Reconstructing Old Testament Theology

In this informative and keen look at contemporary trends in Old Testament theology, Perdue builds on his earlier volume The Collapse of History (1994). He investigates how a variety of perspectives and methodologies have impacted how the Old Testament is read in the twenty-first century including: literary criticism; rhetorical criticism, feminist, womanist, and mujerista theologies, liberation theology; Jewish theology; postmodernism; and postcolonialism. Perdue provides a sensitive reading of the aims of these approaches as well as providing critique and setting them in their various cultural contexts. In his conclusion, the author provides a look at the future and how these various voices and approaches will continue to impact how we carry out Old Testament theology.

With the waning influence of history and historical criticism as the normative context and method of Old Testament study, alternative approaches and new perspectives have appeared. These current developments, Leo Perdue points out, need not halt progress in the doing of Old Testament theology but can move the discipline in a variety of new and imaginative directions.

In this informative and keen look at contemporary trends in Old Testament theology, Perdue builds on his earlier volume The Collapse of History (1994). He investigates how a variety of perspectives and methodologies have impacted how the Old Testament is read in the twenty-first century including: literary criticism; rhetorical criticism, feminist, womanist, and mujerista theologies, liberation theology; Jewish theology; postmodernism; and postcolonialism. Perdue provides a sensitive reading of the aims of these approaches as well as providing critique and setting them in their various cultural contexts. In his conclusion, the author provides a look at the future and how these various voices and approaches will continue to impact how we carry out Old Testament theology.

The author's purpose for Introduction to Old Testament Theology is to show how different approaches to the Old Testament can be brought together into a single theology. The author develops his own distinctive approach which he calls canonical theology.

In this extensively revised and updated edition of The Flowering of Old Testament Theology, Professor Ollenburger provides help for beginning theological students, who are frequently overwhelmed by the proliferation of volumes dealing with Old Testament theology, to say nothing of the variety of approaches used in these works. This textbook has been re-issued with a new title, Old Testament Theology: Flowering and Future. Selected essays include key theological statements of Otto Eissfeldt, Walther Eichrodt, Theodorus C. Vriezen, George E. Wright, Gerhard von Rad, Walther Zimmerli, John L. McKenzie, Ronald E. Clements, Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Samuel L. Terrien, Claus Westermann, Brevard S. Childs, Rolf Knierim, Horst D. Preuss, Walter Brueggemann, Paul R. House, Bernhard W. Anderson, Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Hartmut Gese, Phyllis Trible, Jon D. Levenson, John H. Sailhamer, Gunther H. Wittenberg, James Barr, R.W.L. Moberly, and Mark G. Brett. An appendix contains Johann P. Gabler's 1787 seminal essay on biblical theology. An extensive bibliography and indexes of authorities and Scripture references conclude the volume. - Publisher.

Through these essays, Brueggemann addresses the necessity for thinking about the shape and structure of Old Testament theology, and the impact such thinking can have on the large issues of contemporary life. "The Old Testament is seen to be something that has intelligible and significant connections to all sorts of things in this world".--Patrick D. Miller, Jr.

In this first volume in the Library of Biblical Theology series, Walter Brueggemann portrays the key components in Israel's encounter with God as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. Creation, election, Torah, the divine hand in history; these and other theological high points appear both in their original historical context, and their ongoing relevance for contemporary Jewish and Christian self-understanding.