1. History of Old Testament Theology

1. 1. History of Old Testament Theology APTS � BIB566/THE566

2. 1.1 Introduction

3. 1.1.1 Difficulties in Approaching O.T. Studies 1.1.1.1 Historical barriers 1.1.1.2 Literary barriers 1.1.1.3 Theological / Hermeneutical barriers 1.1.1.4 General unfamiliarity with the O.T. 1.1.1.5 Scholarly barriers Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology.

4. Further Difficulties Pluralism � Pluralformity Historical Critical Issues & the Historiography Sect / Denominational Issues General presuppositions when approaching the O.T.

5. The Bible as a Problem for Christianity "If the equation is made between the biblical representation of Yahweh and the God of creeds of theology, then major problems arise. It is the theological appropriation of the Bible, or, alternatively, the invasion of religion by philosophy (which produces theology in the first place), which constitutes the problem, and which makes the Bible such an uneasy object in the temple of theology." [Robert P. Carroll]

6. 1.1.2 Five Possible Starting Points 1.1.2.1 The Old Testament itself Intra-Testamental: Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 1985.

7. Inner-Biblical Exegesis Michael Fishbane has argued that the first steps toward exegesis begins in the Scriptures themselves: "The Hebrew Bible (HB) is thus a thick texture of traditions received and produced over many generations. In the process, a complex dynamic between tradition (traditum) and transmission (traditio) developed � since every act of traditio selected, revised, and reconstituted the overall traditum. To be sure, the contrast between authoritative traditum and ongoing traditio is most clear at the close of ancient Israelite literature."

8. 1.1.2 Five Possible Starting Points 1.1.2.2 Version Analysis: LXX, Qumran, Samaritan Pent., MT, etc. N.B. Brevard Childs chooses the MT via a Reformation bias. However each textual trajectory has its own theological commitments.

9. Versional Analysis The Era of Pluriformity: The period 250 BCE � 100 CE was an era when the Scriptures were pluriform. The "proto-Masoretic," "proto-Samaritan Pentateuch," Old Greek with its Hebrew Vorlage, the Greek translational emendations, Targumic beginnings, rewritten Bibles, possibly sectarian versions (?)? Some OT scholars have argued that the "all/every" scripture of 2 Timothy 3.16 referred to the pluriform state of the Scriptures.

10. Versional Analysis Different Approaches to the so-called Canon: Qumran Community: Pharisees Sadducees & Samaritans Septuagint with what F. F. Bruce called the Septuagint Plus What was the role of the Rewritten Bibles?

11. Septuagint "The problem of the historical and theological relation of Old Testament and New Testament is, to a large extent, understood as the relation between the Biblia Hebraica and the Novum Testamentum Graece. It is symptomatic that in academic education, the Hebrew original text of the Old Testament receives a lot of attention in contrast to the Septuagint, the Greek translation produced in the Egyptian Alexandria. But during the process of translation a certain shift occurred toward Hellenistic thinking Based on this translation, a considerable Hellenizing of the Old Testament cannot be denied, even if the extent may be debatable. In the Septuagint the spiritual attitude of Hellenistic Judaism in the diaspora is expressed; one may refer to its greater emphasis on universalism." [H�bner]

12. 1.1.2.3 New Testament "For the New Testament authors the Scripture of Israel was not the Old Testament. The correct formulation can only be: the New Testament authors were theologically dealing with the Scripture of Israel which for them exclusively was holy Scripture and, thus, the literal word of God announcing Christ by divine authority." [H�bner] 1.1.2 Five Possible Starting Points

13. Robert L. Hubbard, Jr. �Doing Old Testament Theology Today� 1. "First, one must remember that, compared to the OT, the NT has a narrower focus. It is does not set aside, revise, or update the OT rather, its primary preoccupation is to interpret the significance of the Christ-event and to set up the fledgling Christian church on a solid footing. . . . the point is that the NT does not see itself as replacement of the OT, so that latter retains full authority for Christians."

14. Robert L. Hubbard, Jr. �Doing Old Testament Theology Today� 2. "Second, however, a well-intentioned desire to retain the value of the OT and the unity of the testaments should not blind one to the glaring differences between them. That is, besides fulfilling the OT, the NT goes beyond it." 3. "Most important, Jesus does more that simply fulfil OT prophetic hopes - He actually exceeds their expectations by radically reforming Israel�s religion and by inaugurating a new era of God�s dealings with humanity."

15. Robert L. Hubbard, Jr. �Doing Old Testament Theology Today� 4. "Fourth, the principle of analogy is the key link that unites the testaments. In other words, both share analogous concepts with each other- e.g., a self-revealing creator-God, a people of God, gifts given to them by God, concepts of salvation, etc." 5. Fifth and finally, one must define how Jesus Christ relates to the OT since He is the heart of the NT. Obviously, Christians regard Him as the fulfilment of some OT theological ideas. . . . On the other hand, Christ provides a new, final interpretive key for the Bible. Christians view everything within the Bible from the point of view of Christ."

16. 1.1.2.4 Early church fathers, medieval interpreters and leaders of the Reformation: John Calvin and Martin Luther, etc. David C. Steinmetz � Precritical Exegesis Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflections on the Christian Bible, 30-51. 1.1.2 Five Possible Starting Points

17. Steinmetz: Theology & Exegesis 1. The meaning of a biblical text is not exhausted by the original intension of the author. 2. The most primitive layer of biblical tradition is not necessarily the most authoritative. 3. The importance of the Old Testament for the church is predicated upon the continuity of the people of God in history, a continuity which persists in spite of discontinuity between Israel the the church.

18. Steinmetz: Theology & Exegesis 4. The Old Testament is the hermeneutical key which unlocks the meaning of the New Testament and apart from which it will be misunderstood. 5. The church and not human experience as such is the middle term between the Christian interpreter and the biblical text. 6. The gospel and not the law is the central message of the biblical text. 7. One cannot lose the tension between the the gospel and the law without losing both law and gospel.

19. Steinmetz: Theology & Exegesis 8. The church which is restricted in its preaching to the original intention of the author is a church which must reject the Old Testament as an exclusively Jewish book. 9. The church which is restricted in its preaching to the most primitive layer of biblical tradition as the most authoritative is a church which can no longer preach from the New Testament. 10. Knowledge of the exegetical tradition of the church is an indispensable aid for the interpretation of Scripture.

20. Precritical Movement Four Fundamental Assumptions Governing the Difference Between the Precritical versus the Historical-critical Exegesis: 1. "First, unlike the historical-critical exegesis of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, the older exegesis (whether of the patristic, medieval, or Reformation eras) understood the historia � that is, the story that the text is properly understood to recount � to be resident in the text and not under or behind it. In other words, the "story" is identified with the literal or grammatical sense."

21. Precritical Movement 2. "Second, quite in contrast to modern historical-critical exegesis, the older exegesis assumed that the meaning of a particular text is governed not by a hypothetically isolable unit of text having a Sitz im Leben distinguishable from the surrounding texts or from the biblical book in which it is lodged. Instead, the meaning of a text is governed by the scope and goal of the biblical book in the context of the scope and goal of the canonical revelation of God. In other words, Christian exegetes traditionally have assumed that a divine purpose and divine authorship unite the text of the entire canon."

22. Precritical Movement 3. "Third, the older exegetes understood the primary reference of the literal or grammatical sense of the text not as the historical community that gave rise to the text, but as the believing community that once received and continued to receive the text. The text is of interest above all because it bears a divinely inspired message to an ongoing community of faith and not because it happens also to be a repository of the religious relics of a past age. . . . The precritical exegete . . . did not understand these historical or contextual issues as providing the final point of reference for the significance of the text. . . . the precritical exegete understood the text, but its very nature as sacred text, as pointing beyond its original context into the life of the church. 'Literal,' therefore, had a rather different (and fuller) connotation for the older exegetical traditions than it does for many today."

23. Precritical Movement 4. "A fourth point amplifies the third. The Reformation-era exegete, like his medieval and patristic forebears, never conceived of his task as the work of an isolated scholar on the shoulders of whose opinion the entire exegetical result could be established and carried. Instead, the exegete of the Reformation era � indeed, even the Protestant exegete of the later sixteenth-century, who held as a matter of doctrine that Scripture was ultimately self-authenticating as the highest norm of theology � understood the interpretive task as an interpretive conversation in the context of the historical community of belief."

24. 1.1.2 Five Possible Starting Points 1.1.2.5 Rabbinic scholars Jon D. Levenson, "Why Jews are not interested in Biblical Theology." Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, Emil Fackenhiem

25. Levenson, "Why Jews are not interested in Biblical Theology." 1. "The sad truth is that Old Testament theologians have generally treated the themes that appeal to them as more pervasive in the Old Testament and the religion of Israel than is warranted. Historians of religion without theological commitment would, instead, be inclined to acknowledge the diversity and contradiction of biblical thought frankly. They would feel no need to concoct a spurious "unity."

26. Levenson, "Why Jews are not interested in Biblical Theology." 2. "One reason for the distance Jewish biblicists tend to keep from biblical theology is the intense anti-Semitism evident in many of the classic works in that field." 3. "Historically, biblical theology has been not only non-Jewish, but actively Protestant." Karaism's "search out the Torah thoroughly" and the anti-Oral tradition yielded a pursuit of the peshat (plain sense) reading of the Bible, but this was annomolous. There was not ad fontes (back to the sources!) movement in Judaism.

27. Levenson, "Why Jews are not interested in Biblical Theology." 4. "The effort to construct a systematic, harmonious theological statement out of the unsystematic and polydox materials in the Hebrew Bible fits Christianity better than Judaism because systematic theology in general is more prominent and more at home in the church than in the bet midrash (study house) and the synagogue."

28. Levenson, "Why Jews are not interested in Biblical Theology." Susan Handelman: "One of the most interesting aspects of Rabbinic thought is tis development of a highly sophisticated system of interpretation based on uncovering and expanding the primary concrete meaning, and yet drawing a variety of logical inferences from the meaning without the abstracting, idealizing movement of Western thought."

29. Levenson, "Why Jews are not interested in Biblical Theology." Gershom Scholem "[n]ot system but commentary is the legitimate form through which truth is approached." "It is hard to see how a biblical theology that did not respect the doctrine of the priority and normativity of the Pentateuch could be authentic to the Jewish tradition."

30. Levenson, "Why Jews are not interested in Biblical Theology." 5. "It is precisely the failure of the biblical theologians to recognize the limitation of the context of their enterprise that makes some of them surprised that Jews are not interested in it."