OLD TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION:
Text, Interpretation, Structure, Themes
By Robin Routledge
IVP Apollos. 445 pages. £29.99
ISBN 978 1 783 594 290
One of the most helpful books on the Old Testament in recent years has been Robin Routledge’s Old Testament Theology: A Thematic Approach (2008).
So the publication of his companion volume, Old Testament Introduction, immediately excited my interest. Whereas Old Testament Theology looks at the beliefs and teachings of the first part of the Bible, this new work addresses the more basic questions of what the OT is and how it can be (and has been) interpreted.
Origin of text
Of the main body of the book (excluding introductory matters, bibliographies and indexes), a little under two thirds is devoted to discussion of the origin of the text, the historical context from which it comes to us, the different kinds of literature it contains (poetry, narrative, prophecy, etc.), and the methods used to understand it. This is all helpfully prefaced by a section dealing with the question as to how we are to approach the OT as Christian Scripture. The second part, comprising a little over a third of the book, gives brief introductions to each of the books of the OT. This is less helpful, simply because what one can usefully say by way of introduction to any book of the OT in a couple of pages is very limited.
The reader will inevitably have recourse to a commentary for a proper introduction to each book. In mitigation of the concise format, however, extensive further study is suggested in footnotes at the beginning of each section and in a ‘Further Reading’ section before the main bibliography.
Issues of scholarship
The first part is the more substantial, where Routledge tackles the issues surrounding the OT in contemporary scholarship. This means, of course, that it is educational rather than devotional or expository, but if you want to understand how the OT is approached, understood and debated by experts in the field, this book is as good an introduction as any available. It is an enjoyable read. Of necessity, Routledge deals with many points of controversy in the understanding and interpretation of the OT, especially bones of contention between conservative and liberal/critical scholarship. He does so with his characteristic clarity, but often without passing judgment in favour of one side or the other.
Documentary hypothesis?
On one or two points he does not seem to me to give full value to conservative arguments in the debate. He concludes, for example, that ‘some modified version of the Documentary Hypothesis may, still, be the best option’ for understanding the composition of the Pentateuch (p.57), accepts multiple authorship of Isaiah and is untroubled by a late date for Daniel.
This does not invalidate the usefulness of the book, nor would extensive debate on points such as these be possible in an introductory work of this nature, but it means I would hesitate to recommend it to someone who would read it uncritically.
Routledge’s Old Testament Theology is a book I wish I could have written. His Old Testament Introduction is a book I would like to have written, but a little differently.
