An Intro to the Old Testament

Reading the Hebrew Bible and Christian Discipleship

Photo by Tanner Mardis on Unsplash

The God of the Old Testament does not easily conform to the expectations of Christian dogmatic theology, nor to the categories of any Hellenistic perennial philosophy.

Theology of the Old Testament
Walter Brueggemann

A lot of people have a lot of feelings about the Old Testament, from anger to doubt to apathy. Then, there are those who, like myself, love the Old Testament. There are Christians who feel like it’s a bygone text from a bygone era whose main function is to teach us how not to think about God. I must admit, there are portions of the Old Testament that feel as archaic as they are, and reading the stories can make you feel like you’ve traveled to a culture radically different from your own. That makes sense because the culture(s) of the Old Testament are archaic and they are radically different from our own. It takes some work to understand those cultures, to catch a glimpse of their worldview, and the way they thought. It would be impossible for us in the 21st century, especially in the US, to fully develop a consciousness and worldview from the ancient Israelite world, but it is not impossible to get a good enough understanding through various means in order to not be a complete foreigner to the world of the Old Testament. Over the next few posts, I want to give some context to different portions of the Old Testament, some tips to reading the Old Testament, and why I think it’s important for Christians to know how to read and understand the Old Testament.

As a theologian, I think of my work in terms of Christian Ethics and, to a lesser degree, Systematic Theology. It’s not common (I don’t think) for people doing Christian Ethics to have as deep a commitment to the Old Testament as I do, though that is changing. At one level, that makes sense because of the strange ethical/moral world you find there. After all, would a Christian ethicist condone capital punishment for a child who has dishonored his parents? Systematic theologians have more room for the Old Testament because they’re trying to talk about what the people of God, Israelites and Christians, have said throughout history, and the Old Testament is part of that history.

My value and love of the Old Testament is rooted in the fact that, at one point in time, I was seriously considering a degree in Biblical Scholarship, with a focus on the Old Testament. I read a book (The Unseen Realm by the late Dr. Michael S. Heiser) that set my imagination on fire and taught me a new way of approaching the Bible. I became enamored with the world of the ancient Israelites, the people who wrote the first part of the Bible, and with the Hebrew language and I dove in. What I found was that everything in the New Testament, and I mean everything, is grounded in the ideas and teachings of the Old. Once you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you begin to see how the teachings of the New are not an aberration from, nor are they out of synch with, what you find in the Old. It’s a natural progression, though there’s obviously some surprises (a la the crucifixion).

Obviously, this can’t be a full treatment of the Old Testament or OT Theology, but I will do my best to introduce you to some big ideas that will fuel your curiosity about the stories that laid a foundation for our faith in Jesus.

Why’s it Called That?

When you dive into Old Testament studies, you’ll often see it referred to as the Hebrew Bible. It might be obvious, but the reason for this is because this portion of Scripture was largely written in Hebrew, though, half of Daniel and parts of Ezra were written in Aramaic, an old Semitic language spoken throughout the Levant and Mesopotamia in the Exilic and post-Exilic period. The name “Old Testament” is often seen as problematic for at least two reasons. First, the Hebrew Bible isn’t Old for those non-Christians who view the text as Scripture, namely, people of Jewish faith. Secondly, calling the first part of the Bible “Old” can lend itself to the belief that it is not relevant, or at least not as important, for Christian life. There have been different movements and teachers throughout history who have taken precisely this view, and it’s become slightly more popular as of late, but it’s never been a widely accepted view in Christian doctrine. For this reasons, OT scholar John Goldingay calls his translation of the Old Testament, The First Testament.

Simply stated, the early Christians viewed the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and all that meant for them, as the “new covenant” prophesied by Jeremiah (Jer. 31:31-34). Therefore, if the New Covenant was initiated by Jesus, and they were part of the New Covenant because of their faith in Jesus, then the Mosaic Covenant, which was defined by Torah (the Law), was the Old Covenant. Admittedly, this language can be problematic, but we can’t exactly get around the fact that “new covenant” is language from the Old Testament itself. “Hebrew Bible” might be less problematic, but that ignores the parts, though very small, written in Aramaic. While you will hear that name often in academic studies, it’s probably best to just Old Testament because it’s ubiquitous among Christians.

What Is It?

This question is a little harder to answer, not because it’s mysterious, but because it’s simultaneously so many things. It’s helpful to remember that the Old Testament is a library. It’s a collection of works written over a very long period time, and the narrative time period (from the creation of all things!) is even longer. The people who wrote and edited the Torah are not the same people who wrote the Prophets, who are not the people who wrote the Psalms. Just like a library has books of different genres, so does the Old Testament. Genesis is mythology,¹ there are historical narratives (like Exodus and Chronicles), poetry (Psalms and Prophets), legal literature (Leviticus and parts of Deuteronomy), social critique and commentary (the Prophets), even fiction (Job and Jonah)!² It's important to remember that different books are different genres because that will affect the way you read the book. We don't read The Hunger Games the same way we read a science text book, and we don’t read that the same way we read poetry by Dylan Thomas.

Despite the fact that there are different books written in different genres over a period of over a thousand years, this collection of books is different than the collection you’ll find at your local library. This collection has a specific purpose, and the books chosen to be part of this collection all serve that central purpose. Again, this could be stated in many ways, but generally speaking, the purpose of the Old Testament is to tell the story of a specific people group (Israel) and their encounter and covenant with their God, Yahweh, and how Yahweh is working within that people to redeem them, and the world through them, from the broken patterns of the world (i.e. sin). You might say, “The Old Testament is the story of Yahweh and his people,” and that would be fair enough, but God is doing stuff in and through his people and that’s important to communicate.

A lot happens throughout the Old Testament, promise, praise, judgment, exile, war, love, prophecy, rejection, and redemption. The throughline in all the stories, in all the legal material, in all the prophecies, is the God at work among his people. Though this can get lost at times because of the historical situations the Israelites end up in (e.g. the monarchy), God’s great work throughout the Old Testament is liberation. We could say “salvation,” but for Christians, we tend to think of salvation as being forgiven of our sins and going to heaven when we die. Certainly, there is an element of that present in the Old Testament, but that’s not the main thrust of the story found there. The Old Testament is profoundly earthy, undeniably concerned about this life and how God’s people live in it. In the very, very few times it talks about the afterlife (if we can even call it that), it envisions resurrected human beings who live recognizably human lives doing the kinds of things that humans have always done—like living with families, eating, working, and worshiping.

The Old Testament is a community work. It was written by a community in covenant with Yahweh, and sits at the heart of the community it longs to shape. Its words are meant to be read over and over and over again, not only by individuals, but more importantly by families and communities. Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and Ruth and David and Joshua and Aaron and Samuel and Jacob and Deborah are meant to be, want to be known and loved as part of our families and communities. Through their stories, through their poetry and prophecy, we learn how God interacts with his covenant people, and in so doing, we learn to recognize when God is at work in our own lives and in the lives of our communities.

When we see that, we begin to understand why liberation is at the heart of what God does in the Old Testament. Yes, abstractly, God liberates us from sin, but what does that look like in the flesh and on the earth? It looks like God freeing slaves from Egypt, it looks like God delivering his people from oppressive empires, it looks like God confronting his own people when they abuse their power (a la David and Bathsheba), and, disturbing as it is, it looks like God judging his own people when they become like the empires from whom be delivered them. What we learn from the Old Testament is that sin isn’t (just) an invisible, amorphous, “wickedness” that causes us to do bad things, it's all the ways, from the smallest act in private to the largest public action of empire, we do wrong to one another, to the earth, and to our Creator. Sin is manifest in lying, dishonoring God, oppressing the poor, mistreating the immigrant, murder, and conquest. Throughout the Old Testament, we learn how God responds to sin and how he wants to set us free from it. The "Law,"³ then, is not legalism, but teaching a community of people how to live with one another in a way that promotes peace, justice, and well-being within the community. In a word, it teaches us how to live in shalom.

Learning to Read

Like any literature, whether book, magazine, movie, or painting, how you approach it will greatly impact what you hear from it. As a stark example, someone who does not believe in God, though they read the same words on the same pages, will hear something very different than the person who believes in God and holds Scripture as authoritative. I say that to say that it’s important to learn how to read the Old Testament. The idea that anyone could pick up the Bible at any point, read it on their own, and understand what it’s doing and what it’s saying is naïve. It is true that the Holy Spirit is at work, and the Spirit is able to teach anyone anywhere how to read Scripture and reveal things to people through Scripture, but that’s not the normal way Scripture “works,” nor the way the Spirit wants us engaging with Scripture.

As I said, the Old Testament wasn’t meant to be read in isolation, alone in your quiet time, but as a community that is learning to follow God together. I wouldn’t want to discourage private reading and study of Scripture, but I do want to encourage much more public reading and study of Scripture, and that not just by preachers on Sunday, but by communities as a whole. We also have to learn to read the different genres of Scripture as communities. There are a few ways to go about this. You can enroll in a Bible school and go the academic route. I did this and I loved it, but I realize it’s not for everyone and there are drawbacks. You can read books about the OT (I’ll list some good ones at the end of this post); bonus points if you do this with other people. Or, and this is the most accessible and fun way, you can learn from The Bible Project. They are doing the best job today at educating people how to read Scripture, especially the Old Testament, in a healthy, faithful, and good way.

One more thing before we’re done. Like I said at the beginning, everything the New Testament says directly flows out of the Old Testament. The logic of the New Testament comes from the life of the Old. Jesus’s life and teachings are all steeped in the Old Testament. Even his death and resurrection are in harmony with the revelation of God we find there. Reading, knowing, and being formed by the Old Testament will only serve to make us better Christians.

Reading List

In no particular order.

1. An Introduction to the Old Testament by John Goldingay. 400 pgs. (Easiest read)

2. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture by Brevard Childs. 692 pgs. (Most technical and very thorough)

3. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy by Walter Brueggemann. 800 pgs. (Technical, but approachable. Doesn’t address singular books or sections but takes the testimony as a whole)

4. The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary by John Sailhamer. 544 pgs. (Only covers Torah, but great intro into learning to read the OT. Very influential)

1. I don’t mean by this that the events of Genesis didn’t take place, at least in some form, but that it deals with mythological subjects like cosmology, the beginnings of a people (Israel), and contains stories of the familial founders of Israel (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), and that it explains why the world is the way it is.

2. I will justify this position in a later post where I will specifically address why I think Job and Jonah are fiction and why I think it’s not just okay, but good that there’s fiction in the Bible.

3. Torah is much better understood as “teaching” or “instruction” than as “law.” Torah teaches us, it disciples us, in godly, just, and peaceful living as the community in covenant with Yahweh.