Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous
Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 45:1 (Mar 2002)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous
JETS 45:1 (March 2002) p. 133
Book Reviews
The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective. By James Barr. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999, xvii + 715 pp., $48.00.
Biblical theology is a flowering subject. The multiplicity of books and even scholarly journals devoted to (aspects of) biblical theology that recently have appeared in print testify to this fact. And yet, despite this outward sign of vibrant life, biblical theology is a discipline that is very much in search of its own identity and as such has a contested character. The massive and learned work of James Barr illustrates this quandary skillfully with special attention to the OT.
Barr’s monumental publication, which was “written as a sort of textbook” (p. xiiv) is not intended to be a biblical theology. It is rather a discussion of the whole idea of biblical theology with its possibilities and prospects (p. xiiv). While its primary goal is neither to provide a survey nor a history of a discipline of biblical theology, Barr has nevertheless furnished the scholarly community with a tour de force of the discipline. The bibliography spans some 31 pages (pp. 610-40), covering most of the relevant literature up to the cutoff date for the book sometime in 1997. The bibliography is followed by 58 pages of small-print footnotes (pp. 641-98) in which Barr further interacts with other positions and scholars.
Barr begins his book with the question why it has been so difficult to define biblical theology and suggests that this is the case because “‘biblical theology’” is an essentially contested notion and “does not have clear independent contours of its own” (p. 5). Its character, Barr submits, changes depending on to what it is contrasted. Barr suggests six different contrasts: (1) the contrast between biblical and doctrinal (systematic, dogmatic, or constructive) theology; (2) the difference between biblical theology and a nontheological study of the Bible; (3) the contrast between biblical theology and the history of religion and corresponding approaches; (4) the relations of biblical theology with philosophy and the question of natural theology; (5) the interpretation of parts of the Bible as distinct from the larger complexes taken as wholes; (6) The hotly debated conflict between biblical theology as an “objective” discipline or as a “faith-committed” discipline. These contrasts are discussed in greater detail in later chapters.
When the term “biblical theology” is used for the construction of one single theology of the entire Christian Bible, in contrast to individual theologies of the OT or NT, Barr has chosen to use the term “pan-biblical theology” (p. 1). Chapter 2 provides a concise overview of the origins of modern OT theology. Chapter 3...
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