Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 74:1 (NA 2023)
Article: An Invitation To A New Era Of Biblical Theology: Towards An Old Testament Theology Of Hospitality
Author: Brittany N. Melton

TynBull 74:1 (2023) p. 113

An Invitation To A New Era Of Biblical Theology: Towards An Old Testament Theology Of Hospitality1

Brittany N. Melton

Associate Professor of Old Testament – Regent College, Vancouver
Research Fellow – University of the Free State, South Africa
[email protected]

Abstract

In the past thirty years, the field of Old Testament theology has largely resisted the idea of a unifying centre, and has instead embraced a plurality of methods to reflect an emphasis on the diversity of perspectives within the Old Testament itself as well as its readership. While recognising the critique levelled against biblical theology for its disservice to the diversity of the canon, it is argued that fresh articulations of Scripture’s coherence are pivotal for the life of faith. To this end the value of hospitality is posited as an organising principle for a new way forward, and preliminarily supported by an examination of Genesis 18–19 as a foundational text.

1. Introduction

In the past thirty years, the field of Old Testament theology has largely resisted the idea of a unifying centre and has instead embraced a plurality of methods to reflect an emphasis on the diversity of perspectives within the Old Testament itself as well as its readership. While recognising the critique levelled against biblical theology for its disservice to the diversity of the canon (chiefly by James Barr),2 it will be argued that fresh articulations of Scripture’s coherence

TynBull 74:1 (2023) p. 114

are pivotal for the life of faith. Further, given the pattern of the history of biblical theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we should expect a new era to accompany generational shifts. Nearly thirty years on from the publication of Walter Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament (1997), a new approach is warranted, one that focuses not on a unifying theme/metaphor or ideological centre but on a comprehensive and ethically oriented value; to this end, the value of hospitality will be posited as an organising principle for a new way forward.3 While the prototype for biblical hospitality dawns with creation itself, the exemplar text and counter-text of biblical hospitality, in Genesis 18 and 19, will be examined as foundational texts towards an Old Testament theology of hospitality.

2. A Recent History Of Old Testament/Biblical Theology

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