The Unity of the Old Testament

Extract

Those embarking upon a serious and constructive reading of the Old Testament usually have two basic questions to ask: first, ‘Where should I begin?’, and second, ‘How should I read?’ Though it may not seem obvious, actually I believe that the first of these questions is the more important. The second to some extent solves itself as one progresses. So it is a possible answer to the first question that I want to suggest here. ‘Where should I begin?’ Emphatically not, I suggest, at the beginning. The composition of the Old Testament is utterly unlike that of a modern book. It is a complex of traditions which has grown up round a central nucleus, and which has only subsequently been crystallized in book form. The most ancient and the most creative of these traditions constitutes the central nucleus and the later traditions have been either added on to it at the beginning and end, or else inserted into it. Thus von Rad speaks of the Einbau of the Sinai tradition, the Ausbau of the patriarchal narratives, and the Vorbau of the Primordial history (Gen. i-xi) into or on to what he regards as the central nucleus, namely the events of the exodus and the entry into the promised land. The first task then is to grasp this central nucleus, and to examine how and in what sense it influences or is presupposed by the later traditions. For these reasons, it seems to me, one should begin reading the Old Testament in the middle.