Studying the Old Testament
As a whole, there are a number of ways
of reading the Bible and the Old Testament. One way to read the Old Testament is to read
it from a Christian perspective and based on the Christian tradition.
But there are also other ways to read the Bible and the Old Testament.
Jews read it from the perspective of Judaism and prefer to refer to the Old Testament
as the Hebrew Bible, as the name 'Old' for them implies something deficient,
and also, the term Old Testament in itself implies a Christian approach.
Or, Moslems would read the Bible quite differently from Christians. And, those who do not
have a religious commitment might read it simply as a book that has had considerable influence
on Western civilization, and indeed the whole world.
However, there are also various ways to read the Bible within the Christian tradition,
for example depending on which denomination one belongs and whether one engages with the
academic study of the subject.
Academic study of the Old Testament is by and large not tied to religious commitments.
Most of the academic study has been done in the West, even though some work has been done
elsewhere, especially in recent times. In historical dimension, while the topic was of course studied before,
we may consider that Old Testament study developed as an academic field in accompaniment to the rise of the Documentary
Hypothesis of the Pentateuch in the late 18th and the 19th century. The works of de Wette and
Wellhausen in the 19th century are the classic foundational ones in this respect.
While 19th century scholarship was in many ways mostly based on an exegesis of the biblical texts on their own,
the late 19th century witnessed the birth of the archaeological and ancient Near Eastern disciplines.
The 20th century has also added comparative methods from other fields, including anthropology
and social sciences. New literary approaches are also worth mentioning separately. One can now in many ways consider the field
as wide as any study of human life as a whole.
In relation to exegesis, while the de Wette - Wellhausenian approach that dated Deuteronomy to the 7th century and the priestly
materials of the Pentateuch to the exilic and postexilic times became the mainstream approach and still enjoys much
support in its overall contours, many if not most of its tenets have been questioned, with a number of
somewhat divergent theories proposed. The only real anchor that still remains is the dating of Deuteronomy to
the 7th century BC. Few have challenged this tenet thus far.
It is however also true that there have been approaches that have not followed the mainstream.
There have always been conservatives who have dated the biblical documents early. In addition, since
about the mid-1990s (even earlier in certain ways), some scholars have argued that the preexilic Israel
is a scholarly construct from the Persian period and that very little can be known about biblical Israel
before the exile. In other words, we currently have three main groups in the field: the somewhat diversified
mainstream, the minimalists and the conservatives.
This author believes that all three groups have something to say. He himself has
argued against the necessity of dating Deuteronomy to the 7th century based on centralization
of worship, which itself was the main pillar of de Wette and Wellhausen's original placing of the book
to that time (see P. Pitkänen,
Central
Sanctuary and Centralization of Worship). If the date of Deuteronomy in the seventh century
BC is not assumed any more, Old Testament scholarship becomes much more open to various interpretations
than before, and in the view of this writer, becomes freed from an unnecessary restriction.
In addition to considering some fundamental tenets of the field, it is the conviction of this author
that we must keep applying any possible methods that can shed light to the biblical materials. In particular,
there is no excuse for ignoring archaeological and ancient Near Eastern studies. Also, for example, anthropological,
sociological and literary methods can shed much light for the study of the Old Testament. While it
is impossible to be an expert in all possible relpated disciplines, becoming sufficiently well versed in
them in order to be able to look at issues holistically is imperative in the view of this author. Of course,
the scholarly community should be able to count on collaboration by various people as part of this, even when
tensions may exist due to one person covering only one area and due to general natural interpretative divergence
between individuals and (sub)disciplines.
In the view of this author, these are in a nutshell the main challenges for Old Testament scholarship in the new millennium.
In the light of this, any new entrants to the field of academic study of the Old Testament are advised to work hard in order to be able to interact
with fundamental questions relating to the field, and with multidisciplinary methods and approaches.
Aspects of the modest site offered here are intended to help towards getting to grips with some of these issues.
Finally, interpreters are of course then encouraged to apply the materials and results of scholarship depending
on their personal contexts and any faith commitments. There is less here to say about that, without at all implying that
the enterprise is unimportant.
<Last
updated 24/9/2011>