Tod Linafelt

In this updated edition of the popular textbook An Introduction to the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann and Tod Linafelt introduce the reader to the broad theological scope of the Old Testament, treating some of the most important issues and methods in contemporary biblical interpretation. This clearly written textbook focuses on the literature of the Old Testament as it grew out of religious, political, and ideological contexts over many centuries in Israel's history. Covering every book in the Old Testament (arranged in canonical order), the authors demonstrate the development of theological concepts in biblical writings from the Torah through postexilic Judaism. Incorporating the most current scholarship, this new edition also includes concrete tips for doing close readings of the Old Testament text, and a chapter on ways to read Scripture and respond in light of pressing contemporary issues, such as economic inequality, racial and gender justice, and environmental degradation. This introduction invites readers to engage in the construction of meaning as they venture into these timeless texts.

The Hebrew Bible, or Christian Old Testament, contains some of the finest literature that we have. This biblical literature has a place not only in the synagogue or the church but also among the classics of world literature. The stories of Jacob and David, for instance, present the earliest surviving examples of literary characters whose development the reader follows over the length of a lifetime. Elsewhere, as in the books of Esther or Ruth, readers find a snapshot of a particular, fraught moment that will define the character. The Hebrew Bible also provides quite a few high points of lyric poetry, from the praise and lament of the Psalms to the double entendres in the love of poetry of the Song of Songs. In short, the Bible can be celebrated not only as religious literature but, quite simply, as literature. This book offers a thorough and lively introduction to the Bible's two primary literary modes, narrative and poetry, foregrounding the nuances of plot, character, metaphor, structure and design, and intertextual allusions. Tod Linafelt thus gives readers the tools to fully experience and appreciate the Hebrew Bible's literary achievement.

The writers of the New Testament were largely Jewish and laying the blame for the Holocaust at their feet would be absurd. However, the later cultural origins of anti-semitism means that reading the New Testament after the event calls for a new ethics of interpretation. These essays address this grave issue in detail,

The writers of the New Testament were largely Jewish and laying the blame for the Holocaust at their feet would be absurd. However, the later cultural origins of anti-semitism means that reading the New Testament after the event calls for a new ethics of interpretation. These essays address this grave issue in detail,

This volume engages the work of Walter Brueggemann, most of which has been published by Fortress Press. The volume centers on the character of God in the text of the Old Testament as a site of theological tension and even ambivalence. Biblical faith never experiences God as entirely above the fray but rather as entangled in history, astonishingly transformative, and impinged upon by the voices of the suffering. Brueggemann's monumental Theology of the Old Testament addresses this fact with great theological insight and rigor, and the internationally renowned biblical scholars writing here engage and extend his insights into the "unsettled Character . . . at the center of the text."