Long Ago God Spoke: How Christians May Hear the Old Testament Today

Rating:
Summary: A New Way to Look at the Old Testament
Review: For many people, many portions of the Hebrew Scriptures can be forbidding. The people live in violent times and God can seemingly be as violent and vengeful as well. Many scripture scholars have wrestled with the challenging rewords of these texts and Professor Holladay is among the best. The book is an overview of the Old Testament rather than a commentary of specific passages. It contains enough basic information which makes it accessible for readers unfamiliar with Biblical scholarship, but presents it in a fresh manner so that people who are familiar with Old Testament will be able to see these writings in a new manner. I have found this book most helpful when conducting scripture studies for adults. Many of the participants found his insights regarding God's wrath being seen in light of God's love very comforting, prophecies being true not as a future event but in the lives of the people of the prophet's day interesting, and saw a human side to people who lived centuries ago. The exegetical background of the book is extensive, but the book's pastoral approach is probably its greatest strength. This is not a dry study of the Hebrew Scriptures, but one that can easily be applied to daily life. This is due, no doubt to the fact that the majority of Professor Holladay's students are training for careers in ministry.

Rating:
Summary: A useful guide
Review: Holladay begins by presenting the 10 major problems that Christians have with the Old Testament, and then rather than pretend that they can be easily handled or dismissed, he simply acknolwedges them and moves on to his exposition. I found this to be very honest and frankly comforting. The author does offer some solid advice on ways to deal with difficult Old Testament passages, but he never says "grit your teeth and believe it".

His approach reveals a scholarly background, but this book is accessible to the layman. If you are dedicated to the inerrancy and/or verbal inspiration of the Bible, be warned -- he isn't. But he does take the Bible seriously as the record of the history of God's dealings with people.

My biggest complaint is that he constantly uses phrases like "Jesus is remembered as having said..." or "Jeremiah understood God to be telling him...." Whatever the academic merits of such phrases may be, they are stylistic death.