Rolf A. Jacobson and Michael J. Chan. <i>Introducing the Old Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey</i>

Jacobson and Chan wrote their Introduction for “believers, nonbelievers, doubters, inquirers, those who are curious, and those who simply have to take a required course” in Old Testament (p. xiii). It is “the companion volume to Mark Allan Powell’s Introducing the New Testament” (p. xiii). Chapters need not be read in order, various viewpoints of disputed topics are presented and not always resolved, and the book is replete with ancient and modern Jewish and Christian artwork as well as a website that offers further resources (pp. xiv–xvi).The volume comprises five parts. Part 1, Old Testament: Context and Scope, introduces the other four parts through two chapters. Chapter 1 describes the cultural influence of the Old Testament. The authors observe correctly that few readers understand its sociohistorical background, hence the potential for misinterpreting it. They redress the knowledge deficit with a concise overview of the major periods of the Old Testament, its geography, and facets of contemporary life, including governance, religion, and diet. Chapter 2 is an equally informative discussion of the formation of the Old Testament canon, from oral to written form, and its various renditions, for example, Jewish and Roman Catholic. In the discussion of a typology of Hebrew (pp. 37–38), the authors enumerate Archaic, Classical/Standard, and Late Biblical Hebrew. The Archaic corpus includes Gen 49:1–27; Exod 15:2 [sic]–18/20–21; Exod 34:6–7; Deut 33:2–29; Judg 5; Ps 68; and 2 Sam 1:19–27. Although noting that scholars dispute which texts are archaic, they do not mention that linguistic dating has come under sharp criticism (see, e.g., R. C. Rezetko and Ian Young, “Currents in the Historical Linguistics and Linguistic Dating of the Hebrew Bible,” Hiphil Novum 5.1 [2019]: 3–95).The remaining four parts cover the major divisions of the Old Testament: Part 2, From Creation to Inheritance (the Pentateuch); Part 3, Stories of Land, Loss, and Homecoming (the Historical Books); Part 4, Poetic Collections (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs); and Part 5, Prophetic Literature (the Major and Minor Prophets). Each part begins with a chapter that sets the context for the following chapters in the part, which covers one of the biblical books in the section (e.g., Part 2: From Creation to Inheritance includes Chapter 3: The Pentateuch, Chapter 4: Genesis, Chapter 5: Exodus, etc.). Nonintroductory chapters have the same five sections: Background (composition, development, genre), Literary Interpretation, Theological Interpretation, Historical Interpretation, and For Further Reading. The last section lists a short number of books by mostly mainstream scholars, from classics (e.g., for the chapter on 1–2 Kings, John Bright’s A History of Israel, 4th ed. [SCM Press, 2000 (1959)]) to contemporaries (e.g., for the chapter on Habakkuk, Thomas Renz’s The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah [Eerdmans, 2021]). For books such as Ruth that may be especially meaningful to female readers, bibliographies are weighted toward women scholars. While the bibliographies are duly representative, all are books and there is occasional over reliance on a few scholars (e.g., Walter Brueggeman, Terrence Fretheim).Following are examples of the authors’ treatment of some of the “disputed topics” of the Old Testament. On the composition of the Pentateuch, they start with the traditional view of Mosaic authorship, offer a précis of the Documentary Hypothesis and its criticism by Whybray, van Seters et al., and end with synchronic approaches. The chapter on Genesis makes brief reference to extrabiblical texts such as Enuma Elish but does not entertain the question of human origins. They write that the Exodus tradition of a group that escaped servitude in Egypt, passed through the Red Sea, and wandered in the wilderness should be “held lightly. The entire ‘people’ who understood themselves as ancient ‘Israelites’ probably emerged from several earlier groups,”’ including an exodus group, local Canaanites, and hitherto nomads (p. 110). Discussion of the Conquest/Settlement starts with the vexing issue of divinely ordered genocide before addressing the actual means by which Israel made the Promised Land its home. The authors note the mixed archaeological evidence and summarize the three main models in a sidebar (conquest, peaceful infiltration, and revolution). It is regrettable that the For Further Reading section does not include Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and B. Albert Nakhai’s, “A Landscape Comes to Life,” NEA 62 (1999): 101–27, since it is more accessible for students than Israel Finkelstein and Amihay Mazar’s The Quest for the Historical Israel (SBL, 2007) and Hershel Shanks et al., The Rise of Ancient Israel (BAS, 1992). On the monarchy, the authors remark, “there may be no historical question regarding the Old Testament about which there is currently more intensive debate than that of the kingdom of David and Solomon” (p. 250). They refer to the maximalist, minimalist, and center positions as well as review equivocality in the archaeological data (e.g., the Tel Dan Stele and Moabite Stone) but do not offer a definitive conclusion. The composition of the book of Isaiah is “deeply contested by scholars” (p. 430). The authors summarize the case for the unity of the sixty-six chapters but appear to be more persuaded by the standard tripartite division. Here again, it is regrettable that the chapter bibliography does not include Jacob Stromberg’s concise An Introduction to the Study of Isaiah (T&T Clark, 2011) and Alec Motyer’s The Prophecy of Isaiah (InterVarsity Press, 1993) as respective representatives of composite and unified authorship.Although there is a standard index, dividing by subject, author, etc., would have been preferable. Also regrettable, the volume has endnotes. Since they span only five pages, it is unlikely that footnotes would have been off-putting for readers. There is, however, much to commend in the volume. For example, besides maps and artwork, sidebars provide concise information on terms such as “BCE” and “ostraca.” Similarly, the authors understand how far the West has moved from biblical literacy and so presume little knowledge of the Old Testament on the part of readers. They point out, for instance, that Jesus was a Jew (p. 25)—an unknown datum to many of my students. At just over 650 pages (chapters average approximately sixteen pages), the volume is ambitious for a semester course but could be reasonable over two semesters. Jacobson and Chan’s Introduction is probably not the choice for a strongly evangelical institution, nor for a strongly critical one either. However, it not only succeeds in its objective of opening the door to students with or without any knowledge of the Old Testament, it goes beyond by piquing their interest to explore it further.