Conclusion

The material which we call the Old Testament is commonly found as a single book, either by itself or with the Christian writings called the New Testa­ment. Yet we also speak of‘the Book of Genesis’, ‘the Book of Exodus’ and so on.

The Old Testament (and here we are thinking of the Hebrew Bible, as described in the first section of this article) is the gathering together of the sacred traditions of the Jerusalem community of the Second Temple period. Though very diverse in origin, as to both time and place, they have been given a unity by the nature of the editorial process. For the most part these traditions were shaped in the form of history, particular events in the community’s experience in which God’s decisive action was discerned, with the Exodus from Egypt, the settlement in the promised land, and the establishment of David as king the three especially prominent themes. We have already seen that there is great difficulty in treating many of these traditions as historical in the modern sense of the term; and another problem arises from the fact that all subsequent events tended to be seen in terms of these decisive events in the past. The people were once again in exile from the promised land, and so were to look forward once again to a new exodus-deliverance and a new settlement in the promised land (Isa. 40-55 develops these themes with great poetic power); equally they might hope for a new David to arise to restore past glories to the people. Even the least ‘historical’ or narrative parts of the material, books such as Proverbs, share these underlying assumptions. They are not simply foreign wisdom litera­ture translated into Hebrew. The Old Testament is one book; and as such it has played a vital role in shaping the religious and cultural perceptions of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But the Old Testament is also a collection of diverse books, and those who have studied this collection down the ages have been confronted with the fact that basic religious matters are treated very differ­ently in different books. Human kingship is a divine gift in the Psalms, but a usurpation of divine power in 1 Samuel 8. Cultic worship is the life-blood of the community in Leviticus, but a cause of cynical manipulation in Amos and Hosea. Prosperity is a mark of divine favour in Deuteronomy, and ill fortune a clear sign of wickedness; the Book of Job says that such matters may depend upon a wager in heaven between God and his entourage. And so one could go on. Though the Old Testament is a unity, that does not imply that all except an officially approved view has been edited out. Its diversity remains to warn us against seeking easy and tidy answers to many of our most basic questions.

Bibliography

The first three books listed are useful introductions to Old Testament study; the remainder provide further material on the points raised in the text of this article, as briefly indicated in the comments after each.

Charpentier, E. How to Read the Old Testament (SCM Press, London, 1982) Rogerson, J. (ed.) Beginning Old Testament Study (SPCK, London, 1983) Sawyer, J.F. A. From Moses to Patmos (SPCK, London, 1977)

Anderson, B.W. The Living World of the Old Testament, 3rd edn (Longman, London, 1978) (an introduction to the material arranged around a historical outline)

Barr, J. Old and Neu> in Interpretation (SCM Press, London, 1966) (on the relation between Old and New Testaments)

Barton, J. Oracles of God (Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1986) (on the interpre­tation of Scripture)

Barton, J. Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study (Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 1984) (on literary and other approaches to the Old Testament) Blenkinsopp, J. A History of Prophecy in Israel (SPCK, London, 1984) (on the role of Israel’s prophets)

Bruce, F.F. History of the Bible in English from the Earliest Versions, 3rd edn (Lutter­worth Press, Guildford, 1979) (on the characteristics of different translations)

Caird, G.B. The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Duckworth, London, 1980) (on the literary heritage of the Bible)

Ramsey, G.W. The Quest for the Historical Israel (SCM Press, London, 1981) (non­technical introduction to the difficulties of historical reconstruction)

Schmidt, W.H. The Faith of the Old Testament (Blackwell, Oxford, 1983) (introduc­tion to the significance of Israelite religious practice)