Introduction to the Old Testament

Describe anything in Study Unit 1 that has surprised or challenged you. What relevance does the material in the Unit have for your understanding of the Old Testament? Do you know of any situations where an appeal to the Biblical text has led to an unjust situation?

It has been good to learn about the parallels in the Bible and the Ugaritic texts, and about the way in which Hebrew theologians adopted titles of Canaanite gods to better name and describe YHWH. It is fascinating to think that El Shaddai was originally a deity worshipped at Ugarit: that name for God has always struck me as beautifully mysterious, yet somehow wrong. When I first heard that name sung in a Christian church by a lone reedy voice, I was somewhat confused by it: nowhere in my prior experience of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had I heard him called by that name (not surprising: children’s Bibles tend to avoid the complexity of six billion names for God), and on some inexplicable level it just didn’t seem to fit the picture I had of God; the name felt quite alien to me. The feeling of alienation was amplified by posters I saw in the local Christian bookstore featuring a pure white dove with an olive branch in its beak, flapping away from baby blue El Shaddai lettering: it all seemed to say “This is a fragile God, handle Him with care”. But I let my cynicism about it go and came to accept it as one of God’s names. And now I find out that it’s a name that was adopted from another context and applied to God in order to demonstrate that the one true God incorporates all of the many things that the lesser deities were supposed to be. That works for me, because it validates my suspicion that God is so much more almighty than the image this particular name invokes for me.

I find the documentary hypothesis very interesting, and I quite like the idea that there were multiple sources that have been pooled and integrated to create the whole. It is interesting to see how each source has its own perspective and promotes specific areas of interest or ways of thinking about God and the people. Put together, all of these different perspectives tell a fascinating story about how our understanding of God has progressed over time, which offers hope that our understanding of God will continue to grow as time goes by.

I am intrigued by considering the structure of the Jewish and Christian canons, and how the choice of books as well as the order in which they are included is intended to convey a message, either in conclusion (for the Jewish canon) or to set the scene for what comes next (in the Christian canon). It is also helpful to be more aware of the literary form and context of the writings, and to be inspired to also look at the texts in the passages and books preceding and following any particular scripture that is being considered.

The material in this study unit is relevant in that it encourages me to interpret scripture in a wider context rather than just literally: it guides me towards becoming more aware of the social, political, cultural, religious and historical situation in which the texts were written and then to try to understand the intended message of the writer for the original audience so that I can apply the learning in my own context, by examining the current social, political, cultural and religious situation in which I am living, taking into account my own mindset, thinking and influences, as well as the thinking and influences of the society in which I live. Doing this will give me a fuller appreciation of scripture and enable me to be more comprehensive in the way I interpret and apply Biblical texts. It will also help me to avoid being unreasonably rigid or literalist in my interpretation.

There are a great many situations where appeals to isolated Biblical texts have led to unjust situations! Some parents appeal to the Bible as their justification for being unnecessarily cruel to their children and using excessive corporal punishment. Proverbs is packed full of sanctimonious counsel for these folk: Pr 13:24, 19:22, 22:15 and 23:13-14.

Other unjust situations traditionally exacerbated by appeals to Biblical texts include the treatment of women (Lv 12:2), the keeping of slaves (Gn 9:25-27), the condemnation of homosexuals (Gn 19:24), and the persecution of nonreligious persons or people of other faiths (Nm 25:12-13).