Full Description
This collection of essays is drawn from a series of previous collections to which the author has contributed that were designed to honour senior scholars in the discipline of Old Testament study. Each of these essays reflects a distinct intention depending on the nature of the original collection in which they appeared and the scholar who was being honoured. Taken together, however, this collection amounts to an articulation of Brueggemann's distinctive approach to theological interpretation of the Old Testament. Already in his major volume on Old Testament theology, Brueggemann proposed a dynamism of tension, dispute, and contradiction as the text of ancient Israel sought to give voice to the mystery of God as a sustaining and disruptive agent in the life of the world. Over a long period of time, this collection reflects the author's growing clarity about the task of Old Testament theology. It further reflects on the nature of the biblical text and the way in which the God who inhabits the text runs beyond all of our attempts to define and explain. These essays reflect not so much on methodological issues, but take up the substantive questions that regularly occupied these ancient text-makers.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Foreword by K.C. Hanson
Preface
1 The Role of Old Testament Theology in Old Testament Interpretation
2 The Travail of Pardon: Reflections on slh
3 The Defining Utterance on the Lips of the Tishbite: Pondering 'The Centrality of the Word'
4 Texts that Linger, Not Yet Overcome
5 A 'Characteristic' Reflection on What Comes Next (Jer 32:16-44)
6 A Shattered Transcendence? Exile and Restoration
7 The Epistemological Crisis of Israel's Two Histories (Jer 9:22-23)
8 'Exodus' in the Plural (Amos 9:7)
9 Theology of the Old Testament: A Prompt Retrospect
Scripture Index
Name Index
