A comprehensive Old Testament theology will include and be influenced by several prevailing methods. My own proposal for reading the Old Testament would have as its locus a theology of imagination and incorporate perspectives of (at least) creation, canon, tradition/recital, narrative, linguistic, and history.
My own inclusion of this last category is intriguing. Historical-critical perspectives that dissolve the normative claims of the biblical text have rarely held my interest. The questions “What happened?” and “When was the text written?” as isolated inquiries proffer little illuminative potential. The dissolution of this phase of Old Testament scholarship is testament to a greater disinterest with the approach. Yet, I have discovered a certain validity to events that are in some sense formative to Christian faith. So long as the events are assessed intertextually–i.e., canonically–and are rehearsed as traditioning and re-traditioning confessions in the life of the community, they become powerful witness to formation of present and future believers.
The Old Testament has been, and is being read, in several major ways.[1] First, theology as event has been a predominant trajectory for Old Testament study during the past century. Faith is born from God’s acts and the event roots the believing community in the past.
Second, theology as tradition engenders a faith born from the gathered community and its practices. This enables the ekklesia to form an environment for the question “Why do we do this?” to be asked. We then respond with the stories that speak formatively in the faith.
Third, looking for God’s economy within the Old Testament cannon is fueled by several voices–most prominently Deuteronomy and Proverbs. This involves blessing and curse, insiders and outsiders, and themes of social justice. Relationship here is formative. Blessing is life, and curse is a form of judgment wherein death is the point of revelation. Alternately, blessing may simply be the gift of life, or the ability to recognize the persistent presence of God in life.
As for the perplexing problem in the Hebrew canon of social justice, the monarchical view keeps the rich being rich and the poor being poor as long as all the people’s basic needs are being met. The same people are always caring for the poor, and keeping them poor. In some sense then, the laws were given to privileged people. This also incorporates Jubilee thought that yields a giving away of power and richness so that there is a cycle of need and gift. The New Testament answer to this is that the king must die.
For the Christian community, these three trajectories lead to Christ’s effective killing of the monarchy as it has always been understood: exaltation only comes on a cross. Jeremiah, the forerunner of Christ in this trajectory, was the ultimate deconstructionist. By the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Yahwehism had become the religion of the people behind the wall of the city. When you live behind the wall you are unable to really see how the church is prone to become and be.
Fourth, canonical theology gives due weight to every canonical voice. Each text dialogues with each other text resulting in an intra-textual dialogue. Texts cannot be isolated. Indeed, this is the point of theology: dialogue which becomes God-talk. Functionally, the church goes to scripture for dialogue partners, and from this dialogue emerges the point of revelation.
Springing from, and closely connected to, canonical theology are metaphorical, narrative, and imaginative theology. These three trajectories hold a unique interplay of thought. The notion of the word–dabar–yields an imaging of the Word.
Finally, creation theology is quite able to incorporate and blend the previous approaches while introducing fresh nuance and perspective. We are still living in God’s story of creation and participating with God in creation–we are co-creators. What if the entire Old Testament–and Bible–is the story of creation? God’s concern is not just with the particular, but extends to the universal: God desires to reconcile all of creation–not just humanity. To create means to make room for the other. God is sharing creation with others. Thus, co-creators open up to share creation with others. God has taken great risk and made himself vulnerable in doing this.
Any thorough Old Testament reading will account for the various Old Testament canons. Particularly, the narrative flow of the canons is informative when dealing with Old Testament. Hebrew Scripture moves from Torah, to Prophets, to Writings. The final movement of this triptych is a journey of creation to new creation with emphasis on sapiential literature and a re-historicizing for Israel and all of creation.
The Protestant Old Testament Canon, which is identical in content to Hebrew Scripture, reorders the format thus concluding with the twelve minor prophets. These prophets–in the Jewish Canon filling one scroll and thus contained within one book entitled The Twelve–point toward a newness, are ripe with a theology of hope, and are consistent with the move from creation to new creation.
The overarching narrative in both canons is of a creator-God who creates order out of chaos, shapes life out of the dust of the earth, and then engages with that creation still having dirt on his hands working toward God’s own creative purpose in surprising, dynamic, and relational ways.
To view the whole of Old Testament narrative through this lens will eschew placing primacy on salvation history synthesized from the pens of the Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly writers at the expense of the soulful stories such as, for instance, those told in the Megilloth. Indeed, to conclude that the entire Tanakh and Christian Old Testament are concerned with God’s creative activity through a particular people with the whole of creation will draw the believing community’s attention now sometimes to the major works comprising the Pentateuch, now sometimes to the often-perceived obscure works in the Ketuvim.
To say that God has created, has interacted with his creation, and is continuing to interact with that creation supposes that history, in some sense, is significant. So Genesis is the obvious starting point for theological reflection. Life is not imposed on the created order, nor inherent in the chaos as it stood. Rather, life was and is given as gift, and the gifting is contingent on the interplay of two wills: God’s and creation’s (particularly, humanity’s).
Interpretation of Old Testament begins then with following this creator-God’s interplay with creation: the relationship of the two wills and the dance of giving, receiving, and returning life. This hermeneutic will allow for the dialogue of canonical voices to be heard, explored, and interpreted. Study will examine even the styles of reporting God’s activity in creation, the rehearsals of worship, the agony and joy of divine-human struggle, and so forth.
For example, what causes salvation history to be told in the fashion of 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings then re-traditioned in the telling of 1 & 2 Chronicles? How does the drama that unfolds in Song of Songs–much like a Greek play from antiquity, with lead characters, chorus, and all–illuminate the relationship of creator, co-creators, and creation?
When dealing with the biblical text, meaning emerges as something other than fact-based deductions defined by contemporary standards. There is something of mystery with equal part poetry.
Nor is meaning gleaned in isolation.
Any cursory study of the pre- or post-exilic Hebraic people yields an atmosphere of communal worship, indeed community life. This side of the text, meaning holistically arises in communal diachronic reading, speaking, and interpretation. What is being described is a process of the imagination. It is the imagination that is the touchstone for meaning; the matter that is ordered into coherent meaning.
Part 2 to follow …
[1] For more on the following trajectories, see Leo G. Perdue,
The Collapse of History: Reconstructing Old Testament Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1994), 29.
SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
What is your hermeneutical lens for reading the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)?
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Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
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