Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 26:1 (NA 1975)
Article: The Study Of Old Testament Theology: Its Aims And Purpose
Author: John Goldingay

TynBul 26:1 (1975) p. 34

The Study Of Old Testament Theology: Its Aims And Purpose*

J. Goldingay

*A paper read at a meeting of the Tyndale Fellowship at Tyndale House, Cambridge, in July, 1974.

The history of Old Testament theology as a discipline has been well chronicled, for instance (from varying perspectives) by N.W. Porteous, R.C. Dentan, R.K. Harrison, and W.F. Harrington.1 Its floruit began, in the context of renewed German theological interest in the Bible between the wars, with the publication of Eichrodt’s first volume in 1933.2 It ended with the publication in Germany in 1960 of von Rad’s second volume.3 Von Rad’s work has introduced a period of reflection and debate — a debate which continues without seeming to promise early agreed conclusions — upon the methodology of Old Testament Theology.4 In part this was because von Rad’s diachronic approach was so radically different from the one that had broadly characterized the earlier Old Testament Theologies.5 But to this fact must be added the broader questions being asked about the Old

TynBul 26:1 (1975) p. 35

Testament’s significance, reflected in the two volumes of essays by Claus Westermann and B.W. Anderson6 — and also the wider debate on hermeneutics. There have been other contributory factors, notably the varied broadsides of James Barr upon loose thinking especially in this area, beginning in 1961 with The Semantics of Biblical Language;7 and the publication of Honest to God (1963)8 and The Secular City (1965),9 which Brevard Childs sees as bringing to a head the American ‘Crisis in Biblical Theology’ — this was, he reckons, the moment when the American postwar ‘biblical theology movement’ died and creative theology resumed a more ‘natural’ or philosophical turn.10 We have thus entered a period of reflection, and hesitation about the task of writing Old Testament theology.

This paper takes up three aspects of the study of Old Testament theology and interpretation. The first is the question of presuppositions: can Old Testament theology be presuppositionless and uninvolved? Is its task only descriptive (“th...