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Katharine J Dell, A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament. By Mark W. Hamilton, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 70, Issue 2, October 2019, Pages 741–742, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flz057
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This is an introduction, largely geared towards students (undergraduate and postgraduate) and interested lay people, but it has the difference that it seeks to place more of an emphasis on theological issues than other books. Having said that, though, it is still pretty thorough on historical and literary issues that are pertinent to the discussion as well as on interpretative reading lenses that have been so emphasized in biblical scholarship in the last few decades. It is both a guidebook to ‘how’ to read the Bible and a handbook of its major contents. The discussion of every book of the Old Testament shows a remarkable breadth and command of the material. Boxes are used to break up the text and separate out some of the extra issues such as date, authorship, or other literary discussions that have taken place in the scholarship but are less pertinent to the theological concerns of the book. There is an ecumenical flavour to this book in the way that it airs different interpretative stances—Jewish and Christian—and explores extra-biblical areas of discussion such as the canon and the Dead Sea scrolls, which have now become so integral to our understanding of the Bible itself. Hamilton makes a good point about the canon that it was not until Marcion questioned the value of the Old Testament that, at least in Christian circles, the old flexibility about its parameters was lost and a more dedicated approach to what to include and what not to include was needed. In his introduction Hamilton identifies three types of reader: the ‘ideal’ reader who attends diligently to what the text has to say; brilliant readers of the past whose legacy of ideas we receive today; and contemporary readers, whether they be critical, pre-critical, or post-critical. This points the way to his concern for ‘readerly’ understanding in his theological approach; indeed he personally identifies with a postcritical approach that ‘on the one hand, … takes seriously the findings of modern research … on the other, it seeks to interpret those books in terms of a hermeneutics of sympathy … that wishes to understand the theological arguments that those books make on their own terms, with an eye toward the sort of readers they endeavour to create’ (p. 9). He coins the phrase ‘traditioned imaginations’ for biblical texts (p. 10) in that the creators of texts follow traditional ideas and traditional modes of presentation and yet they develop them in new and original ways to reveal deep realities of the divine–human relationship. Each chapter has a ‘key text’ at the start and other texts are discussed within the chapters. There are wider discussions at times, e.g. in the section on poetry and wisdom (p. 207). There is also a section on the nature of Hebrew poetry that helps to put the books ranged under this heading into a broader context. This is an ambitious undertaking—of course there is always the problem when delving into such introductions that there is more that could be said, and the interpretative breadth can sometimes be sacrificed to the need to deal with basic descriptions and traditional literary-critical and historical questions as well. It brings many of these discussions up to date, however. Overall it is a very readable and thorough book and highly recommended to all.
