Reviews Of Books -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 76:2 (Fall 2014)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous


Reviews Of Books

Biblical Studies

Jason S. DeRouchie, ed., What the Old Testament Authors Really Cared About: A Survey of Jesus’ Bible. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2013. Pp. 496. $45.99, cloth.

This volume is an overview of the entire OT, with book-by-book treatments contributed by a number of authors. It has been organized under the categories of Law, Prophets, and Writings, the order of the Jewish canon (cf. Luke 24:44) in an attempt “to show the theological significance of this structure” (p. 23). The volume, a companion to Kregel’s What the New Testament Authors Really Cared About (2008), is aimed at college or seminary students and local churches, and is designed to be “manageable” and “message-driven” (p. 23).

The stated goal of the book is to present “the essence of what is revealed in the OT, with a conscious eye toward the fulfillment found in Jesus as clarified in the New Testament” (p. 13). As such it is written “from a conservative, evangelical perspective,” and intentionally refrains from presenting a history of Israelite religion, synthesizing sources behind the text, or surveying a theology of the HB per se, among other endeavors (cf. p. 23). Rather, the OT is distinctly understood as the progressive revelatory foundation of the NT, which itself behaves “like an answer key in the back of a math textbook” (p. 14). Accordingly, the contributors often turn to the NT to “unpack the long-range trajectories that are evident [in the OT]” (p. 14).

Although not the primary focus, each chapter treating a given OT book provides pertinent background information. This includes “authorship and audience, time period, geopolitical context, and purpose,” which “provide[s] the setting for the overview of the book’s message that shapes each chapter’s body” (p. 14). As the title indicates, there is a stress throughout upon “authorial intent as the basis for meaning” (p. 14), while recognizing a difference between the protagonist/speaker of a given book and “the final author/compiler” (p. 15). In the face of this complexity, no book’s author is definitively identified in any chapter, yet each contributor deals briefly with the question of authorship. In this way, it is assumed in this volume that there is coherent authorial intention and shaping in each OT book—at both the levels of composition and compilation—that in its historical context and in relation to the NT itself has a controlling influence upon interpretation.

Each chapter prominently presents the central, authorial message of each OT book in three to six themes, which then act as chapter subheadings. While the OT is explicitly identifi...

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