The Old Testament
Canon, History, and Literature
Published February 2019
A clear and eloquent introductory study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
Engaging and accessible to students from all backgrounds, this book is a comprehensive introduction to the Old Testament. It is designed to equip readers with the knowledge and skills needed to read, interpret, and benefit from the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible in their own context. Using scholarly consensus and current research with numerous examples, this book helps prepare students for further advanced courses related to exegesis, individual books, and special topics. It also provides a balanced approach to controversial areas in biblical scholarship such as violence, sexuality, and slavery.More importantly, this introduction understands the Old Testament as a resource for the human quest for meaning making it an essential tool for helping students appropriate this, often neglected, part of the Bible for their own faithful living.
It includes at-a-glance sections to highlight matters of special interest- including material about important ancient Egyptian west Asian documents; significant archaeological excavations; a demonstration of textual criticism; problematic translation issues such as Gen 1:1, Isa 7:14, or Job 19:25; special problems such as the chronology of the kings and the dating of the second fall of Jerusalem.
About the Author
Dr. Richard D. Nelson
Richard D. Nelson is professor emeritus of Biblical Hebrew and Old Testament Interpretation at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. His teaching career on the college and seminary level has spanned more than thirty-five years. He is the author of nine books on biblical themes, including The Historical Books (Abingdon Press, 1998) and Historical Roots of the Old Testament (1200–63 BCE). He has published commentaries on Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and 1–2 Kings. Professor Nelson has been a visiting scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Tyndale House, Cambridge, England. He is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.