OLD TESTAMENT STORY
Seeing the Old Testament as a whole
By Audrey Nash. Author House. 154 pages. £9.49
ISBN 978-1-4389-2873-9
This book, by a highly experienced Bible teacher, is designed to provide a ‘road map’ through the Old Testament so as to help the Christian reader to read it, rather than just simply dip into the ‘purple’ passages and predictions of Jesus. Clearly and interestingly expressed, in a popular style, it carries its scholarship lightly (as it should, given its intended ‘popular’ readership).
Its strengths include its stress upon the fact that the Old Covenant was a covenant of grace, and the regular quotable quotes: for example, ‘With this move away from covenant loyalty there was also inevitably a move away from covenant morality’.
Generally the story is well and pointedly told and the texts that are not historical narrative are usually fitted within the wider biblical and (where necessary) historical framework. This is especially true of the prophets, where Nash stresses their role as preachers of repentance rather than clairvoyants!
If criticism might be made, a minor one would be the number of printing errors. Of greater consequence, the simple telling of the story sometimes occurs without the offer of an interpretative framework or application…. And this reviewer simply doesn’t believe that the Old Testament saints only had a vague idea of life after death!
Overall… a very useful book to encourage the ‘ordinary’ Christian believer to get into the spiritual riches that are the Old Testament.
The Rev. Dr. Stephen Dray,
senior minister, Ferndale Baptist Church, Southend-on-Sea; and visiting Scholar, Sarum College, Salisbury
