Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 58:1 (Mar 2015)
Article: Having The Last Say: The End Of The OT
Author: Gregory Goswell

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Having The Last Say: The End Of The OT

Gregory Goswell*

* Greg Goswell is Academic Dean and a lecturer in Old Testament at Christ College, 1 Clarence Street, Burwood, NSW, Australia 2134.

This study views the OT as a unified corpus whose ending is significant for an understanding of the whole. According to the philosophy of Frank Kermode, the “end” signals a new start, a renovation, with this hope generated by the deeply-ingrained human need for finding meaning in the present.1 For Kermode, therefore, apocalyptic thinking is not specifically Christian or biblical in origin, though he illustrates it from the Bible (notably the book of Revelation).2 We do not, however, need to adopt Kermode’s view that beginnings and ends are merely cultural fictions.3 This way of looking at reality also applies to how books are read, and this may partly explain why a literary critic like Kermode developed his philosophy in the direction that he did.

The behavior of readers establishes the principle that a consideration of the end of a book transforms how one reads the book. It is not uncommon for a reader when taking up a book to start by turning to the last chapter as a guide to what the book is about and to use what is found there to guide the reading of the whole. A literary critic will read a book more than once, and second (and subsequent) readings are done with knowledge of how the book ends, and it is this epistemological vantage point that enables critical appraisal of a book’s contents. As stated by Jonathan E. Dyck, “Reading the ending first is simply a shortcut to a critical reading of the text.”4

Something similar is involved if the series of books that make up the OT is read as a coordinated canonical structure.5 The diversity of the contents and origins of the different parts that make up the Bible does not exclude it from being considered

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a single work.6 A reader’s expectation is that the last book in a series builds on, interacts with, and (re)interprets the books that precede it in a particular canonical order. If the Bible is read in canonical order and viewed as having a narrative trajectory (i.e. as one story moving toward a goal), this requires “an increased emphasis on the theology of the later literature which forms the end of the story.”You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
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