An Introduction to the Old Testament - Hardcover

Dillard, Raymond D.; Longman, Tremper

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0310432502 ISBN 13: 9780310432500

Publisher: Zondervan, 1994

Synopsis

Several distinctives set this volume apart from other introductions to the Old Testament: - It is thoroughly evangelical in its perspective. - It emphasizes 'special introduction' -- the study of individual books. -It interacts in an irenic spirit with the historical-critical method. - It features high points of research history and representative scholars rather than an exhaustive treatment of past scholarship. - It deals with the meaning of each book, not in isolation but in a canonical context. - It probes the meaning of each book in the setting of its culture. With an eye on understanding the nature of the Old Testament historiography, An Introduction to the Old Testament offers the reader a solid understanding of three key issues: historical background, literary analysis, and theological message.

About this title

About the Author

Tremper Longman III (PhD, Yale University) is the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies and the chair of the Religious Studies department at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, where he lives with his wife, Alice. He is the Old Testament editor for the revised Expositor's Bible Commentary and has authored many articles and books on the Psalms and other Old Testament books.

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Introduction
Orientation
Bibliography
Anderson, B. W. Understanding the Old Testament (Prentice-Hall, 1975); Archer, G. L. A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (SOTI; Moody, 1964); Childs, B. S. The Book of Exodus (Westminster, 1974); idem. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (IOTS; Fortress, 1979); Craigie, P. C. The Old Testament. Its Background, Growth, and Content (Abingdon, 1986); Eichhorn, J. G. Einleitung in das Alte Testament, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1780–83); Eissfeldt, O. The Old Testament. An Introduction (OTI; Oxford, 1965); Harrison, R. K. Introduction to the Old Testament (IOT; Eerdmans, 1969); Kaiser, O. Introduction to the Old Testament (Oxford, 1975); Kaufmann, Y. The Religion of Israel (University of Chicago Press, 1960); Laffey, A. L. An Introduction to the Old Testament: A Feminist Perspective (Fortress, 1988); LaSor, W. S., D. A. Hubbard, and F. W. Bush Old Testament Survey (OTS; Eerdmans, 1982); Rendtorff, R. The Old Testament: An Introduction (OTI; Fortress, 1986); Rivetus, A. Isagoge, seu introductio generalis, ad scripturam sacram veteris et novi testamenti (Leiden, 1627); Soggin, J. A. Introduction to the Old Testament (Westminster, 1976); Sternberg, M. The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Indiana University Press, 1985); Young, E. J. An Introduction to the Old Testament (IOT; Eerdmans, 1949).
The Genre
The genre of introduction has a well-established place in the field of Old Testament studies. It is one of the first volumes that serious students of the Bible encounter in their quest to understand the text. Its very title connotes the preliminary nature of its subject matter. As E. J. Young, the authors’ distinguished predecessor at Westminster Theological Seminary, commented, the word derives from the Latin introducere that means "to lead in" or "to introduce" (Young, IOT, 15).
It is thus the purpose of this introduction, like all introductions, to acquaint the reader with information that is important to know in order to read the books of the Old Testament with understanding. In more contemporary terminology, our goal is to provide the student with resources needed to achieve reading competence (J. Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature [Cornell, 1975], 113–30).
There have been many introductions written during the history of biblical studies. The history of the genre may be found elsewhere (Young, IOT, 15–37, and Childs, IOTS, 27–47); it will not be repeated here. Nevertheless, we will recount a few of the major transitional points to give the reader a feel for the evolution of the genre and to provide a framework for the present volume.
The church fathers did not write what we would recognize today as introductions to the Old Testament, but they did deal with topics that would later occupy volumes that go by that name. Thus Jerome, Augustine, Origen, and others wrote concerning authorship, literary style, canonics, text, and theological issues. Their comments, however, may be found in scattered locations and not in any single volume.
Childs and Young disagree over the date of the first true modern Old Testament introduction. The latter (IOT, 18) attributes it to Michael Walther (A.D. 1636) because of his distinction between matters of general and special introduction (see below). Childs, on the other hand, dates it later with J. G. Eichhorn, whose three-volume Einleitung was first published between 1780 and 1783. The difference reflects the theological disagreement between Young, who as a conservative acknowledges the work of Walther, who held a high view of inspiration, and Childs, a critic (though moderate), who requires the advent of the critical method to find the first "truly modern, historical critical Introduction" (IOTS, 35).
In the twentieth century the introduction continued its evolution along the lines of the development of the discipline as a whole. Thus after Wellhausen introduced the documentary hypothesis, all succeeding introductions had to take his theory into account (see pp. 38–48). The same is true with later developments, including form criticism and tradition criticism.
While mainstream introductions agree in their acceptance of critical methodology, there are differences among them. These differences may be observed in a sampling of the introductions that are still in use. The introduction by Eissfeldt represents classic German criticism. Much of his work is devoted to reconstructing the history of the composition of the individual sections of the Bible. Although his work is idiosyncratic in detail, Eissfeldt devotes detailed attention to a source analysis of the Pentateuch. In the critical tradition, Rendtorff adopts a somewhat different approach in that he follows in the line of Noth and von Rad to present a more historical analysis of the Pentateuch. B. S. Childs, on the other hand, brackets many of these questions of the historical development of the individual books in order to delineate the canonical function of the books.
The preceding paragraphs describe the general contours of mainstream Old Testament studies. Specifically, they delineate the developments of critical Protestant Old Testament studies in Europe, Britain, and the United States. Protestant scholarship was mainstream because ever since the early part of the nineteenth century this approach to the text controlled most of the large churches and virtually every major academic post. The majority of Catholic and Jewish scholars who were writing and teaching at this time also accepted many of the tenets that were developed by these Protestant scholars.
Nonetheless, there was still a small but determined group of conservative Protestant scholars who were active in the field and produced Old Testament introductions. The four most significant works are by Young, Archer, Harrison, and LaSor-Bush-Hubbard. They differ in length, areas of interest, and, though they are all conservative in their approach to the text, theology. A characteristic of conservative scholarship as represented in most of these volumes is an apologetic interest. This concern is represented least in the LaSor-Bush-Hubbard volume, but conservative scholars have felt it necessary to direct much of their discussion toward combating the historical-critical method and in particular a source analysis of the Pentateuch.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0310432502
• ISBN 13: 9780310432500
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2