John Sailhamer’s "The Meaning Of The Pentateuch:" A Review Essay -- By: James M. Hamilton, Jr.

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 14:2 (Summer 2010)
Article: John Sailhamer’s "The Meaning Of The Pentateuch:" A Review Essay
Author: James M. Hamilton, Jr.


John Sailhamer’s The Meaning Of The Pentateuch: A Review Essay

James M. Hamilton, Jr.

1. Introduction

This book received significant electronic attention. Mark Driscoll and John Piper went back and forth over it on Twitter, then Piper blogged on it, followed by a Collin Hansen Christianity Today interview, all linked on Justin Taylor’s Between Two Worlds blog. Even before the generation of this digital excitement, I had been looking forward to this book for several years. If asked to identify the major influences on my thinking about the Old Testament, Sailhamer is on the short list with T. Desmond Alexander, Stephen Dempster, William J. Dumbrell, and Paul House.

Sailhamer’s Presidential Ad-dress to the ETS, later published as “The Messiah in the Hebrew Bible,” was a watershed moment in my thinking about the Old Testament.1 That address gripped and fascinated me, as did an essay Sailhamer wrote on the connections between Genesis 49, Numbers 22-24, and other texts.2 I say all this to preface the following points of appreciation, puzzlement, and disagreement.

2. Points Of Appreciation

2.1 Impressive Research In Latin And German

A few years ago I had the opportunity to meet Sailhamer and visit with him for a few moments. When I asked him who he read and who influenced his thinking, he explained that he had given himself to reading mainly German and Latin works, which meant that he did not spend much time with contemporary work being done in English. That decision is evident in this volume. Sailhamer quotes freely from the Latin of Augustine, Jerome, Coccejus, and others. He ranges widely through an array of German authors as well.

This exposes Sailhamer to streams of influence that are not available in English, and it puts him in position, for example, to critique Moses

Stuart’s translation of Johann Augusti Ernesti’s work on Hermeneutics (106, 111 n. 14, passim). This remarkable strength of Sailhamer’s opens him up, however, to a corresponding weakness. The decision to focus on older works in Latin and contemporary German authors has given Sailhamer unique abilities and perspectives, but it also has implications about his awareness of what his contemporaries are writing, as will be seen in §3.4 below.

2.2 Focus On The Messiah

Sailhamer has a salutary focus on the Messiah in the Old Testament, and he seeks to show how this theme rises from the text of the Old Testament and develops as the t...

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