23 - The Theology of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Summary

Biblical theology, with Old Testament theology as an eventual subset, was a relative latecomer on the scene of biblical study. It emerged as a discipline distinguishable from systematic or dogmatic theology in the seventeenth century, with the role of providing the biblical evidence for the assertions of systematic or dogmatic theology. In the eighteenth century it began to assert itself as a discipline that should define its own categories rather than simply act as handmaid to systematics, and in 1787, Johann Philipp Gabler delivered a lecture that is commonly seen as a key articulation of this conviction, ‘An Oration on the Proper Distinction Between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each’. A number of nineteenth-century Old Testament theologies worked with Gabler's prescription, though they also continued to be influenced (consciously or unconsciously) by the categories of systematics, by the philosophical views of the day, and by New Testament priorities that led to an emphasis on marginal topics, such as resurrection, and a neglect of topics prominent in the Old Testament but not in Christian faith. It became customary for Old Testament theologians to draw attention to the way their predecessors were affected by the presuppositions of their time but not to recognize the same dynamics in their own work. In the twenty-first century, post-colonial or feminist or other postmodern perspectives are equivalents to the evolutionism, rationalism or romanticism of the nineteenth century. These provide frameworks that theologians bring to their study, which both illumine it and skew it.

WALTHER EICHRODT

Another such framework is the assumption that Old Testament theology needs to be approached historically, and it became common for theologies to comprise two parts, one tracing Israel's history and the other covering the theological implications of the literature in topical fashion. Indeed, the energy in nineteenth-century Old Testament study came to lie in tracing the history of Israel and its religion against their Middle Eastern background. This preoccupation rather left hanging the question of the Old Testament's ongoing religious and theological significance. It was after the 1914–18 war in Europe, and parallel to the work of Karl Barth in Christian dogmatics, that some Old Testament scholars began once more to think in theological terms.