The Old Testament

Summary: A good overview of the Old Testament, not just the content of the Old Testament, but interpretative methods, ancient culture, and ways scholarship interacts with ancient texts.

I am a fan of Great Courses and “Very Short Introduction to” books. But one of the most common weaknesses is that in a brief survey, the book/lectures can be primarily about the academic study of the subject, not the subject itself. For example, in The Bible: A Very Short Introduction by John Riches spends very little time introducing the content of the bible and instead spends almost all of his time on the academic study of how it was written or compiled into the canon or how it is studied. All of those things are helpful in the proper context. But in a brief survey, I think the primary focus should be an overview of the content.

I have wanted to read a book by Amy-Jill Levine. She is a well-known author and writer. She is Jewish but is known partly for her Jewish presentations to Christian audiences. She takes the spiritual reality of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible seriously. Still, she is an academic presenting in a way that primarily focuses on what can be known naturally (in the sense of non-spiritual). And this is what most of the negative reviews on Audible are about. For example, she says that at this point, there is no archeological evidence that David was a real person and that she tends to think that he was an archetypal figure. That does not mean that there never will be archeological evidence of David. But I think Christians must grapple with the reality of how modernism has impacted our faith. Modernism wanted to dismiss not just the possibility of supernatural actions of God but dismiss anything that could not be proven naturally. And those Christians that reacted against modernism accepted many of the same premises, but in the other direction, trying to prove through modern scholarship that all of the supernatural events actually happened and the bible was only historical in a modern understanding of that idea.

One of the strengths of this presentation is that in the process of giving an overview of the content of the Old Testament, Levine illustrates different models of understanding and studying ancient texts. She uses the Historical-Critical method and brings comparative stories from other cultures. She spends a lot of time on genre and points out how the author's intention (at least what we can reconstruct of intention) should play into how we understand a text today. She introduces the idea of etiological myth, a story that explains how something came to be. One example of this is the story of Lott and his two daughters; the children born to Lott and his daughters are Moab and Ammon, the names of two of the people groups around Israel. And a story about how those people groups were derived from incest and drunkness seems like it very well may be an example that was intended to be an etiological myth (an explanation of how something came to be) and not an example of modern history.

One of the problems with recommending this is that in a real classroom, there can be discussion and grappling with meaning. But in an audio course, there is no back and forth. A friend of mine is a Hebrew and Old Testament professor at a secular university. One of the tasks he takes seriously is trying to help students with Christian or Jewish backgrounds interact with modern scholarship on the bible without them just wanting to throw away their bibles. I can speak more about Christianity, but many Christians are taught the bible in a very modernist method. In other words, they are told that the bible is history and only history and all of it literally happened in the exact way they are told. If any individual part they understand as history wasn't history, their entire understanding of their faith crumbles. But I think scholars like Levine or John Walton, who take their faith very seriously, are trying to say that reading a portion of scripture as history when it wasn't intended to be read as modern history is a misreading of scripture, not a faithful reading of scripture.

There is only so much that 24 thirty-minute lectures can cover. Much material is covered here, but it is still a survey. The first six lectures are mainly about the book of Genesis and introducing interpretative methods. The seventh lecture is “Folklore Analysis and Types Scenes” and is the only lecture that is not primarily concerned with exploring the biblical content. Lectures 8 to 14 are about the rest of the Pentateuch, the conquest of Cannan, and the book of Judges. Lectures 15 to 21 are about Saul, David, Solomon, and the split into the two kingdoms through exile and return. And then the last three lectures are about Wisdom Literature, Life in the Diaspora, and Apocalyptic Literature.

Generally, this presentation is intended to cover an academic understanding of the Old Testament and not a religious understanding (either Jewish or Christian) of the Old Testament. And that isn't what everyone wants. Generally, I think that Levine knows she is primarily talking to Christians and so references Jesus and the New Testament when it makes sense to the text she is discussing. But this is not a Christian-specific presentation. One of the aspects that I appreciate is that she emphasizes a more Jewish understanding of the Old Testament by asking more questions than she is answering. The rabbinic tradition of discussion is rooted in asking questions. Christianity is often more interested in getting to the answers. But I think there is a lot of value in asking good questions. It is one reason why I think that Wil Gafney's books, like Womanist Midrash, are so helpful. Gafney is raising questions about the text that many will not ask of the text without a guide like her.

Overall, I think this presentation of the Old Testament by Amy-Jill Levine is well worth listening to, maybe more than once. Of course, it isn't going to be helpful for everyone, but I think if you are willing to ask questions of your faith, then you will find value here.