a. The development of Old Testament study (pp.1-82)

The teachings of Scripture have been perverted even in the first century of the Christian era. Cassiodorus’ work entitled De Institutione Divinarum Scripturarum (d. A.D. 562) is seen as a valuable contribution to the beginnings of Biblical criticism as applied to the text of the Hebrew Bible. The tenth and eleventh centuries witnessed a number of critical attacks in Spain upon various parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, one of which was made by Ibn Hazam of Cordova about A.D. 994. The Reformation introduced biblical criticism even though individual Reformers sometimes adopted a standpoint towards certain books in the canon which was not in complete harmony with earlier ecclesiastical traditions. A more developed critical approach to the Old Testament appeared in the writings of several men who were not professional theologians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Source criticism is discussed in its relationship with eighteenth-century enlightenment. The Graf-Wellhausen hypothesis, reactions to the afore-mentioned hypothesis and Old Testament scholarship since World War I are also discussed.

The writer believes that it is only when criticism is properly established that Old Testament scholarship can expect to reflect something of the vitality, dignity and spiritual richness of the law, prophecy and the sacred writings.

b. Old Testament archaeology (pp.83-144)

In discussing the historical survey of scientific archaeology, the writer discusses the pre scientific archaeology taking into consideration pilgrimages, Napoleon in Egypt and surface explorations. He studies the spread and development of archaeological techniques and radiocarbon dating in the analysis of scientific archaeology since Flinders Petrie. One of the functions of archaeology is to awaken a sense of the vitality of the Hebrew past in the student of Old Testament life and times. His analysis of the archaeology of early Mesopotamia reveals that archaeological activity in the land of the Tigris and Euphrates has now demonstrated conclusively that culture originated in that general geographical area rather than Egypt. The archaeological study of the background of the Old Testament tremendously assists the researcher to understand patriarchal history, the exodus and the Israelite kingdom. Perhaps the most famous archaeological discovery of all times was the findings of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Much that was known in earlier days has been amply confirmed, thus furnishing a more secure basis for future advances in the field of Biblical scholarship.

c. Ancient Near Eastern chronology (pp.145-198)

The writer admits that despite the enormous amount of information available for the modern scholar as the result of historical and archaeological research, there is still an insufficiency of primary source materials to adequately trace the chronology from Adam to Abraham. Extra-biblical sources are naturally of very great importance when they furnish fixed dates, and it is often in the light of such material that schemes of Biblical dating have to be modified. However, it was proved impossible in the light of available statistics to assign precise dates to the Hebrew patriarchs, or to associate them with any detailed chronological scheme amenable to control by means of extra-biblical sources. In discussing the chronology of Israel’s early history, Harrison observes that the nature of the genealogical scheme associated with the patriarchs in Genesis 14 has raised important problems of Old Testament chronology. Although the problems with chronology cannot be solved completely, a recognition of the customs of the ancient scribes, taken together with the archaeological findings that require an interval of some two hundred and thirty years between Joshua and David, should go far towards resolving most of the difficulties arising from a strictly literal interpretation of the figures in Judges. The writer admits that the discussion on the Old Testament history (the monarchy and after) deals with much more exact numbers.

d. The Old Testament text and canon (pp.199-288)

This section is a discussion on the history of Hebrew writing, the Old Testament text, textual criticism and the Old Testament canon. The study of the Hebrew text in its own right is a matter of great importance, since the judgements that are made by scholars in this field are basic to all other areas of Old Testament investigation. As a discipline, textual criticism is independent of the history and growth of the Scriptural writings, as well as of the formation of the canon. The primary concerns of this study are the transmission of the text, the rise and development of revisions, the nature and scope of scribal activities during the process of transmission, the incidence of vocalization and the emergence of the Massocretic text. The ultimate aim of the textual critic is to recover the text of Scripture as nearly as possible in its original form. However, this laudable objective cannot always be realized, for none of the original drafts of the Old Testament compositions has survived, and the copies that exist have of course been subjected both to the frailty of human nature and the ravages of the centuries. There are undoubtedly numerous instances in which cogent arguments can be adduced for the adoption of one of several plausible variants.

e. The study of Old Testament history (pp.291-348)

The writer observes that while the sources available for determining the idea of history among the ancient Hebrews are of an accredited literary nature, they are quite unlike the cuneiform and hieroglyphic inscriptions of Babylonia and Egypt. At least one Moabite ruler has a royal inscription; the Hebrews possessed none. Despite this lack of official records, however, there were a great many other sources in existence upon which the writers of the Old Testament books were able to draw. The rise of the nineteenth-century critical school, with its emphasis upon literary analysis and its evolutionary view of Hebrew origins, brought with it an extremely skeptical evaluation of the Old Testament historical narratives. Whereas at the end of the nineteenth century one of the most pressing questions of debate among Old Testament historians was the nature of the progression from polydaemonism to monotheistic faith in the experience of ancient Israel, the situation had changed by the middle of the twentieth century to the point where scholars were concerned to grapple with the entire question of the origins of Israel. It is evident that there is a need for a reliable methodological approach that will bridge the gap between the Biblical events and the extant written form of the narratives describing them, if the writing is not contemporary with the event. A much more satisfactory approach to the problems of Hebrew historiography has been provided by W.F. Albright, a distinguished Biblical archaeologist. Though Albright himself and some of his followers appear to concur in a kind of documentary analysis of the Pentateuch that has affinities with that propounded by Wellhausen, they are quick to recognize the breakdown of the classical pattern of source-analysis as the primary means of reconstructing Hebrew history and religion, and are willing to avail themselves of other cognate areas of information.

f. Old Testament religion (349-414)

The writer observes that the study of Old Testament religion took a somewhat different turn as a result of Julius Wellhausen’s speculative ideas about the development of Hebrew history. Starting from the Positivish premise that religion was merely an offshoot or product of human cultural activity, he applied the evolutionary philosophical concepts of Hegelianism to the study of the faith of Israel. Following the lead of Kittel and Sellin, scholars began to look for traces of Canaanite religious influence during the settlement period and the monarchy upon the faith of Israel. An entirely new and unexpected source of information concerning the culture of ancient Canaan came to light with the discovery in 1929 of a great many cuneiform tablets at Ras Shamra, the Ugarit of the Armarna Age, on the coast of northern Syria. In the eleven campaigns at the site prior to World War II, many hundreds of tablets were unearthed whose contents placed the culture of ancient Canaan in an entirely new perspective. Harrison also discusses the influences of the methodological approach, animism, totemism, tabu and ancestor worship on the religion of the Hebrews. He systematically traces the religion of the Patriarchs, the religion of Moses, the tabernacle and Canaanite influences, the sacrificial system, the religion of the monarchy and the prophets and later Judaism in his discussion on the history of Old Testament religion.

By: Oliver Harding

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