This is not only a big book, it is a really huge subject and full of rich insights: Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, (Fortress Press, 1997). It is a work worthy of spending a long time with—it’s over 700 pages—and is also one that will invite going back to and going over again and again. I would say it’s worth allowing yourself a year to live with.
I think I first became aware of Bruegemman’s work through one of his smaller and very popular works TheProphetic Imagination, and then his excellent works on the Psalms. He writes for people who want to do more than understand the Old Testament: for him, the text is itself an invitation into a conversation, indeed a life, with its source, the living God.
It is always a challenging thing for Christians to deal responsibly with the Hebrew scriptures. So much damage has been done to relationships with the Jewish peoples through a crass and irresponsible reading of the books we both consider sacred. Brueggemann assists us in a more honourable and sensible reading and as a result leads us to many wonderful insights, challenges and possibilities. His eventual vision is for a life of partnership and that surely must include Christians and Jews living and reading in partnership.
Part of Brueggemann’s task if to offer a survey of Old Testament thought: the many different genres and themes in this whole body of literature. He knows it is a huge task, but he undertakes it with a great breadth of scholarship and with his eye and ear to the reader.
Brueggemann is convinced that Scripture must be understood as the witness of the faith community (in this case Israel) and that those who read it and preach it are drawn into the same encounter with a living word and witness. He writes of the word as ‘proclamation’ and he is clearly concerned to help all of us whose task itis to preach the word of God today.
A long section at the beginning of the book addresses the many lively questions about method in Old Testament scholarship. Some readers will find this just too much and may just go straight into the main part of the book. Butfor others it can be a very helpful ‘refresher course’, bringing us up to date with the new approaches.Brueggemann is critical of some of the recent ‘schools’, yet finds what is of value among them for his own exposition and theology.
The heart of his approach is a strong insistence that God is who and what God says in the word of Scripture. (Echoes here of Karl Barth: God is what God is in the Word.) We should not look for God ‘behind’ the words or in some other way. Rather, the Old Testament is Israel’s testimony or speech about who God is and what God is like.
This divine self-expression is explained through the ideas of ‘testimony, dispute, advocacy’. These terms make up the sub-title of the book. The main theme comes through the idea of testimony. The Old Testament is the testimony of Israel to its immediate encounter with Yahweh as a God who speaks, who addresses them. In a seriesof exceptionally helpful chapters Brueggemann describes the speech of God in terms of the verbal sentences, the nouns and adjectives which make up Israel’s testimony.
So, just to illustrate, he begins with the verbs of God’s active speech: Israel testifies that Yahweh is the God who creates, who promises, who delivers, who commands and who leads. These are inspiring and enriching chapters, which open up the text to us in ways that we may not have known before.
The overall context of Old Testament faith and life, Brueggemann suggests, is something like a court trial: it is as if God is on trial before the unbelieving nations of the world, and Israel must offer its testimony to the court. But this testimony is itself ‘cross-examined’ within the Old Testament itself and the life and experience of the people.
“Is Yahweh really trustworthy?” is the basic question.
In the second main section of the book, Brueggemann deals with the struggles and suffering of Israel and the testing out of its understanding of God. So there is ‘dispute’ about the word and promises, the justice and reliability of God. There is real honesty and struggle in the texts here, and many who have known similar struggles, individually or in community, will be grateful to Brueggemann for making it plain that the Bible does not avoid these issues. God invites us to come and ‘have these things out’.
Crucial to this approach is the acceptance of different voices within the Scripture. There is no single ‘biblical’ view. Rather, there is a history of conversation, expressing differing and sometimes contested experiences and views. The same stories and history are told and retold, with different inferences and values. For instance, there is a clear contest between a priestly or temple-based vision of the nation (and with that a city-centred focus) as against a prophetic and justice-focussed vision, drawing upon the ‘pilgrim people’ or rural history.
All this ‘dispute’ is such a productive and worthwhile encounter that in the third movement of the ‘trial’ Israel offers its own ‘unsolicited testimony’, actually advocating on behalf of its God.
Here we find the joyous celebration of the place of Israel, of human beings, of the nations and indeed the entire creation as Yahweh’s partners. These are wonderful chapters and again richly edifying. Here, as Brueggemann’s theology proposes, is a vision to live into: this is the rhetorical power of Scripture. It is a living word calling forth life, life with God in every dimension of our being.
This is a book to live with. It’s over seven hundred pages; it took me a while to read! If you can buy only one Old Testament book for a long time, this is the one to buy. If your church has a library, it should have this book. And it’s a book I find I go back to, again and again.
It is a book that invites us into life, the life of faith which inspired and still guides the people of Israel: calling them and us to encounter the living God in the living word.