4. The Pentateuch Today: Relevance and Application
God as Creator Today
The Fall Today
Significance of the Faith of Abraham
Old Covenant/New Covenant
What Are All of These Laws Doing in My Bible If the Law Is Obsolete?
What Does Sacred Space Mean to Me?
A Sense of the Holy
3. OLD TESTAMENT NARRATIVE
1. Introduction to Old Testament Narrative and Its Time
Summary of Ancient Near Eastern History
2. Introduction to the Literature and Theology of Old Testament Narrative
Literary Perspective
Theological Perspectives
3. Introduction to the Books of Old Testament Narrative
Joshua
Judges
Ruth 1 and 2 Samuel 1 and 2 Kings
1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezra and Nehemiah
Esther
4. Old Testament Narrative Today: Relevance and Application
History Seems Boring and Irrelevant to Me Help!
How Can We View History Biblically?
How Should We View the Bible Historically?
4. PROPHETS AND PROPHETIC LITERATURE
1. Introduction to Prophecy and Prophetic Literature
Story Line of the Prophets in Their Times
Literary Perspective
2. Introduction to the Theology of the Prophetic Books
Prediction, Prophets, and God
Fulfillment and Revelation
Theological Perspectives
3. Introduction to the Books of Prophetic Literature
Purpose of Prophetic Books
Isaiah (740–700 BC)
Jeremiah (ca. 627–575 BC)
Lamentations
Ezekiel (ca. 593–570 BC)
Daniel (ca. 605–535 BC)
Minor Prophets
4. Prophetic Literature Today: Relevance and Application
Thinking about Prophecy
Indictment Today
Judgment Today
Instruction Today
Aftermath Today
5. WISDOM AND PSALMS
1. Introduction to Wisdom Literature
What Is Wisdom?
Retribution Principle
Literary Perspective
2. Introduction to the Literature of Psalms
Summary of Content
Literary Perspective
3. Wisdom Literature as Scripture
Purpose of the Wisdom Literature as a Whole
Theology of Wisdom Books and Psalms
4. Introduction to the Wisdom Books and Psalms
Job Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Songs
5. Wisdom Literature and Psalms Today: Relevance and Application
When Life Goes Wrong
Seeking Fulfillment in Life
Proverbs and the Family
The Power of Sex
Contemporary Worship and the Psalms
What Do We Expect from God, and What Does He Expect from Us?
Devotional Use of Psalms
6. EPILOGUE
Plotline of the Old Testament Continued to the New Testament
How Do the Old and New Testaments Relate?
Were Israelites “Saved”?
Interpreting the Old Testament in Light of the New and the New in Light of the Old
What Have We Learned?
Overall Theme
What to Do with It?
“You Will Know That I Am Yahweh”
Appendix
Glossary
Index
LIST OF MAPS AND TABLES
Maps
Ancient Near East about 2000 BC
Major Trade Routes through the Fertile Crescent
Cities Where Archives Have Been Found
Where Moses Crossed the Red Sea
Possible Routes of the Exodus
Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Empires
The Ancient Near East in the Late Bronze Age
Administrative Districts of Solomon
Neo-Assyrian Empire
Neo-Babylonian Empire
Medo-Persian Empire
Campaigns of the Conquest
Tribal Land Allocations
United Monarchy
Judah and Israel in the Mid-Eighth Century
Tables
The Semitic Languages
Contrast in Values and Perspectives
Ancient Near East Story Line
Covenant and Treaty Format
The Eden and Babel Problem
Sacred Compass
The Flow of the Pentateuch
Patriarchal Family Tree
The Plagues and the Gods of Egypt
Sacred Compass
Sacrificial System
Sacred Space, Sacred Status
Jewish Calendar
Structure of Deuteronomy
Comparative Worldview
Key Theological Distinctions Between Israel and Its Neighbors
Principles of Transfer
The Ten Commandments for Today
The Prophetic Voice in Kings
Baal Versus Elijah and Elisha
Major Archaeological Texts
Cycle of the Judges
Sinai and Davidic Covenants
The Kings of Israel (Northern Kingdom)
The Kings of Judah (Southern Kingdom)
Kings and Chronicles
Prophets Chronology Chart
Function of the Prophets
Categories of Prophetic Oracles
The Nations in Prophecy
Messianic Prophecy
Minor Prophets
Retribution Principle
Psalm Types
Themes of Wisdom Literature
Structure of the Book of Job
A Cantata about the Davidic Covenant
ABBREVIATIONS
AEL Ancient Egyptian Literature, ed. Miriam Lichtheim (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975–80)
ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ed. James Pritchard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)
BWL Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960)
COS The Context of Scripture, eds. W. W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997–2002)
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament
NIVAC NIV Application Commentary
RB Revue biblique
SBL Society of Biblical Literature
VT Supp Vetus Testamentum Supplements
ZAW Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenchaft
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Abook like this does not come together easily it is a group project that many hands help to shape. The writing is only the beginning.
For the first edition, we both were helped by student assistants, particularly Kyle Keimer, Caryn Reeder, Lis Klassen, and Heiko Wenzel, who each spent countless hours helping track down pictures, collect captions, and organize the work.
Artists also made a contribution to the beauty of the book. Our special thanks to Alva Steffler, Susanne Vagt, and Hugh Claycombe for lending us their artistic skills and their attention to detail.
The staff at Zondervan worked tirelessly to bring this book to completion. Layout director Tracey Moran and editorial assistant Katya Covrett deserve special mention. At the top of the list, however, is project manager Angela Scheff, who guided the production of the book with grace and patience. We are also grateful to others on the staff who had significant roles, Ron Huizinga, Alicia Mey, and Jack Kragt. Of course, we must thank Stan Gundry and Jack Kuhatschek for allowing us to tackle this project in the first place.
For this second edition, we acknowledge the many hours of work provided by student assistants Kathryn Cobb and Ben Robison. At Zondervan the text was capably managed by our editor, Jim Ruark, and Kim Tanner guided the visuals aspect of the project. Kim Walton (Walton Image Supply) provided many of the new visuals and organized them in the work.
Finally, we are both in debt, as always, to our wives, Kim (Walton) and Teri (Hill) for their support and their help in dozens of ways. From reading the manuscript at various junctures, to giving opinions and suggestions, to helping out with some of the mechanical details, they are ever our strong right hands.
PREFACE
VISION
The Old Testament has been largely lost to the church. For the most part, this is because people simply don’t know what to do with it. Not only do the people in the pew have this struggle; many pastors do as well as they labor to figure out how to make these texts relevant to their congregations. Unfortunately, books and survey courses on the Old Testament sometimes do little to rectify this situation if they present the Old Testament as if it were a haphazard collection of moralistic lessons or endless lists of names and dates. Somehow people have imagined that if students are introduced to the history of the Old Testament and have learned the names of all the patriarchs, judges, kings, and prophets, they have been adequately introduced to the Old Testament! Other courses might focus on the arguments that can be made against the critics or on trying to understand the Bible as a great piece of literature. All of these pursuits have their place, but they often leave us empty and still mystified about the place of the Old Testament in our lives.
For many their experience with the Old Testament is similar to the piñata game. There is a target out there that they are aiming at, but they are blindfolded and turned around so many times that they are entirely disoriented. They flail wildly at the air and become frustrated with an exercise that offers so little return for their effort. In this book we want to remove the blindfold and point the student in the right direction. Perhaps we can even take their hands in ours and give them a bigger stick so the prize becomes achievable.
Our vision for this book is that we would be able to introduce students to the Old Testament by going beyond basic content to help them know just what they are supposed to do with it and what it is supposed to mean to them. Our hope is that this approach will remedy the all-too-frequent caricature of the Old Testament as little more than endless trivia, irrelevant history, and obscure prophecies only alleviated by some comforting psalms and models
for living from the heroes and heroines of the faith. Students will not be overwhelmed by names and dates, but in contrast will be impressed with the way the Old Testament uniquely reveals the God of the universe. They will gain an appreciation for the central importance of this sacred text and in doing so will come to appreciate the literature, theology, and history for the contribution they make and, most of all, the role they play in the greater story of God’s plan for reconciling his creation to himself.
To accomplish this we have tried to make plain the coherence of the biblical text. When we speak of coherence, we refer to several different levels of connectedness. First, each book is coherent and has an inner connectedness. We want our readers to understand that connectedness. Second, there is a connectedness between the books of the Old Testament that we want to clarify. Third, there is a connectedness between the Old Testament and the New Testament that we must understand in order to appreciate either one. Fourth, there is a connectedness of believers across the millennia for which the Bible, as the common heritage for our faith, provides the foundation. Finally, there is a connectedness to all the levels of significance as the content serves as the basis for the message and theology and as all of them then provide the foundation for our appropriation and application of the text’s teaching to our lives.
Our hope is that students will become equipped to handle Old Testament texts with confidence that extends beyond trivia tests. This text will help schools move beyond the outcome objectives of the past that aimed at making sure students knew which books were in the Pentateuch, who the lefthanded judge was, and when Samaria fell. Instead, resulting outcomes will include an understanding of God as revealed in the Old Testament, a grasp of methodological approaches to the specialized genres of revelation found in the Old Testament, and a comprehension of the theological, cultural, and historical aspects of the plotline of the Old Testament and how it merges with the plotline of the New Testament. In short, the Old Testament will become central to their theology and their spiritual growth.
OBJECTIVES OF THE BOOK
In summary, then, our objectives are to present an orientation to the concepts of the Old Testament through this textbook. First, we will introduce students to the content of the Old Testament, always showing how to move beyond the details of names, places, events, and dates. Second, we will provide an orientation to the world of the Old Testament through pictures, maps, and other visuals. These will often take students beyond the focus of the textbook and into the world behind the Old Testament text. Third, we will provide an orientation to the study of the Old Testament through principles and methods that will help students read the Bible with confidence. Finally, we will offer an orientation to the theology of the Old Testament in its own right but also as a prelude to the New Testament and as a section of the church’s canon.
UNIT DESIGN
We have introduced each of the units with a carefully chosen quote about the literature of the unit and a summary of the key terms the unit will include. We then offer some of the important concepts for the unit in an “Orientation” box and include a “Yahweh Focus” box that highlights some of the key theological teachings of the unit. Ample use is made of time lines, maps, pictures, and charts to aid in the pedagogical process.
A wide array of sidebars and callouts have been used throughout the text. Each unit takes students through sections dealing with background information and an introduction to the pertinent genres. Each unit concludes with study questions and also features an application section, not for devotional thoughts but for guidance concerning how to understand the material of the unit as relevant to their lives of faith. Unlike the first edition of the textbook, this edition provides a book-by-book treatment to help the professor proceed through the Old Testament. In addition, each unit concludes with a very basic list of books that is designed to take students to the next level.
THE USE OF THE BOOK
Sample objectives for a course using this book:
• to acquaint students with the purpose and themes of the books of the Old Testament
• to acquaint students with the major characters of the Old Testament
• to acquaint students with important locations in Israel and the ancient world
• to familiarize students with the chronological framework of the Old Testament
• to nurture in students an understanding of God as revealed in the Old Testament
• to equip students with methodological approaches to the specialized genres of revelation found in the Old Testament
• to acquaint students with some of the important aspects of interpretation of the Old Testament
• to familiarize students with the theological, cultural, and historical aspects of the plotline of the Old Testament
• to familiarize students with how the Old Testament plotline merges with that of the New Testament
The desired outcome is that the Old Testament will become central to students’ theology and spiritual growth.
Objectives for classes in which students are reading this book in preparation for each class:
1. Much of the information presented in the book will require radical changes in the way the students have previously thought about the Old Testament; therefore the professor will need to summarize, target important points, and probe for areas that need further clarification and explanation.
2. Once it appears that the concepts are understood, class time may be spent on working through specific examples in the Old Testament and trying to pursue the implications for Bible reading, theology, the church, the students’ personal lives, and so on.
3. Some class time may be devoted to developing areas that the textbook has only touched on in a sidebar, such as the date of the exodus or the Ten Commandments.
4. Alternatively, discussion might target particularly difficult (though familiar) passages, such as Isaiah 7:14 or Genesis 22 as interpretive case studies.
5. Certain issues are not addressed at all in the book, such as the extent of the flood or the archaeology of Jericho. Such topics offer additional possibilities for discussion.
6. Visuals in the text may be used as prompts for discussion of various issues.
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ORIENTATION FUNDAMENTALS
Caves near the site of Qumran. ROHR Productions Ltd.
ABOUT THE OLD TESTAMENT
The Old Testament can be considered a book, a part of a book, and a collection of books. It is a book to the extent that its parts form a single whole. This book is often referred to today as the Hebrew Bible since it constitutes the Scripture of the Jewish people. As history progressed and Jesus Christ came, taught, died, and rose again, a whole new round of Scripture was formed to document the life of Christ and the rise of the church and to explore the theological and practical implications of what Christ had done. This New Testament was joined with the Old to become the Christian Bible, and so the Old Testament has become part of that book.
We also understand that the Old Testament is a collection of books thirty-nine books by various authors written over the span of a millennium. These books share a common religious perspective, but they vary widely in the types of literature they represent and the functions they serve. In the pages of these books, the reader will find consideration of origins, tribal and
national histories, collections of laws, collections of poetry, philosophical discussions, and prophetic sermons. But in all of these and through all of these, the reader will find theology or, more appropriately put, God. Although the genres (types of literature) may vary, each is theological throughout. So, for instance, the discussion of origins is not about science, it is about God. The presentation of history is not concerned with facts or events in themselves; it is concerned with God’s role. And perhaps most important, rather than simply being thoughts and opinions about God, the Old Testament is God’s presentation of himself: his self-revelation.
The Old Testament can be considered a book, a part of a book, and a collection of books.
THE BIG STORY LINE/PLOTLINE
God made the world operational and put people into it. Adam and Eve disobeyed his command, resulting in their being driven from the Garden of Eden and thus losing access to sacred space. Thus begins the story of dislocation. Over time the “Eden problem,” sin, became so pervasive that God sent the flood to destroy all but Noah and his family. The Tower of Babel represents the next step, as people imagined that God had needs and saw themselves as providing the way for God to come down and have his needs met. This misperception of God can be called the “Babel problem.”
Consequently, God chose Abraham to be the ancestor of a chosen people through whom he would reveal himself and correct the distortion represented at Babel. He brought Abraham to the land of Canaan, where his family lived on the brink of extinction for three generations before going down to Egypt. There they lived for more than four hundred years and became a large nation. God brought them out of great oppression in Egypt, and they began their journey back to the land of Canaan, the Promised Land. After stopping at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the law God’s next phase in revealing himself—they were waylaid in the wilderness for a generation because they
lacked the faith to let God lead them into the land.
Sequence
Creation
Fall
Flood
Tower of Babel
Patriarchs
Sojourn
Exodus
Wilderness
Conquest
Judges
United Kingdom
Divided Kingdom
Exile
Return
Under the command of Joshua, the Israelites returned to the land and, in a series of battles, God won them control of the land. Joshua divided the land among the tribes, and they began to settle in. Over the next several centuries, known as the period of the judges, there was no king. Each tribe had its own tribal leadership, but they constantly fell prey to the surrounding nations. God allowed this because of the failure of the Israelites to be faithful to God in their beliefs.
Finally, the people initiated a move to a monarchic form of government. The first attempt, in which Saul was crowned king, failed because of unrealistic and theologically misguided expectations of the king and his role. At Saul’s death, Israel was just as bad off politically and spiritually as when he came to the throne. The second attempt was more successful. David was
chosen by the Lord to be king, his dynasty became established through a covenant with the Lord, and Jerusalem was made the capital city. As the empire of David expanded, Israel finally came into control of the land that had been promised to Abraham nearly a millennium earlier. He successfully passed this empire to his son Solomon, but Solomon’s misjudgments and excesses in both political and theological terms eroded the empire as well as the support of the people. After Solomon’s death in 931 BC, his son Rehoboam retained control of only a small section of the kingdom from Jerusalem south, while God gave a new dynasty control of the much larger northern kingdom. The southern kingdom was now designated “Judah” and the northern kingdom, under Jeroboam, was designated Israel.
For just over two hundred years, this situation continued. The Davidic dynasty remained in control in Judah, while the northern kingdom, Israel, experienced a series of dynastic lines. When the Assyrians extended their control across the ancient world in the middle of the eighth century, Israel joined a coalition against the Assyrians and eventually lost the war. The capital city, Samaria, was destroyed in 722 BC, and the northern kingdom was assimilated into the Assyrian Empire. Judah remained an independent nation but was for the most part under Assyrian control. During this time there were kings who were faithful to the Lord (such as Hezekiah), but for the middle fifty-five years, Manasseh forged a regime that accepted not only Assyrian rule, but foreign religious practice as well. The Assyrian Empire lasted for another century until it weakened and was taken over by the Medes and the Babylonians.
Already as the Assyrian Empire receded, the prophetic voices in Judah, such as Jeremiah, were calling on the people to return to the Lord and were warning of impending doom at the hands of the Babylonians. The Assyrian Empire breathed its last gasp in the fall of Carchemish in 605 BC and the Babylonians began to exert their control into Judah. For several years it is uncertain whether Babylon or Egypt would have the greatest influence, and the kings of Judah rock back and forth. Eventually Babylon prevailed as the army under Nebuchadnezzar moved west to punish the rebellious King Jehoiakim. His son Jehoiachin was taken into exile in Babylon along with many others in the administration, but the kingdom was left intact. In the next decade, however, the lure of rebellion became too strong, and King Zedekiah
joined a conspiracy against the Babylonians. This time there was no mercy. The result of the Babylonian invasion in 587 was the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, the massive deportation of the Israelites, and the incorporation of Judah as a Babylonian province. The prophets’ warnings had come to pass, and for the first time in over four hundred years, there was no king on David’s throne.
The inscription from Tel Dan is the first reference outside of the Bible that mentions the “house of David.”
Kim Walton courtesy of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem
The seventy years spent in exile are given very little treatment in the text.
Prophetic voices such as Ezekiel and Daniel continued to speak, but no historical literature discusses the situation in either Israel or Babylon. When the Babylonian Empire falls to the Persian king Cyrus in 539 BC, a new policy of tolerance allowed the exiles to return to Israel and rebuild their temple. In this postexilic period, they had no king, but a governor ruled the small state of Yehud on behalf of the Persian king. Under the leadership of individuals such as Ezra and Nehemiah, the city of Jerusalem was rebuilt and the people recommitted themselves to the covenant and the Lord. Yet they remained a state under Persian rule until Alexander the Great overthrew the Persians and they become part of another empire. As Daniel had indicated, empire followed empire as the people waited for their deliverance and the return of a Davidic king, their Messiah.
Picture of a typical Jewish scroll. The Jewish people wrote their script from right to left on individual pieces of parchment, which were then sewn or glued together and rolled up. Z. Radovan/www.BibleLandPictures.com
REORIENTATION: OLD TESTAMENT AS REVELATION,
SCRIPTURE, AND AUTHORITY
If it is true that the Bible is God’s self-revelation, we must move beyond the superficial levels of description in the previous paragraphs. It is not enough to say “The Old Testament is a collection of thirty-nine books written in Hebrew (and Aramaic) that became the Scriptures of the Jewish people as well as Christians,” although this certainly is true. But that is what the Old Testament is we need to be reoriented to what the Old Testament does.
It is not enough to know what the Old Testament is; we need to reorient to what it does.
Revelation
When we say that the Old Testament is God’s revelation of himself, we are affirming that in the Old Testament God is telling us his story. So begins our quest in the Bible. We need to know God, and the Bible is his story. When we first come to know someone, we become acquainted by relating parts of our stories to one another. The first pages we open include our name, our hometown, and other basic information. As acquaintances become friends, they unfold more and more of their stories to one another. They discover likes and dislikes, past history, present struggles and joys, and future hopes and dreams. We gauge how well we know a person by how much we know of their story. When people come to love one another, they want to know every story, and they delight in hearing those stories over and over again.1
How can we come to know God? By relating stories to one another. God relates his story through his Word, the Bible. We relate our stories through prayer. God’s story is intended to help us to know him. When we see his attributes in action, we come to understand the implications of those attributes. If I were to boast of a friend’s kindness, my assessment would be most persuasive if I were able to tell of some of the incidents in which that
kindness was evident in unique ways. Once in an initial conversation with a real estate agent, we discovered that we had a mutual acquaintance. My statement that this mutual acquaintance was a good friend could have been understood at various levels. But when I elaborated by saying that his family lived at our house for three weeks while their house was being remodeled, the person had a lot better idea of the level of our friendship. So it is with God. It is not enough to say simply that he is sovereign, just, faithful, loving, gracious, compassionate, or anything else. We know God by hearing his story and by others telling us of things he has done. We know God by seeing his attributes in action and thereby gaining insight into the warp and woof of his character. The Bible accomplishes this for us, and that is why we refer to it as God’s revelation of himself.
If we had no revelation, we would only be able to guess what God was like. We would have to infer from the world around us or from philosophical deduction or from the circumstances of human experience. Like ancients who had no revelation, moderns who refuse to acknowledge the Bible as God’s revelation are mired in this bog of uncertainty. If they believe there is a God, the world around them might suggest he is arbitrary or distant. Human experience might suggest to them that he is cruel or meddling. Speculation might conclude that he is like a genie in a bottle, a cosmic cop, or a kindly grandparent.
Throughout the biblical narratives God continually reveals himself in theophanies, as in the case of Moses and the burning bush.
Baker Photo Archive
Only revelation can correct these misperceptions. Without the Bible we would know nothing about God with any confidence. Only revelation can offer information outside of ourselves by which we can form a confident and accurate image of God in our minds. As we proceed through our orientation to the Old Testament, one of the most important tasks we will face is to understand how God’s story is presented or advanced through each book and
how the different genres function to offer us this story.
Scripture
In many ways in various places from Sinai and the prophets in the Old Testament to the statements of the apostles in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20–21 the Bible presents itself as God’s self-disclosure. It is because we accept these claims of the Bible to be God’s revelation, God’s story, that we label it Scripture. It is not like any other book; it is not just good or classic literature; it is not just a repository of traditions; it is not just entertainment. Once we label it as Scripture, it is no longer just anything. Yet even among the books that the major religions of the world label as scripture, the Bible holds a unique position. Even most other scriptures are not revered as the self-revelation of deity they are simply seen as sacred books. If we were left with a Bible that was just a sacred book, our confidence in our faith would be badly compromised. If the Bible were reduced to being the wise thoughts of spiritual people about God, our hope would be shattered.
Without the Bible we would know nothing about God with any confidence.
But how can we be so confident that the Bible is revealed Scripture?
Normal responses include reference to fulfilled prophecies and historical accuracy these have an important role to play, and they help but fall short of offering absolute proof. Skeptics can always find examples of prophecies that don’t pair up well with fulfillments or historical statements that can be undermined. Moreover, even if everyone agreed that every historical statement was above reproach, that would not prove the book was God’s revelation of himself. In the end, the confidence we have derives from Christ. The Old Testament was the Bible to him his basis for teaching who God is, what he is like, and what he did. If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, his testimony seals our acceptance of the Old Testament as revealed Scripture.
Authority
The implication of the belief that the Bible is God’s revelation of himself is that we must accept it as authoritative. At the center of this authority is not what the Bible tells us to do, although its commands and instructions cannot be ignored. The center of its authority is found in what it tells us to think and believe. It is true that if the Bible says something happened, we believe it happened; if the Bible says someone existed, we believe he or she existed; these are implications of its authority. But the core of its authority is to be found in what it tells us God is like. We are compelled by its authority to accept this picture of God, place it in the center of our worldview, and make it the basis for everything we think and do. Its picture of God is true, and this picture demands our response. In our reorientation to the Old Testament, we need to come to know the Old Testament not merely as laws and history, psalms and prophecy, but as God’s authoritative revelation of himself. If we can do this, the end result will not just be that we will be educated; we will be transformed godly people living holy lives committed to imitating and serving the God we have come to know through the Bible.
If we were left with a Bible that was just a sacred book, our confidence in our faith would be badly compromised.
EXPECTATIONS AND PROCEDURES
Most people come to the Old Testament with certain expectations. Some are skeptics and expect myths or legends. Some are believers who have had bad experiences with the Old Testament frustrated by its laws, bored by its history, or confused by its prophecy. Many have written off the Old Testament as irrelevant to the modern world, and many have concluded that the God of the Old Testament is a tyrant. Some expect moralizing stories of saints and sinners, while others want to find mystical guidance for life. These expectations coupled with our past experiences with the Bible have given us a collection of assumptions about the Old Testament. Whether those
