Known as one of America’s best theologians and one of the world’s foremost scholars on the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann has inspired young scholars and students and driven the discourse on theology with some of the biggest players in contemporary Bible scholarship.
In this collection of essays, Walter Brueggemann raises a variety of intriguing, contemporary questions on the relation of society and text in the Old Testament, such as:
Brueggemann opens to a myriad of readers a compelling picture of subversive paradigm and social possibility in the Hebrew Bible.
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Raises a variety of intriguing questions related to the relation of society and text in the Old Testament. Brueggemann’s social reading is a constant awareness of the social dimensions of every text.
—Patrick D. Miller, Charles T. Haley Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary
Walter Brueggemann through his teaching, lecturing, and writing, has effectively demonstrated the significance of the Old Testament for our fractured world today. Recognized as the preeminent interpreter of the ancient texts in relation to questions posed by a variety of academic disciplines, he has shown the way toward a compelling understanding of the major components of the faith and life of ancient Israel, especially its Psalms, the prophets, and the narratives. His award-winning Theology of the Old Testament quickly became a foundational work in the field.
Brueggemann, who holds a ThD from Union Seminary, New York, and a PhD from St. Louis University, is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He was previously professor of Old Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis. His many Fortress Press books, including The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain, Power, and Weakness, exhibit a fecund combination of imaginative power, sound scholarship, and a passion of justice and redemption.
“The three belong closely together: a God who makes covenant by making a move toward the partner (Hos. 2:14, 18–20); a community that practices covenant by the new forms of torah, knowledge, and forgiveness (Jer. 31:31–34); and a world yet to be transformed to covenanting, by the dismantling of imperial reality (Isa. 42:6–7; 49:6).” (Page 53)
“Job does indeed represent the ‘old truth’ that oppressive life must be accepted as ordained, surely a comfort in exile, while the Deuteronomistic Historian bears the ‘new truth.’65 Exile brings these truths to sharp conflict, the one offering assurance of grace, the other the urgency of repentance. Exile may be read, then, either as a destiny to be embraced or as a historical situation to be transformed.” (Page 33)
“Everything is at stake because how we judge it to be in heaven is the way we imagine it to be on earth. If our mistaken notion leads us to an impassive, self-sufficient God in heaven, then the model for humanity, for Western culture, for ourselves, is that we should also be self-sufficient, impassive, beyond need, not to be imposed on.” (Page 46)
“Where there is intervention on behalf of the powerless, the holy, covenanting power of God is at work. This radical liberation tendency belongs to and is derived from the central covenant texts of the Bible. Covenanting is an assertion that vulnerable relationships of solidarity constitute an alternative way to organize the world.” (Page 57)
“This God is not known in any speculative or theoretical way but always through acts of social intervention and inversion that create possibilities of human life in contexts where the human spirit has been crushed (see Isa. 57:15) and human possibility choked off.” (Page 55)