The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity

311 Pages·2018·3.265 MB·English

by  Christopher R. Seitz

The Elder Testament
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The Elder Testament
Canon, Theology, Trinity
Christopher R. Seitz
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS
© 2018 by Baylor University Press
Waco, Texas 76798
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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without the prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press.
Cover Design by Aaron Cobbs
Cover art: Andrei Rublev, The Trinity, icon showing the three angels
being hosted by Abraham at Mamre
The Library of Congress has cataloged this book under ISBN
978- 1- 4813- 0828- 1.
978-1-4813-0837-3 (Web PDF)
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Contents
Introduction 1
PART ONE
ORIENTATION
1 Elder Testament: Introducing the Scriptures of Israel 13
2 Canonical Interpretation of the Elder Scriptures 21
3 Theological Interpretation of the Elder Testament 35
4 “Can we read this book?”: Reader Response- ability 51
PART TWO
ENTERING THE ELDER TESTAMENT
5 The Strange Old Book: The Limits of Narrative 71
6 The Fate of JEDP: The Mysterious Disclosure of the
Divine Name 85
v
vi Contents
7 YHWH and Elohim: The LORD God 97
8 Order, Arrangements, Canonical Shape, and Name 119
9 The Pentateuch 131
10 Prophets 139
11 Writings 161
PART THREE
THEOLOGICAL READINGS IN THE ELDER TESTAMENT
12 The Triune Name 183
13 Proverbs 8:22- 31 and the Mind of Scripture 201
14 The Sun Also Rises: Time and Creation
in Ecclesiastes and Genesis 1– 11 221
15 “When Christ came into the world he said”:
The Scriptural Christ in the Letter to the Hebrews 243
16 Theophany and Trinity 261
Conclusion 271
Bibliography 281
Scripture Index 295
Author Index 301
Introduction
I have always been a voracious reader, from Hardy Boys books
with a flashlight in the backyard tent to high school introduc-
tions to American novels and Latin history and French short stories
to undergraduate courses as an English major. Especially there in
college, reading Faulkner or Milton or Shakespeare or the meta-
physical poets, I began to sense that it was the Bible, and often the
Old Testament, that was the inspiration guiding great literature
and great writers. I took a couple of courses from a very popular
professor on Old Testament prophets and basic Old Testament and
New Testament introduction. I was introduced to moderate forms
of historical- critical method. The professor was a gifted orator,
and it was a blow when he died before retirement— in the pulpit
of the Presbyterian Church he was visiting as preacher. I went
to the funeral, and his widow invited me and other students and
teaching assistants to their house for tea afterwards. She wanted me
1
2 The Elder Testament
to have some of his books, which surprised me, as I was intending
to go to law school. I had known the professor well enough that
he knew my intentions. I picked out three books we had used in
the courses he taught. His wife said she wanted to add one. It was
a big Brown- Driver- Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, probably the most
thumbed book in my present library after forty years of study-
ing and teaching Old Testament, writing books, and directing
doctoral students.
I have written biblical commentaries, technical studies on Jere-
miah and Ezekiel and the Deuteronomistic History, monographs on
the development of the book of Isaiah, a theological commentary
on Colossians, books on hermeneutics and prophetic literature and
the relation of Old Testament and New Testament, and scores of
technical articles on Genesis, Job, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Psalms, Exodus, and most of the material of the Old Testament. I
have edited several books that cross disciplines.
As I now look back on my own education in biblical stud-
ies, I can reflect on the different experiences I have had. After
university I even taught high school students “JEDP” and “Q” and
“special Luke” and “authentic Pauline epistles” before attending
seminary. God only knows what they took away from that. I had
fairly standard introductory and advanced courses in seminary, and
then attended the University of Munich for several terms. I was
intrigued by the standards and the discipline of German biblical
criticism. My first interest in Brevard Childs was via his Exodus
commentary, which had appeared and was highly regarded as a
model, if ambitious, deployment of critical methods so as to eval-
uate the final form of the text.1 Provocatively, he said the text’s
prehistory had a counterpart in its reception history, which he
spent considerable space evaluating, and both helped illuminate the
presentation of the final form and its unique contribution.2 At the
1 Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary,
OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974).
2 “The section on the history of exegesis offers an analogy to the section
on the prehistory of the text. The one deals with the period before the text’s
Introduction 3
time I did not understand much about what a canonical approach
meant and did not know why he included a section on history of
interpretation. I was far more interested in his command of source,
form, tradition history, and the general development of the text
from oral to written form.
I was privileged to study with him and in time to be his
colleague and friend. Our offices were next to each other, and more
generally it was an exciting time to be at Yale. A young James Kugel
was teaching there then. The theological and historical faculty were
impressive and engaged across their respective disciplines (Hans
Frei, George Lindbeck, David Kelsey, Paul Holmer). Old and New
Testament colleagues discussed each other’s domains and read each
other’s books. Childs produced a New Testament introduction at
that time.3 I team taught with Leander Keck on several occasions.4
Yale was the first place where critical methods were taught with
great rigor but at the same time were also the subject of an equally
rigorous evaluation. I suppose it was the generally high regard
that Yale had for history as a discipline as such. Critical methods
had a history, they cast a shadow, they belonged on a longer time-
line than those who proposed them often liked to think. Before
Wellhausen there were Spinoza and Hobbes, Simon and Astruc,
Reuss and Kuenen and Eichrodt. And before them all were Calvin,
complete formation, the other with its interpretation after its formation. Both
have a significant, albeit indirect, relationship to the major task of interpreting
the canonical text. The history of exegesis is of special interest in illuminating
the text by showing how the questions which are brought to bear by subsequent
generations of interpreters influenced the answers which they received. No one
comes to the text de novo, but consciously or unconsciously shares a tradition
with predecessors” (Childs, Exodus, xv). The present work will explore both of
these dimensions as well though toward a slightly different end, as will become
clear, it is hoped.
3 Brevard S. Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Phila-
delphia: Fortress, 1984).
4 See now his Christ’s First Theologian: The Shape of Paul’s Thought and his
Why Christ Matters: Toward a New Testament Christology (Waco, Tex.: Baylor
University Press, 2015).