The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity

by Christopher R. Seitz

Overview

The Elder Testament serves as a theological introduction to the canonical unity of the Scriptures of Israel. Christopher Seitz demonstrates that, while an emphasis on theology and canonical form often sidesteps critical methodology, the canon itself provides essential theological commentary on textual and historical reconstruction.

Part One reflects on the Old Testament as literature inquiring about its implied reader. Seitz introduces the phrase "Elder Testament" to establish a wider conceptual lens for what is commonly called the "Old Testament" or the "Hebrew Bible," so that the canon might be read to its fullest capacity.

Part Two provides an overview of the canon proper, from Torah to Prophets to Writings. Seitz here employs modern criticism to highlight the theological character of the Bible in its peculiar canonical shape. But he argues that the canon cannot be reduced to simply vicissitudes of history, politics, or economics. Instead, the integrated form of this Elder Testament speaks of metahistorical disclosures of the divine, correlating the theological identity of God across time and beyond.

Part Three examines Proverbs 8, Genesis 1, and Psalms 2 and 110--texts that are notable for their prominence in early Christian exegesis. The Elder Testament measures the ontological pressure exerted by these texts, which led directly to the earliest expressions of Trinitarian reading in the Christian church, long before the appearance of a formally analogous Scripture, bearing the now-familiar name "New Testament."

Canon to Theology to Trinity. This trilogy, as Seitz concludes, is not strictly a historical sequence. Rather, this trilogy is ontologically calibrated through time by the One God who is the selfsame subject matter of both the Elder and New Testaments. The canon makes the traditional theological work of the church possible without forcing a choice between a minimalist criticism or a detached, often moribund systematic theology. The canon achieves "the concord and harmony of the law and the prophets in the covenant delivered at the coming of the Lord" of which Clement of Alexandria so eloquently spoke.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481308304
Publisher:	Baylor University Press
Publication date:	07/15/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	310
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Christopher R. Seitz (Ph.D. Yale) is Senior Research Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 Orientation

1 Elder Testament: Introducing the Scriptures of Israel 13

2 Canonical Interpretation of the Elder Scriptures 21

3 Theological Interpretation of the Elder Testament 35

4 "Can we read this book?": Reader Response-ability 51

Part 2 Entering the Elder Testament

5 The Strange Old Book: The Limits of Narrative 71

6 The Fate of JEDP: The Mysterious Disclosure of the Divine Name 85

7 YHWH and Elohim: The LORD God 97

8 Order, Arrangements, Canonical Shape, and Name 119

9 The Pentateuch 131

10 Prophets 139

11 Writings 161

Part 3 Theological Readings in the Elder Testament

12 The Triune Name 183

13 Proverbs 8:22-31 and the Mind of Scripture 201

14 The Sun Also Rises: Time and Creation in Ecclesiastes and Genesis 1-11 221

15 "When Christ came into the world he said": The Scriptural Christ in the Letter to the Hebrews 243

16 Theophany and Trinity 261

Conclusion 271

Bibliography 281

Scripture Index 295

Author Index 301

What People are Saying About This

Matthew W. Bates

Impossible. Sealed tight. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity cannot be successfully grounded in the Old Testament, read on its own terms. Or so scholars have claimed for hundreds of years. But the Old Testament’s witness to God’s complex reality contains volcanic pressure. Large cracks have already appeared. But stand back! Christopher Seitz has blown off the lid.

Gary A. Anderson

Christopher Seitz is one of the freshest voices in biblical scholarship: learned, witty, and incisively theological. He provides more reasons for recovering the ‘Elder’ Testament as a source for Christian thinking.

Ephraim Radner

The book is a kind of window onto the theological distillation of an especially gifted critical reader of the Bible, deeply immersed in the church's lived experiences and challenges—a kind of intellectual 'testament,' that carries the charge of a special witness.

Hans Boersma

Christ is already at work in the Old Testament, which resists therefore our attempts at historicizing it. This claim forms the solid basis on which Seitz grounds his reading of the Old Testament. Drawing on many years of teaching and writing, The Elder Testament presents Seitz's mature understanding of a canonical reading of the Scriptures. His rich treatment reminds us why God's purposes with the Scriptures reach beyond authorial intent to the theological ontology that comes to expression in the 'first witness.'

Editorial Reviews

Chris Seitz has done a great service, both to the scholarly community and to the church, with his latest book, The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity. It is the product of many years of reading and teaching the Old Testament

Pro Ecclesia - Hans Boersma

[The Elder Testament] will make an excellent textbook for those who are looking for a theologically interested approach to Israel’s scriptures that engages critical issues.

International Journal of Systematic Theology - Don Collett

The work’s primary strength lies in its coherent and robust theological vision of the Elder Testament as an authoritative theological witness with its own venerable integrity—a vision both traditional and innovative. Seitz’s mastery of canonical hermeneutics shines throughout the text, providing a solid backbone for his theological claims. Seitz’s erudition shines through in his careful textual readings and his command of theological hermeneutics and early patristic interpretation.

Review of Biblical Literature - Stephen L. Cook

…A remarkable tour de force, a re-envisioning of theological study of the Old Testament, whose implications merit serious thought on the part of Christian theologians.

Walter R.W.L. Moberly

As T.S. Eliot put it in Little Gidding, the end of our exploration is to return to our starting point and to know that place for the first time. This is clearly the case with this new offering from Christopher Seitz, The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity. By drawing on his own history in the evolution of Scriptural scholarship, Seitz makes an important contribution to the burgeoning but often imprecisely thought-through field of ‘theological interpretation' of Scripture.

Pro Ecclesia - John Behr

Seitz has produced a valuable work that raises the most important questions every Christian reader of the Elder Testament should ask about the nature of canon, theology, and Trinity, and how these concerns weave together in the process of reading the Bible as Christian Scripture. Every reader has implicit assumptions about these matters, and Seitz has performed a great service by helping readers become aware of how these assumptions govern our reading.

Stone-Campbell Journal - Paavo Tucker

Seitz has written a stimulating and substantial work that advances the project of interpreting scripture canonically.

Scottish Journal of Theology - Collin Cornell