Paulist) by John F. X. Sheehan. In a study that is sometimes highly speculative and often draws from controversial strains in Old Testament scholarship, Sheehan has given us a way of reading the Old Testament that looks at its oral history as a key to understanding the whole.

Two other books lack the sparkle of the previous two but are useful introductions. A Popular Survey of the Old Testament (Baker) by Norman L. Geisler is a Christological survey of the Old Testament for undergraduates. The book is replete with charts and maps. Far less ambitious is Walter W. Stuenkel’s The Books of the Old Testament (Concordia). Stuenkel simply tells when, how. and why each book was written. Both Geisler and Stuenkel assume traditional conservative conclusions.

LITERARY CRITICISM Two paperbacks deal with the subject of structural analysis and go a long way toward bringing that elusive subject within the grasp of the average Old Testament scholar. It may be argued whether structuralism as done by these scholars is really what the French structuralists have in mind, but these are nonetheless fine short introductions. In Biblical Structuralism (Fortress or Scholars) Robert M. Polzin begins by describing structural analysis, moves on to apply the method to the Book of Job, and finishes with a study of the work of Wellhausen, Van Rad, and Noth from a structuralist point of view. Robert C. Culley’s Studies in the Structure of Hebrew Narrative (Fortress or Scholars) likewise applies structuralist principles to a number of Old Testament passages. In the hands of Culley and Polzin, structuralism becomes a refreshing way of looking at the text as it stands without the subjectivity of various attempts to reconstruct the history of the text.

David Robertson in Old Testament Literary Criticism (Fortress) follows a new trend. The earlier volume on literary criticism in the same series dealt largely with source analysis, but Robertson looks at the Bible as literature. This is really what literary criticism is all about, and we can be grateful that modern critical study of the Scriptures has finally caught up with the study of other texts.

DICTIONARIES AND CONCORDANCES The big news in 1977 was the appearance of revised translations of volumes one and two of the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Eerdmans), edited by G. J. Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren. Issued in German 1970–73, the volumes first appeared in English a couple of years ago. However, enough suggestions for corrections and improvements were made that the publisher decided to put out a revision. Words starting with one of the first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet are treated in these two volumes of what will be a standard reference series, the Old Testament counterpart to Kittel.

A helpful linguistic tool is updated with the issuance of volume ten of the Computer Bible (Biblical Research Associates) edited by F. I. Andersen and A. D. Forbes. This volume covers eight minor prophets, taking the place of and supplementing volume six in the series. The Hebrew printout is now in standard character rather than in computer language, and the methods of word analysis have been considerably improved. As a result this valuable tool is now even more valuable.

On a very different order is an 1845 concordance brought back into print under the title Dictionary of Old Testament Words for English Readers (Kregel), by Aaron Pick. Although the transliteration system is somewhat outdated and the same information is available in a slightly different form through Young’s Concordance. this volume may still prove useful for those who wish to know the Hebrew word behind any English word in the King James Version.

ANCIENT NEAR EAST Easily the best of last year’s books in this category is The Treasures of Darkness (Yale), a thorough study of Mesopotamian religion from the fourth millennium down to the time of the Hebrews by the Harvard Semitist Thorkild Jacobsen. Mesopotamia was, of course, the area from which Abraham and the patriarchs emerged, so the history of its religion has many interesting points of comparison with the Bible. Slightly more technical collections are included in The Legacy of Sumer (Undena [Box 97, Malibu, Calif. 90265]) edited by D. Schmandt-Besserat. The Sumerians, who preceded the Assyrians and Babylonians in the same area, exerted a formative influence on all Near Eastern culture, and the lectures thus collected are a most useful introduction to certain aspects of that culture. Originally given as lectures at the University of Texas, these chapters contain much for everyone concerned with the subject. From the same publisher comes a short monograph entitled Thoughts About Ibla by Ignace J. Gelb. Ibla or Ebla is the site in Syria where in the last two years spectacular finds have been unearthed that illuminate the history of the patriarchal period. A popular evangelical introduction to the find is Ebla Tablets: Secrets of a Forgotten City (Creation-Life) by Clifford Wilson.

MONOGRAPHS Every year more and more work originally presented in dissertation form is made available to the public, especially through the good offices of Scholars Press (Box 5207. Missoula, Mont. 59806) with its various low-cost series. The next seven titles are among this publisher’s more important contributions. Wisdom and Cult by Leo G. Perdue begins with the assumption that while the relation between prophecy and cult and between prophecy and wisdom has been well worked over, very little has been done on the relation between wisdom and the cult in Israel. Perdue studies both Mesopotamian and Israelite wisdom literature and concludes that the wise men definitely viewed cult as a necessary and normal part of their world. In Comparative Philology and the Text of Job Lester L. Grabbe has used as a starting point the criticism of James Barr and the suggestions of Mitchell Dahood and Marvin Pope concerning philological problems in Job. His concern is method, and chapter four gives a convenient summary of what he would consider a valid approach.

Bruce C. Birch’s dissertation The Rise of the Israelite Monarchy: The Growth and Development of First Samuel 7–15 is a tradition-history study of the passages in question, to determine the roots of the various views on kingship expressed. Essentially he finds a series of old Saul traditions that came down to their final form as the Deuteronomist added his own concern that kingship be made subject to covenant. A stimulating essay on the ideas of the exilic and post-exilic communities comes in the form of Jon D. Levenson’s Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40–48. Finding a combination of mythical and non-mythical elements behind the high-mountain tradition of Ezekiel 40:2, Levenson goes on to suggest that the tensions in which these varying traditions are held still stand as a beacon to those who both hope for God’s promises and labor for what he has mandated. Another Harvard dissertation. Isaiah 24–27 and the Origin of Apocalyptic by William R. Millar, goes back to the question of dating the so-called Little Apocalypse of Isaiah. His conclusion: the entire apocalypse comes from the last half of the sixth century B.C. after the destruction of Jerusalem and stands at the very beginning of the movement we know as apocalyptic. Two additional Harvard monographs deal with technical linguistic matters. Douglas K. Stuart in Studies in Early Hebrew Meter returns to an interest of his mentor. Frank Cross, in examining the metrical features of such passages as Exodus 15 and the Song of Deborah. Another of Cross’s students, Robert Polzin, attempts in Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose to date the key document in relation to the Chronicler by the linguistic features. Both these represent solid objective work.

From Johns Hopkins University Press came Divine Presence and Guidance in Israelite Traditions: The Typology of Exaltation, in which Thomas W. Mann follows the history-of-religions approach to the question of the divine-presence motif in the exaltation of a leader. In the main this is a study of the Exodus narratives with additional reference to David, Solomon, and others. Moses is seen as the prototype of a royal and religious figure for whom the divine-presence motif in Exodus is absolutely central. A second volume in the same Near Eastern Studies series is not itself a dissertation but interacts with recent theses. Patrick D. Miller. Jr. and J. J. M. Roberts in The Hand of the Lord also look to comparative material to discuss the provenance of the so-called Ark narrative in First Samuel. The authors conclude that the narrative was formed in the period of religious crisis between the defeat and loss of the ark at Ebenezer and the later victories of David.

An excellent piece of work on the Chronicler from the able pen of Hugh G. M. Williamson is entitled Israel and the Book of Chronicles (Cambridge). Williamson believes that the writer of Chronicles is not the same as Ezra and Nehemiah; he shows that Ezra’s and Nehemiah’s exclusivist attitude toward the remnants of the northern tribes is not reflected in Chronicles. Cult and Conscience (Brill) by the veteran Jewish scholar Jacob Milgrom is a thorough study and clarification of the “guilt offering” (asham) and the priestly doctrine of repentance in Leviticus and elsewhere. His conclusion: remorse plus confession constitute the priestly approach to repentance, but sacrifice is required also (contra prophetic teaching) to obliterate sin.

MISCELLANEOUS A fine short paperback entitled Old Testament Books for Pastor and Teacher (Westminster) is a very personal statement by Brevard S. Childs of what books will be of most use to the working pastor. John H. Otwell’s And Sarah Laughed (Westminster) gives us a balanced survey of the role of women in the Old Testament. The late eminent Old Testament scholar Gerhard Von Rad has left a legacy for preachers in a short book published by Abingdon entitled Biblical Interpretations in Preaching. It begins with an excursus on the relation between exegesis and preaching and goes on to twenty-one biblical passages about which Von Rad makes exegetical suggestions. Finally, Strange Heroes (Holman) is a paperback collection of meditations by David A. Hubbard on twenty-five of the best-known men and women in the Old Testament.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

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