Gospel and Kingdom Chapter 3, "What is the Old Testament?"

The Old Testament as Literature, History, and Theology

When dealing with anything as complex as the Old Testament, it is well not to assume anything, but rather to attempt to understand what makes up the complexity. The first and most obvious dimension of the Old Testament is the literary one.

The Old Testament is a book, or rather a collection of books. Secondly, we note that a common feature of these books is their association with a history which embraces a single continuous time span and also a single continuous part of human history.

Thirdly, the Old Testament presents a theological dimension in that the history, which is the subject of the literature, is represented as a single history of God's dealings with the world and with human beings.

Let us now consider some of the implications of these three key dimensions of the Old Testament, and for that matter, of the whole Bible. The literary, the historical, and the theological. The Old Testament is a collection of 39 books written by a variety of authors over a period of maybe 1 ,000 years or more.

Nearly all of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, an ancient language of the Northwest Semitic group which was closely related to the language of the Canaanites. Some parts of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic, another Semitic language which was spoken throughout the Babylonian Empire from where it was adopted by the Jews in the 6th century BC.

The earlier parts go back to the time of Moses, which was probably the 13th century BC, while the latest sections were written before the Greek period of the 4th century BC. It has been customary to divide the individual books of the Old Testament into four groups, law, history, prophecy, and poetry.

This has some value, but the classifications are very broad, and it is helpful to be a little more specific about the literary types of the Bible. Different literary forms or types function in different ways, and some appreciation of the various forms of Hebrew literature is essential if we are to avoid a misinterpretation of the author's intentions.

We must not expect the Hebrew authors to be bound by the same rules of literary expression to which we are accustomed. The Bible is not a bound volume of 20th century works. It is an ancient collection of using an ancient language to express thought forms which frequently differ from our own.

We should not be concerned to classify entire books since within any one book, many different literary types may be found. Each type must be recognized for what is there before it can be properly interpreted.

Thus, the intention behind a section of historical narrative will be different from that which is behind a parable or a precept of the Mosaic Law. Some of the literary types will be familiar enough to us and will present few difficulties as literary expressions.

Others will be strange to us, and their intention will be not so clear until we have discovered the nature and function of such types. In the Old Testament, we find historical narratives, law, and statutes, prophetic oracles, genealogies, songs of many kinds, wisdom sayings of the proverbial kind, instructional wisdom, hymns of praise, thanksgivings, taunts, parables and fables, riddles, laments, apocalyptic visions, and much else.

We do not have to become experts in ancient literary types in order to avoid the pitfalls, but we should at least try to become more familiar with them and to understand the way they function. It is really amazing how neglected the literary dimension has become when you reflect that we are talking about the medium of communication used by God.

It is equally amazing that some interpreters seek to impose a single code of interpretation of literature, such as literal interpretation. Literalism is, of course, perfectly valid as an approach to literature if it is conceived of broadly enough to accommodate the different ways in which language may be used to communicate.

But it is not the purpose of this book to discuss the complex questions of literary types. Let us, however, maintain an openness to the ancient conventions of the literary medium of communication by becoming sensitive to the wonderful variety of expression in the Bible.

The Shape of Old Testament History

We cannot hope to understand the way the Old Testament functions as part of the Bible without some grasp of the whole sweep of Old Testament history. But the answer for most of us is not to wade through a large volume on the history of Israel.

That should come later. We ought to begin with a basic framework of biblical history, a bird's eye view, which will show us the main events in the progression of the history. This, contrary to supposition, is easily done, for there is really a very simple historical outline to be discerned in the Bible, even if it is not the immediate impression gained by the reader who has become bogged down in the Book of Kings.

This simple diagram, which I learned from one of my own teachers, provides one effective representation of the history of the Old Testament. The simplicity of this diagram allows for further detail to be added as one becomes more familiar with the contents of the Old Testament.

It cannot be overemphasized that without a sense of the historical progression and of the relationship between the principal events and characters, it would be very difficult to make much, much sense out of the Bible.

The overwhelming conviction of the biblical authors is of the activity of God in history. God acts not in a fragmentary, capricious, or unrelated way, but in a single purposeful span of history. The Bible is not a deposit of abstract ideas or even of formulated doctrines, but a marvelous unity of salvation history.

If you have never taken time to grasp the basic historic progression of the Bible, it is time to do so. I would suggest that this outline be used, or something like it, in conjunction with a summary of biblical history, such as can be found in numerous books.

We are thus dealing with a history which begins with the creation of the universe, the world, and humanity. The history then focuses on man, Adam, and on his relationship with God. After being ejected from paradise in Eden because of his rebellion against the Creator, man's history is one of increasing and widespread sinfulness.

This leads to destruction through the flood and to the preservation of one family. From this family of Noah, the lineage of humanity is shown to divide among the nations of the world, although the focus is on the line of Shem leading to Abraham.

Abraham was called by God to leave Mesopotamia and to go to Canaan, where he received certain promises concerning his descendants, of which there were none as yet. This promise was later passed on to his son Isaac and to Isaac's son Jacob.

Eventually, the descendants of Jacob migrated to Egypt and in time became a large nation. When this people was subjected to a cruel slavery by the Egyptians, God sent Moses to lead them into the land of Canaan, which he had promised to give to Abraham's descendants.

This process was long and involved and included the making of a covenant at Mount Sinai, in which this nation of Israel was bound to God as his people with all that that implied. The dispossession of the inhabitants of Canaan and the settlement of the land led to the development of the need for some form of government or administration of the covenant.

After a false start under King Saul, Israel received a great leader in the person of David. He united the tribes, established a capital city, secured the borders and set up a proper administration. Unfortunately, David's successor, Solomon, became too ambitious and unwise policies led to eventual dissatisfaction.

When his son came to the throne, there was a rebellion and the ten tribes of the north seceded to become the kingdom of Israel, while the dynasty of David continued to rule over the southern kingdom of Judah.

The secession led to a general decline in both north and south, although the prophets continued to call the people back to faithfulness to the covenant God. The north finally suffered defeat at the hands of the Assyrians in 722 BC and ceased to be an independent state.

More than a century later, the might of Babylon was aimed at the south and with the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC and the deportation of most of the people, Judah as a political entity ceased to be.

The exile in Babylon came to an end for the Jews when Cyrus the Persian overcame the power of Babylon and allowed captive peoples to return home in 538 BC. Many of the Jews chose to remain in Babylon for life had been quite kind to them, but those who returned had a real struggle to reconstruct the state of Judah.

Eventually, with Persian cooperation, some stability was reached and Jerusalem and the temple were reconstructed. But the glory of the golden age of David and Solomon never returned and the Old Testament period comes to an end with a whimper rather than a bang.

Some three and a half centuries intervened between the two testaments. During this time, the most complex political developments occurred in the Jewish state. The Persian Empire crumbled when Alexander the Great pushed into Asia Minor and advanced to Egypt and beyond Babylon to the borders of India.

Hellenistic culture was imposed upon Alexander's empire by his successors and the Jews did not escape the fearful results of the conflict between pagan Greek philosophies and their way of life and the Hebrew devotion to the law and religion of the one true God.

In the middle of the first century BC, the Romans entered the Middle East region and the Jews found themselves a province of the great Roman Empire. At first sight, the history contained in the Old Testament may seem to be that of a fairly insignificant nation which spent most of its time in political subjection to whatever great power had the ascendancy in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, this is often the impression to be gained from a concentration on the details of the Old Testament history. Now, the study of detail is certainly important but it is a human weakness to fail to see the forest for the trees.

Too much initial concentration on the details of Israel's history may obscure important relationships and the overall pattern in the events. It is essential to remember one of the cardinal points of history writing that no history is ever the mere record of a succession of details or events.

The historian writes selectively according to his purpose. Of course, he cannot completely isolate one aspect of human life from all others but he can direct his attention to one or the other aspect so that all others fall more or less into the background.

Thus, we might have in relation to the same nation in the same period of time a political history, an economic history, a social history, a military history, and so on. What kind of history is Old Testament history?

Theological History and Divine Revelation

First, let us see what it is not. It is not merely a history of Israel for part of it deals with the period before the birth of Israel and this material cannot be treated as only background. Genesis 1 to 11 is far too important to be dismissed so simply.

Nor is Old Testament history a religious history for that would entail nothing more than the attempts of historians to deal with religious thought and activity. The Old Testament claims to be much more than that especially since it continually passes judgment upon mankind's religious activity even upon that of the Israelites.

In fact, to treat the Bible as a history of religions was the great mistake of the rationalistic age of the 19th century. In so far as the Old Testament is history, it is a theological history rather than a religious history, a human record of human religion.

It is God's record of God's own dealings with the world and with humanity. It is characteristic of the Bible that it does not record the events in the affairs of human beings as if they were determined by chance by blind fate or by unnecessary chain of prior events.

The history of the Bible is purposive. The purpose which governs the events is God's purpose. The biblical historians relate events not as events in themselves but as the deeds of God or as the deeds of men which are to be judged according to the character of God.

It is God who calls Abraham from Ur, who brings Israel out of Egypt, who raises up Cyrus to free Israel from Babylon and who judges human actions according to whether they are good or bad in his sight.

It is this purposive element in biblical history which makes the Bible unique, giving it its distinctive dimension. Furthermore, the biblical history, history as the Bible presents it rather than merely the history of Bible times, is therefore a part of God's word to man.

God's own interpretation of the events of biblical history makes known to us the purposes he is pursuing within this history. It is this interpretation of the events as God's events which give the Bible its character of divine revelation.

This is the consistent testimony of the Bible as it records how God speaks to humanity, declaring his purpose and intentions, how he acts on the basis of his word and how he then interprets the events by his word.

Thus we see, contrary to some modern interpretations, that God declares to Moses what he will do for Israel, free them from Egypt and give them Canaan and on what basis he will do it, the promises to Abraham.

When the exodus has taken place, God then declares, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Now this purpose of history not only reveals the mind of God, it also affects the way in which those thoughts are communicated.

The selection of events and then recording of details is governed by the theological meaning rather than by military or political significance. The theology controls the writing of the history. The fact that God acts in the history of men and interprets his acts means that these historical events will form a pattern that relates to the purposes of God.

Biblical history is theological history. Theology means the knowledge of God as God himself reveals it. We have seen that biblical theology consists of the study of the revelation of God as he acts in the world, in the history of men.

The most important concern in the study of the Bible is the revelation of God. What is God saying to us in the record of his acts? What did God do in entering in a special way into the history of humanity?

We have already raised the question of the unity of the Bible. We are here asserting that the aspect which above all else creates the Bible's unity is its theology. It is the one God who acts and speaks throughout the history in the Bible.

Furthermore, God acts and speaks with a unity of purpose. God's message to us is one unified discourse, not a series of isolated and disconnected messages. The task which lies ahead of us is to try to discern what God is saying and how he says it.

In doing this, we may say that we are primarily interested in revelation and theology, but we may not separate what God says and does from the context in which he says and does it, the history, nor from the way in which what he does, the literary record.

We shall be looking for the essential unity of the Bible without ignoring its diversity and its complexity.