[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Baker Academic in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary and Review
The editors of this book assert that an earlier exploration of Old Testament scholarship, The Face of Old Testament Studies, published 25 years ago, while still valuable, is missing some of the more recent developments in Old Testament studies – new questions being asked, new topics and new research agendas, even new sub-disciplines that didn’t exist at the start of the millennium! So a new resource was necessary. And this one also offers suggestions of still more future research that could be done.
There are three sections of the book, and, honestly, section one was completely out of my lane. This section explores archaeological finds and other contexts outside my experience. Section two, which dives into questions of cannon and the actual texts from the Old Testament, was a much better fit, and I really enjoyed it. Section three tackles topics like ecotheology, OT ethics, the Ten Commandments, gender and sexuality, etc., which was also fascinating.
This felt harder to connect with than the Pauline Studies book in this series that I reviewed earlier this year. The content was still fascinating! But it felt over my head more times than not. While I am by no means giving up on squeezing everything I can learn out of this, I would recommend it highly for seminaries, professors, researchers, and students. Casual readers of Biblical scholarship (like me) might veer toward deep dive commentaries on the texts themselves instead if this feels like too much. But for a broad consideration of the field, including new and developing research, this feels like an excellent resource. I have recommended this to my colleagues at the seminary where I work.
Rating: ♥♥♥♥*
*♥♥♥♥ = Great! Might re-read.