Craig G. Bartholomew. <i>The Old Testament and God. Vol. 1 of Old Testament Origins and the Question of God</i>

In this first installment of a projected four-volume series that seeks to do for the Old Testament what N. T. Wright did for the New, Bartholomew addresses a range of topics even more expansive than the book’s title suggests. Chiefly, he aims to describe two things: the historic uniqueness of the OT within the ANE and the ongoing power of its testimony to the living God. However, these agenda items are largely postponed to Parts 3 and 4 of the book. To get there, he begins to describe, in Part 1, the origins of the OT in connection with the land of Israel and other dimensions of the biblical text. Broadly speaking, OT interpretation is characterized as “a threefold cord” with strands made up of “the literary,” “the historical and factual,” and “the ideological (religious and political) or kerygmatic” (p. 61). Contemporary OT scholarship is found to be deficient in all three areas. It is too atomizing literarily, even this long after the “literary turn” in biblical studies; too skeptical historically, denying realities like the Exodus, Sinai event, and Moses; too constrained methodologically, bound to a post-Enlightenment naturalism that prohibits due consideration of “Old Testament origins and the question of God.”To address the problem, Bartholomew calls for a Kuhnian paradigm shift in OT studies and then, in Part 2, unpacks tools for interpretation in “a critical realist paradigm.” The toolbox includes implements of epistemology, world view, narrative theory, literary theory, speech-act theory, history, theology, and more. It is a heavy box, though Bartholomew is a good guide to its contents. Part 3 turns to a survey of “the world views of the Ancient Near East,” with discussions of the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Arameans, Phoenicians, Canaanites, and Persians. World views are abstracted from profiles drawn from their history, geography, cosmology, gods, religious practices, writings, laws, government (monarch), anthropology (society), and so on. The nations are compared to each other and to Israel, and then to Israel as a collective. Other scholars recognize that Israel is distinct in the ANE, for example, because of its aniconism, or its ambivalence about kingship, but “without ever considering the possibility that God spoke at Sinai and addressed the issue” (p. 350). Still others—most mainstream scholars today, probably—do not see any Egyptian influence on Israel, on historical grounds, but rather elevate Canaanite neighbors as the main source of influence. For Bartholomew, though, “there was a long sojourn in Egypt, and there was an exodus and a profound formation of Israel through YHWH’s revelation of himself at Sinai” (p. 350). In short, the distinctiveness of Israel’s literature and history is best explained if one accepts that God acted in Egypt and spoke at Sinai, and that the OT preserves the kerygma. Israel was clearly shaped by its cultural environment, but revelation is the reason Israel’s neighbors did not, like it, “develop an overarching view of history in development,” nor separate king and law (p. 366). Finally, in Part 4, the God of Israel is expounded as “the living God” whom “the patriarchs encountered” (p. 400) and who was disclosed as king (p. 409) and creator (p. 452) of all the earth, as author of the Law in Israel (p. 453), and as “a God who acts” (p. 476).Bartholomew opens himself up to criticism on several fronts simply by ranging as widely as he does in his study; he employs hermeneutics, comparative studies of world views, detailed exegesis of texts, broader claims about the Bible, and the history of biblical scholarship. In addition, he seems to want to reopen some old, intricate debates—for example, those surrounding Yehezkel Kaufmann’s effort to put source criticism and ANE myths in a certain place, relative to the religion of Israel (pp. 57–59, 207–8) or the history and assessment of the Biblical Theology Movement that seemed to run aground in the 1960s, despite its great emphasis on the mighty acts of God in history (pp. 481–85). And why not? Biblical scholarship can be narrow to the point of irrelevancy. The broad discussion here seems most secure where the author’s background is strongest (hermeneutics, scripture). Yet, it seems more vulnerable where he takes shortcuts—for example, by relying on summaries of other scholars (conspicuous in the surveys of ANE world views), or by making historical points through deductive analysis (as on the history of biblical scholarship). In the lattermost case, the author’s own reading (in another book) of Hobbes and Spinoza boils down almost to a syllogism about source criticism (p. 29). Much is taken for granted. Logical inferences and topical jumps are made quickly and often. This is a risky pattern. Although, on some occasions I found myself impressed with the author’s range. Among other examples, there is a fine discussion that coordinates Jan Assmann, Paul Ricoeur, and Mark Smith on translatability in the OT (pp. 368–81). But on three occasions I found myself seriously doubting conclusions about scholars whose work I know reasonably well: Brevard Childs (pp. 48–49), Walter Moberly (pp. 428), and Mark Smith (pp. 390–91). It happened just often enough for me to wonder about other points where key inferences are sketched but not pursued. The criticism here is like one that I have heard made about N. T. Wright’s big project: not that its aims are too ambitious but that its execution is too hasty.For all that, I remain intrigued by many of the present project’s stated imperatives. At one point Bartholomew writes: “We need to reinject the OT into our doctrine of God, and we need models of God and divine action to inform our reading of the OT” (p. 195). This goal seems worth pursuing from both sides. After the methodological prolegomena, ground-clearing, and first starts of volume 1, it will be worth seeing how the project develops.

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