The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
The Elder Testament serves as a theological introduction to the canonical unity of the Scriptures of Israel. Christopher Seitz demonstrates that, while an emphasis on theology and canonical form often sidesteps critical methodology, the canon itself provides essential theological commentary on textual and historical reconstruction.
Part One reflects on the Old Testament as literature inquiring about its implied reader. Seitz introduces the phrase “Elder Testament” to establish a wider conceptual lens for what is commonly called the “Old Testament” or the “Hebrew Bible,” so that the canon might be read to its fullest capacity.
Part Two provides an overview of the canon proper, from Torah to Prophets to Writings. Seitz here employs modern criticism to highlight the theological character of the Bible in its peculiar canonical shape. But he argues that the canon cannot be reduced to simply vicissitudes of history, politics, or economics. Instead, the integrated form of this Elder Testament speaks of metahistorical disclosures of the divine, correlating the theological identity of God across time and beyond.
Part Three examines Proverbs 8, Genesis 1, and Psalms 2 and 110—texts that are notable for their prominence in early Christian exegesis. The Elder Testament measures the ontological pressure exerted by these texts, which led directly to the earliest expressions of Trinitarian reading in the Christian church, long before the appearance of a formally analogous Scripture, bearing the now-familiar name “New Testament.”
Canon to Theology to Trinity. This trilogy, as Seitz concludes, is not strictly a historical sequence. Rather, this trilogy is ontologically calibrated through time by the One God who is the selfsame subject matter of both the Elder and New Testaments. The canon makes the traditional theological work of the church possible without forcing a choice between a minimalist criticism or a detached, often moribund systematic theology. The canon achieves “the concord and harmony of the law and the prophets in the covenant delivered at the coming of the Lord” of which Clement of Alexandria so eloquently spoke.
- Reflects on the Old Testament as literature inquiring about its implied reader
- Provides an overview of the canon proper, from Torah to Prophets to Writings
- Examines texts that are notable for their prominence in early Christian exegesis
Impossible. Sealed tight. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity cannot be successfully grounded in the Old Testament, read on its own terms. Or so scholars have claimed for hundreds of years. But the Old Testament’s witness to God’s complex reality contains volcanic pressure. Large cracks have already appeared. But stand back! Christopher Seitz has blown off the lid.
—Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity
The work’s primary strength lies in its coherent and robust theological vision of the Elder Testament as an authoritative theological witness with its own venerable integrity—a vision both traditional and innovative. Seitz’s mastery of canonical hermeneutics shines throughout the text, providing a solid backbone for his theological claims. Seitz’s erudition shines through in his careful textual readings and his command of theological hermeneutics and early patristic interpretation.
—Stephen L. Cook, Review of Biblical Literature
Christopher Seitz is one of the freshest voices in biblical scholarship: learned, witty, and incisively theological. He provides more reasons for recovering the ‘Elder’ Testament as a source for Christian thinking.
—Gary A. Anderson, Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Theology, Notre Dame University
- Title: The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity
- Author: Christopher R. Seitz
- Publisher: Baylor University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Pages: 310
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Resource ID: LLS:LDRTSTMNTTTRNTY
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-06-06T20:47:43Z