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2004). I Norton, D., A History of the Bible as Literature, 2 vols. (Cambridge 1993). I Prickett, S., Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible (Cambridge 1996). I Sheehan, J., The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton, N.J. 2005). I Shuger, D., Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity (Berkley, Calif. et al. 1994). I Weidner, D., Bibel und Literatur um 1800 (Mnchen 2011). I Ziolkowski, T., Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus (Princeton, N.J. 1972).

Daniel Weidner See also /Alexandrian Exegesis; /Antiochene Exegesis; /Exegesis; /Hermeneutics; /Historical Critical Method; /Interpretation

Biblical Pulp Fiction

/Pulp Fiction, Biblical

Biblical Societies
/Bible Societies; /Societies of Biblical Research

Biblical Spectacular
/Spectacular, Biblical

Biblical Theme Parks

/Theme Parks, Biblical

Biblical Theology
I. II. III. IV. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament New Testament Judaism Christianity

I. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

1. Introduction. Biblical theology is the systematic theological exposition of the Bible. Since the Bible appears in a variety of forms in Judaism and the various streams of Christianity, the scope and concerns of biblical theology must be defined in relation to each tradition. When employed in relation to Judaism, biblical theology encompasses the theological exposition of the Tanakh, viz., the Jewish version of the Bible comprising the 24 books of the Masoretic Text in Hebrew and Aramaic. When employed in relation to Christianity, biblical theology encompasses the theological exposition of the books of both the OT and NT. Biblical theology in the Protestant traditions takes up the 39 books of the OT and the 27 books of the NT; because of the quasi-canonical status of the Apocrypha in Protestant Bibles, its treatment is optional in Protestant biblical theology. The Roman Catholic Church, meanwhile, considers the apocryphal books to be fully canonical, and their treatment is therefore to

be expected in a Roman Catholic biblical theology. Ideally, Christian biblical theology treats the books of the Bible in relation to the principal versions and languages in which they are written and read, e.g., the Masoretic Text, the Greek Septuagint, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, etc. 2. The Origins of Biblical Theology in the 16th 18th Centuries. Old Testament theology originated during the mid-16th through the 18th centuries as a subset of the larger field of Christian biblical theology. Biblical theology per se has its roots in the early Protestant Reformation, which was concerned with challenging the dominance of dogmatic theology in the Roman Catholic Church by establishing sacred Scripture as the fundamental basis for Christian theology, faith, and practice. Although M. Luthers principle of sola scriptura, scripture alone, constituted one of the ideals of the early Protestant Reformation, subsequent Protestant orthodoxy followed P. Melanchthons attempts to systematize Luthers understanding of the Bible by developing its own dogmatic theology in which selected biblical passages would be employed as proof texts to justify the dogmatic principle or doctrine in question. Such use of proof texts, dicta probantia, was derived from earlier medieval practice, and it presupposed that the Bible in its entirety and every individual statement therein constituted the universally true, sacred, infallible, and authoritative word of God. Consequently, early Protestant orthodoxy saw no need to treat individual passages from the Bible in relation to the historical, cultural, literary, or theological contexts and concerns in which they were written and to which they were addressed. Since every statement from scripture must be considered in relation to the whole as a true witness to Gods relationship with humanity through Christ, the OT was effectively subsumed into the concerns of the NT and ultimately to the dogmatic theological concerns of Protestant orthodoxy through the 17th century. Greater attention to the reading and study of scripture within Protestant Christianity nevertheless prompted greater awareness of the historical dimensions of the writings of the Bible. Baruch Spinoza (16321677), a Dutch Jew whose works were widely read by Christians, called for a reading of the Bible based on reason that would separate the universal truths of the Bible from the particular teachings of its historical context. Protestant thinkers increasingly understood that the Bible was not written as a book of systematic theological doctrine but instead presented an account of Gods relationship with humanity through the course of history from creation through the revelation of Christ. Recognizing the importance of the relationship between God and humanity defined as foedus (league, federation, or covenant) throughout the Bible, Johannes Cocceius (originally Koch

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[16031669]) proposed that covenant become the fundamental concept upon which the teachings of the Bible must be understood. Cocceius distinguished two fundamental covenants in the relationship between God and humankind. The first was the covenant of works (foedus operum) or the covenant of nature (foedus naturae), which was in force prior to the fall of Adam. The second was the covenant of grace (foedus gratiae), which came into being with Adams fall, included the revelation of Mosaic law, and reached its fullest expression in Christs self-sacrifice to expiate the sins of humanity. By emphasizing both covenant and the sacred history, or Heilsgeschichte, of the relationship between God and humankind, Cocceius set the fundamental patterns for the development of modern OT theology. German Pietism also played an important role in focusing attention on the importance of the Bible rather than doctrine as the foundation for Christian theology. P. J. Spener (16351705) called for the reading and study of Scripture, together with prayer and devotion, by all Christians as the basis for personal experience of God and moral living. Insofar as the Bible recounts the history of Gods interaction with humans, Pietism increasingly recognized that full understanding of the Bible called for recognition of its historical dimensions as differentiated from dogmatic theology. The rationalism of the Enlightenment period also played an important role in emphasizing the Bible, particularly in relation to its historical dimensions, as the foundation for Christian theology. Recognizing the Bible as the product of a historical context very different from that of modern times, G. T. Zachariae (17291777) wrote the first major biblical theology to define the Bible as the basis for theological doctrine. Zachariae organized his work around three basic concerns that exemplify dogmatic or systematic theology: i) God; ii) The fall and consequential divine arrangements; and iii) The total change in the damaged human condition by means of Christianity. 3. The Development of Old Testament Theology in the 18th through the Early 20th Centuries. Although many contemporary theologians identify J. P. Gabler (17531826) as the founder of the field of biblical theology, his work clearly presupposes earlier currents of thought. Influenced by Kants understanding of empirical reason and ethical idealism, Gabler did not set out to define biblical theology as a field in its own right; rather, he was concerned with defining a secure basis for formulating dogmatic theology by first establishing its foundations in the Bible. His 1787 inaugural lecture at the University of Altdorf, An Oration on the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each, argues for a distinction be-

tween biblical and dogmatic theology based upon the distinction between the human or historical concerns expressed within the Bible and the core divine or universal concerns expressed therein (Sandys-Wunsch/Ellredge 1980). Gablers proposal challenged Luthers principle of sola scriptura by emphasizing the interrelationship between the historical concerns of biblical exegesis, which identified what the biblical authors thought about matters of theology, and the didactic concerns of dogmatic theology, which would employ the universal truths of the Bible to address the needs of the contemporary world. The 19th century saw increasing concern with the rationalist and historical dimensions of philosophy and theology. F. Schleiermachers (17681834) work was particularly influential during this period insofar as his interest in constructing a true Christianity based on the experience of absolute dependence on God prompted him to reject the teachings of the OT as primitive fetishism that provided the basis for the development of true Christianity. Also influential was the work of G. W. F. Hegel (1770 1831), which emphasized the role of the Absolute Spirit (of God) in the unfolding historical progress of humankind. Hegel argued that the Greeks and Romans embodied the spirit of developing human intellectual freedom and that the Germanic nations of Protestant northern Europe were their heirs. Although the OT was a product of the Oriental fetishism, it provided a historical foundation for the unfolding of the Absolute Spirit in German Protestantism. The continuing dominance of rationalism and the developing interests in historical evolution during the 19th century profoundly influenced the emergence of OT theology as a distinct field. Such work emphasized the overriding concern with the historical character of the OT and its theological subordination as a foundation for the NT, already evident in the work of G. L. Bauer (1796), who traced the historical development of religious ideas of the OT in relation to those of the ancient Near Eastern world in an effort to establish the background and foundation of the NT. Subsequent work in OT theology during the 19th century continued to emphasize the historical character of the OT and to devalue it (and postbiblical Judaism) in relation to the NT. W. M. L. De Wette (1813) carefully distinguished two phases in the OT, viz., Hebraism, which expressed the fundamental ideals of a universal, ethical, and monotheistic God, and postexilic Judaism, which in his estimation constituted a degenerative form of legalistic theocracy. J. K. W. Vatke (1835) emphasized the high point of the OT in the development of a religion of spiritual individuality in the prophetic works of Jeremiah and Second Isaiah as well as the Wisdom literature, which transcended nationalistic particularism. G. F.

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Oehler (1883 [1873/74]) emphasized a heilsgeschichtlichen, or salvation-historical, approach that saw the genetic development of OT revelation through Mosaic moral law, prophetic communion with God, and the reflection of the sages on Gods cosmic ordinances and ethical life in the Wisdom and psalmic literature. Unfortunately, such a term does not account for the problem of theodicy in this literature, which depicts the destruction of Jerusalem and the deaths and exile of its people as an act of God. By the late 19th century, the predominance of historical work in OT studies in general buttressed by the increasing knowledge of the history and literature of the ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman worlds prompted an eclipse in the field of OT theology as scholars increasingly turned their attention to the historical development of the OT from its earliest stages through the beginning of the Christian era. For many theologians, the OT was a relic of the primitive past, increasingly irrelevant at the dawn of the newly emerging modern world. 4. Old Testament Theology in the 20th Century. World Wars I and II, the Shoah (Holocaust), and other forms of genocide, nuclear destruction, and environmental collapse played important roles in prompting theologians to recognize the fundamental problems with models of human progress in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and to turn once again to questions of theology as a basis for engaging religious traditions to interpret both the past and the modern world. The result was a reinvigoration of the fields of biblical theology in general and OT theology in particular during the course of the 20th century, as theologians debated the question of the interrelationship between historical knowledge of religion and theological understandings of revelation in relation to biblical interpretation. Writing in 1926, O. Eissfeldt argued that Israels religious experience and development through history must remain distinct as a concern of Religionsgeschichte, or religious history, in comparison to the true and absolute religion of divine revelation. W. Eichrodts 1929 response to Eissfeldt emphasized the affinities between religious history and theology insofar as the former pointed to the fundamental nature and inner structure of the latter. As a result of this discussion and the perceived need to address questions of biblical theology in the aftermath of World War I, Eichrodt produced his still-influential OT theology (196167 [193339]). He attempted to provide a methodological synthesis in producing an OT theology that would combine engagement with history of religions research with concern for the revelatory character of the NT. Regrettably, Eichrodt expressed the prevailing antiSemitism of his day by not taking up the relationship between the HB and postbiblical Judaism, which he characterized as having a torso-like appearance in separation from Christianity.

Eichrodt chose the concept of covenant as the basic concept for his systematic exposition of the OT, arguing such a cross-cut method in which he would demonstrate the unity of a fundamental concept throughout the various writings of the OT would best facilitate the exposition of the constancy and basic character of the OT as a self-contained entity despite the ever-changing historical conditions that led to its production. Although the Hebrew term be rt, covenant, does not appear throughout the HB, Eichrodt considered it to express the living process of the relationship between God and the human world that manifests itself throughout the OT. Consequently, he organized his theology around three fundamental themes: (i) God and the people, expressed as the people of Israel or the national concept of Israel; (ii) God and the world, expressed in terms of Gods relationship with all of humanity and the cosmos; and (iii) God and man (i.e., the human being), expressed in terms of the relationship between God and the individual human being. Overall, the organization of his work reflected Eichrodts concern with one of the fundamental theological problems of Christianity, viz., the interrelationship between the particularism of the nation Israel and the universalism of all humankind as collective and as individual. Such a concern also reflected the question of Germanys unification in central Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its growing hostility to recognizing the legitimacy of Jews as a distinct people and to integrating them into the German nation. Although Eichrodt was criticized for imposing a concept that did not account adequately for the entire OT, his theology constitutes a highly systematized account of the means by which the holy, all-powerful, sovereign, and infinite author of creation relates to the vulnerable, educable, and finite Israel and humanity in the world. A number of other notable OT theologies also appeared between World Wars I and II. E. Knig (1922) attempted to interrelate the concerns of history of religions with those of theology by identifying and describing Israels legitimate religion from the time of Abraham and then by taking up the classic themes of Christian dogmatic theology, viz., God, humanity, sin, and salvation. E. Sellin (1933) first described Israels religio-historical development and then treated only those theological conceptualizations of Judaism during the 5th2nd centuries BCE taken up in the New Testament. L. Khler (1957 [1936]) presented a philologically-rigorous analysis of texts from the HB/OT concerning God, man, judgment, and salvation. The widespread silence of Christian churches during the Nazi period prompted some pointed rethinking of systematic theology as Christian and Jewish theologians explored new means to articulate a theological world view. In his Church Dogmat-

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ics (English: 193677 [German: 193270]), K. Barth emphasized the importance of the proclamation of the word of the transcendent and holy God as the central task of Christian theology and preaching. D. Bonhoeffers (1972) writings and his execution by the Nazis stimulated reflection on theological questions of social justice and the need to assert divine presence in the world. Moreover, W. Pannenbergs (1977 [1975]) reflections on the role of the divine in history expressed the theological return to history in the face of an increasingly secular and technological world. While A. J. Heschels (1962) portrayal of divine pathos in the face of evil and the efforts of the divine to enter into a relationship with humans prompted both Jews and Christians to posit a far more intimate relationship between God and human beings, R. L. Rubenstein (1966) raised the question of divine absence in the world in the aftermath of the Shoah and its implications for constructing Jewish identity and Judaisms relationship with Christianity. The early postwar years saw a number of OT theologies that helped to lay ground work for the second half of the 20th century. M. Burrows (1946) emphasized the historical development of the OT as a prcis to the revelation of Christianity, and O. Procksch (1949) was especially interested in the relationship between history and revelation from creation through Israels election and historical experience and its culmination in Jesus Christ. O. Baab (1949) attempted to bring together the historical and normative dimensions of the Bible in an effort to articulate the view of God in OT religion, while R. C. Dentan (1963) placed the OT within the broader context of (Christian) biblical theology and systematics. Post-war discussions sponsored by the World Council of Churches played an important role in stimulating thought on the relevance of the Bible to the modern world. Such reflection prompted the so-called Biblical Theology Movement during the 1950s and 1960s as interpreters turned to the Bible as a basis for discerning divine purpose for the world. A number of theologies published during the postwar period reflect the influence of this movement. T. C. Vriezen (21970 [1949, 1956, 1964]) emphasized the Christian character of OT theology and focuses on the concept of the communion between God and human beings as the fundamental expression of kerygmatic proclamation of the relationship between God and humankind. G. E. Wright (1952) argued that the Bible is not the word of God but rather a confessional record of the acts of God as they actually happened and were portrayed in the OT. His 1969 study discussed three basic concepts of God in the OT, viz., God the Creator who sets the structure of the universe to which humans must conform, God the Lord or divine monarch who establishes a covenant relationship

with humans, and God the warrior who combats human sin in an effort to redeem the world. E. Jacob (1958 [1955]) drew heavily on the comparative study of ancient Near Eastern mythology to focus on Gods freedom and sovereignty in the OT in which God sets the parameters of the relationship to which human beings respond. In the aftermath of Vatican II, J. L. McKenzie (1956, 1974) was the first Roman Catholic biblical theologian to move beyond dogmatic categories in his attempts to focus on the experience by Israel of YHWH in the OT with particular emphasis on cultic matters, law, and holiness. G. von Rad was the most influential OT theologian of this period. His heilsgeschichtlicher, or salvation-historical, approach (196265, 1972 [195760, 1970]) took seriously the dichotomy between the picture of ancient Israelite history and religion developed by modern historical scholarship and the kerygmatic understanding of YHWH in history as proclaimed in the OT. Indeed, von Rads early formand tradition-critical work on the Hexateuch pointed to the confessional role of the statement in Deut 26 : 59 concerning YHWHs acts on Israels behalf during the ancestral, exodus, and wilderness periods until the entry into the promised land as the basis for Israels understanding of YHWH. There was no center to the OT insofar as the many biblical writings displayed tremendous diversity in theological outlook due to their long tradition-historical development in a variety of historical and institutional settings. Nevertheless, the historical dimensions of the OT point to a theological view grounded in history from the time of creation, through Israels historical experience, and beyond. Since von Rad was heavily criticized for marginalizing concepts that demonstrated stability rather than change in the relationship between YHWH and Israel or the world e.g., creation and the Wisdom literature in particular he subsequently produced a book devoted to the Wisdom literature but nevertheless characterized wisdom as Israels response to YHWHs acts in history. Nevertheless, his heilsgeschichtliches model provided the primary counterpoint to Eichrodts covenant model throughout the 20th century. A number of theologies written during the latter 20th century followed upon the work of von Rad. W. Zimmerli (1978 [1972]) attempted to counter von Rads heilsgeschichtliches model with one that highlights the central concern of what the OT says about God by emphasizing classical Reformed theological themes concerning the absolute free sovereignty and grace of God, the revelation of the divine name to Israel, Israels ungrateful response leading to divine judgment, and the salvation offered to the entire world. G. Fohrer (1972), on the other hand, identified two centers to the OT in the rule of God and communion with God, which empha-

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sized prophecy as the reappearance of Mosaic religion in a purified form that would counter the nationalist-religious ideology of state. C. Westermann (1982 [1978]), for his part, combines systematic and diachronic approaches in an effort to present Gods saving action in history, Gods blessing in creation, Gods judgment and compassion, the human response to God in words, action, and reflection, and the relationship between the OT and Jesus Christ. At the same time, H. Gese (1981 [1977]) emphasizes the tradition-historical stream of development from the OT to the NT, while H. D. Preuss (199596 [199192]) focuses on Israels election in the OT as a basis to trace the election of humanity in the NT. Finally, E. Gerstenberger (2002 [2001]) eschews any attempt to define a center to the OT and instead examines the theologies represented throughout the social history of ancient Israel. 5. Developments in the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries. By the latter 20th century, the dominance of historical models for OT theology came under challenge as theologians sought to address their shortcomings. Although it may be premature to refer to the collapse of history (Perdue 1994a, 2005), newer canonical, cosmological, and dialogical (including feminist, Jewish, African-American, and postcolonial models) have emerged during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In an attempt to recover the theological character of the Bible as Christian Scripture, B. Childs (1970, 1985, 1993) called for a focus on the Christian canon as the central concern of biblical theology insofar as the canonical text of the Bible and not the reconstructed history of Israel or the purportedly original texts that had informed the work of the biblical theology movement stood as the product of Christian faith throughout history. Childs understood biblical theology to include both the OT and NT but sought to provide a basis for interpretation of the OT in its own right as Christian Scripture in conversation with the NT and the Wirkungsgeschichte, or later actualization of Scripture in the Christian community. Childss work has been sharply criticized as an attempt to abandon the historical character of Scripture, although he does account for historical issues in his treatment of texts. More importantly, his emphasis on the substantia, which he understands as the divine reality to be found in the Bible, has left him open to charges of subjectivity (Barr 1999). Nevertheless, Childs canonical model provides a means to overcome the selective foci of earlier theologies based on systematic and historical grounds; moreover, it provides a means to account for the interpretative afterlife of the Bible in the communities for which it serves as sacred Scripture. Childss work has been followed by other scholars who have focused on canonical issues as well. Although he did not produce a full biblical theol-

ogy, J. A. Sanders (1972, 1984) moves beyond Childs monolithic focus on the western Protestant canon to stress the importance of the various textual and canonical forms of the Bible and their impact on Christian and Jewish believing communities. R. Rendtorff (2005 [2001]) proposes concentration on the masoretic form of the Bible as a canonical model for OT theology to provide the opportunity for Judaism and Christianity to engage in a common reading of their shared sacred Scripture, and M. A. Sweeneys (1997; 2011) call for consideration of the unique canonical forms of Judaism and Christianity is intended to account for the unique conceptualization of the Bible by each. One of the major problems to emerge in biblical theology in general and OT theology in particular during the course of the 20th century is the recognition that the ideal patterns of Gods relationship with humanity and creation at large have failed to be realized. Although past models have generally been content to characterize the question of theodicy as one of human sin, the moral questions raised about divine absence in relation to the Shoah have prompted reconsideration of divine power and righteousness in the Bible. Scholars are increasingly interested in investigating the theological significance of the Wisdom and creation texts and the issues they raise. R. P. Knierim (1995) moves beyond the historical work of his teacher von Rad to point to the cosmological foundation of YHWHs world order in justice and righteousness as a means to define human responsibility in the world of creation. In addition, J. D. Levenson (1985, 1988) points to the role of the Jerusalem temple as the sacred center of creation as well as of the nation Israel and to the importance of YHWHs daily struggle against evil to maintain the holy and moral integrity of creation at large. B. W. Anderson (1999) points to the different understandings of covenant in the OT as a means to define the relationship between YHWH and Israel and the crisis provoked by the manifestation of evil in the world of creation, while J. Crenshaw (2005) points to the importance of the question of theodicy in the OT which asserts divine righteousness as a means of defending God. Sweeney (2008) points to the role that human beings must play to ensure the well-being of the world when God fails to act in the face of evil. Finally, the inclusion of groups previously marginalized in theological discussion including women, Jews, African-Americans, and theologians from cultures outside of the European and NorthAmerican orbit point to dialogical models for OT theology that bring the unique perspectives of each group into the discussion. Feminist theological scholarship has emerged as a powerful voice, prompting theologians to rethink basic understandings of God and the web of relationships between and among God and human beings. P. Trible

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(1978, 1984) emphasizes that texts may be read from multiple perspectives depending on the context of the reader and that not only the feminine characters of God and key figures in the Bible but also the interrelationships between God, humans, and texts are frequently overlooked because of the limits of gendered hermeneutical perspectives. Jewish biblical theology is represented in the works of Heschel, Levenson, and Sweeney discussed above as well as in the work of M. Fishbane (2005), who emphasizes the interrelationships between biblical and rabbinic literature. Furthermore, R. C. Bailey (2000) presents an overview of African-American biblical interpretation of the Bible that exposes white supremacist presuppositions in current biblical scholarship and points to the role of African-American ideological criticism in the reading of biblical texts, and F. Segovia (2000) points to perspectives from the Third World in the theological reading of biblical literature. Finally, W. Brueggemann (1997) takes up the postmodern question of differing perspectives in the reading of the Bible that underlies each of the preceding approaches to biblical theology. Brueggemann emphasizes that the discipline of theology is fundamentally discourse concerning God. He therefore examines the communicative functions of various writings of the HB/OT in an effort to bring their differing perspectives together in theological dialog or testimony concerning God and Gods relationship to the world. Although OT theology, or the theological study of the HB/OT, has prompted a very intense and variegated discussion over the past centuries, continuing work at the outset of the 21st century promises continuing engagement in the field.
Bibliography: I Anderson, B. W., Contours of Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis, Minn. 1999). I Baab, O., The Theology of the Old Testament (Nashville, Tenn. 1949). I Bailey, R. C., Academic Biblical Interpretation among African Americans in the United States, in African Americans and the Bible (eds. V. L. Wimbush et al.; New York 2000) 696711. I Barr, J., The Concept of Biblical Theology (Minneapolis, Minn. 1999). I Barth, K., Church Dogmatics, 5 vols. (Edinburgh 193677). I Bauer, G. L., Theologie des Alten Testaments oder Abri der religisen Begriffe der alten Hebrer (Leipzig 1796). I Bonhoeffer, D., Letters and Papers from Prison (ed. E. Bethge; New York 1972). I Brueggemann, W., Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis, Minn. 1997). I Burrows, M., An Outline of Biblical Theology (Philadelphia, Pa. 1946). I Childs, B. S., Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia, Pa. 1970). I Childs, B. S., Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia, Pa. 1985). I Childs, B. S., Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis, Minn. 1993). I Crenshaw, J. L., Defending God (Oxford/New York I Dentan, R. C., Preface to Old Testament Theology 2005). (New York 1963). I Eichrodt, W., Hat die alttestamentliche Theologie noch selbstndige Bedeutung innerhalb der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft?, ZAW 47 (1929) 8391. I Eichrodt, W., Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, Pa. 196167); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 3 vols. (Leipzig 193339). I Eissfeldt, O., Israelitisch-jdische Religionsgeschichte und alttestamentliche

Theologie, ZAW 44 (1926) 112. I Fishbane, M., Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford/New York 2003). I Fohrer, G., Theologische Grundstrukturen des Alten Testaments (Berlin 1972). I Gerstenberger, E. S., Theologies in the Old Testament (Minneapolis, Minn. 2002); trans. of id., Theologien im Alten Testament (Stuttgart 2001). I Gese, H., Essays on Biblical Theology (Minneapolis, Minn. 1981); trans. of id., Zur biblischen Theologie (Beitrge zur evangelischen Theologie 78; Mnchen 1977). I Hasel, G., Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich. 41991). I Hayes, J. H./F. Prussner, Old Testament Theology (Atlanta, Ga. 1985). I Heschel, A. J., The Prophets (New York 1962). I Jacob, E., Theology of the Old Testament (New York 1958); trans. of id., Thologie de lancien Testament (Neuchtel 1955). I Knierim, R. P., The Task of Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge 1995). I Khler, L., Old Testament Theology (Philadelphia, Pa. 1957); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testament (Tbingen 1936). I Knig, E., Theologie des Alten Testament kritisch und vergleichend dargestellt (Stuttgart 1922). I Kraeling, E. G., The Old Testament Since the Reformation (New York 1969). I Kraus, H.-J., Die biblische Theologie (NeukirchenVluyn 1970). I Levenson, J. D., Sinai and Zion (Minneapolis, Minn. 1985). I Levenson, J. D., Creation and the Persistence of I McKenzie, J. L., The Two-Edged Evil (New York 1988). Sword (Milwaukee, Wis. 1955). I McKenzie, J. L., A Theology of the Old Testament (Garden City, N.Y. 1974). I Oehler, G. F., Theology of the Old Testament (New York 1883); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 187374). I Pannenberg, W., Faith and Reality (Philadelphia, Pa. 1977); trans. of id., Glaube und Wirklichkeit (Mnchen 1975). I Perdue, L. G., The Collapse of History (Minneapolis, Minn. 1994a). I Perdue, L. G., Wisdom and Creation (Nashville, Tenn. 1994b). I Perdue, L. G., Reconstructing Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis, Minn. 2005). I Preuss, H. D., Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Louisville, Ky. 199596); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 199192). I Procksch, O., Theologie des Alten Testament (Gtersloh 1949). I Rad, G. von, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (New York 196265); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Mnchen 195760). I Rad, G. von, Wisdom in Israel (Philadelphia, Pa. 1972); trans. of id., Weisheit in Israel (Neukirchen-Vluyn 1970). I Rendtorff, R., The Canonical Hebrew Bible (Leiden 2005); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Neukirchen-Vluyn 2001). I Reventlow, H. Graf, Problems of Old Testament Theology in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, Pa. 1985); trans. of id., Hauptprobleme der alttestamentliche Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt 1983). I Rubenstein, R. L., After Auschwitz (Indianapolis, Ind. 1966). I Sanders, J. A., Torah and Canon (Philadelphia, Pa. 1972). I Sanders, J. A., Canon and Community (Philadelphia, Pa. 1984). I Sandys-Wunsch, J./L. Eldredge, J. P. Gabler and the Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology, SJTh 33 (1980) 13344. I Segovia, F., Decolonizing Biblical Studies (Maryknoll, N.Y. 2000). I Sellin, E., Theologie des Alten Testament (Leipzig 1933). I Sweeney, M. A., Tanak versus Old Testament, in Problems in Biblical Theology, FS R. Knierim (eds. H. T. C. Sun/K. L. Eades; Grand Rapids, Mich./ Cambridge 1997) 35372. I Sweeney, M. A., Reading the Hebrew Bible after the Shoah (Minneapolis, Minn. 2008). I Sweeney, M. A., Tanak: A Theological and Critical Introduction to the Jewish Bible (Minneapolis, Minn. 2011). I Trible, P., God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia, Pa. 1978). I Trible, P., Texts of Terror (Philadelphia, Pa. 1984). I Vatke, J. K. W., Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt (Berlin 1835). I Vriezen, T. C., An Outline of Old Testament Theology (Newton, Mass. 21970); trans. of id., Hoofdlijnen der theologie van het Oude Testament (Wageningen 61987).

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Westermann, C., Elements of Old Testament Theology (Atlanta, Ga. 1982); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments in Grundzgen (Gttingen 1978). I Wette, W. M. L. de, Biblische Dogmatik Alten und Neuen Testaments (Berlin 1813). I Wright, G. E., God Who Acts (London 1952). I Wright, G. E., The Old Testament and Theology (New York 1969). I Zimmerli, W., Old Testament Theology in Outline (Atlanta, Ga. 1978); trans. of id., Grundri der alttestamentlichen Theologie (Stuttgart 1972).

Marvin A. Sweeney

II. New Testament

From the perspective of the New Testament, as part of the (Christian) Bible, the enterprise of biblical theology (or of a NT biblical theology) is not without its problems. 1. The Problems of a New Testament Biblical Theology. a. Which Bible? Whose Bible? The initial problem is posed by the title biblical theology of the New Testament (Hbner; Stuhlmacher; Childs) and arises with the term biblical itself. (i) The title assumes a Christian perspective , in which there already exists an entity called the New Testament, and, explicitly or implicitly, another entity called the Old Testament. In this perspective, the Bible is the Christian Bible made up of these two Testaments. (ii) At the same time, a biblical theology of the NT is inevitably an attempt to expound the NT writings from within the NT, using as a major explanatory key the NT writers use of the OT. But since for the NT writers there was as yet no NT as such, Bible here (i.e., from their perspective) can denote only the (Jewish) Scriptures. Thus the very title biblical theology immediately demands the recognition that the writings being studied are Bible/Scripture because they function as such for two different religious communities the Jewish and the Christian. Of course, Christians could ignore the fact that their OT is also the Jewish Bible and affirm that their biblical theology is concerned only with their Bible. But that would immediately run counter to central concerns of the NT writers themselves, for whom the Jewish Scriptures were the only Bible. It was crucial to earliest Christian self-understanding and to NT apologetics generally that the gospel they were proclaiming was in direct continuity with those writings already recognized as Scripture by Jews generally and not just by Christians. Consequently, the issues of continuity/discontinuity lie at the heart of biblical theology. In short, the dynamic of biblical theology is that its subject matter is determined and defined by texts which are Israels Scripture (the Torah or Tanakh as a whole) and not merely the Old Testament, but which are also Christian Scripture (the Scriptures for the NT writers) and which therefore have some sort of defining role for the texts which were to become the New Testament. What is the relation of New Testament to Old Testament?

Does New indicate movement on to a different plane of revelation, with Old subordinated to a merely background role? Or is New a new form of the Old, with each vital to a proper reception and understanding of the other? This is the fundamental problem of biblical theology, and is indeed constitutive of biblical theology properly so called. b. The Question of the Canon. The question of the canon is unavoidable, since canon defines the content and scope of the Bible, and is particularly pressing for those who want to provide a canonical biblical theology. The difficulty in this case is that, for the crucial period when the NT was being written but was not yet the New Testament, the boundaries of the canon were fuzzy. What counted as the Law (Torah) and the Prophets was more or less agreed. But the number of the Writings was far from clear, including the status of a major Second Temple Jewish writing like Ben Sira. And is the OT the Hebrew Bible or the Greek Bible (LXX), the latter with several HB texts elaborated and extended? It is clear from OT quotations in the NT that the LXX was the principal text for the NT writers. With the NT writings, the problem is still more serious. For in the 1st century CE, there was, properly speaking, no NT canon. We can certainly speak of traditions of Jesus that were prized and functioned authoritatively, and of letters of Paul which were soon circulated and began to acquire a kind of proto-canonical status for a steadily widening circle of churches, but of little more than that. Nor should we forget that canonical status was never really a parity of status across the board of the NT writings. Those whose apostolic authority was doubted well into the 4th century CE are better designated as deutero-canonical. And questions about the status of secondary items have never been finally or satisfactorily resolved. The real problem with tying a New Testament theology to the NT canon is that it makes not so much the NT documents the norm for NT theology, but rather the 4th-century CE evaluation of the NT and its canon. The voices of the NT writers are valued not so much for their individuality but for their agreement, or for their assent to a creed or rule partly drawn from some of the writings but also imposed on the others and reflecting more the priorities of the subsequent centuries than those of the NT writers themselves. But what if conformity to such a rule is an imposition on much more diverse patterns of speech, belief, and praxis? In which case, is that properly NT theology, or the theology of the 4th-century CE church? This issue underlines the importance of biblical theology as a historical discipline: to hear the texts in their historical context, as they were heard when first or finally written down in their enduring form; to read them diachronically, taking into account the

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influences which shaped them, and not simply synchronically where complementarity to other canonical texts becomes the primary hermeneutical principle. This also involves recognizing the relevance and possible influence of non-canonical texts, particularly the so-called intertestamental Jewish writings. A New Testament theology in particular cannot confine itself to the canonical writings, since many of the writings in the NT canon cannot properly be grasped without appreciating the interaction with issues and themes attested in extra-canonical writings which was part of their raison dtre. c. Jesus and/or Paul? A further issue for NT theology is posed by the question of the historical beginnings of Christianity. Was Jesus or Paul its principal founder? Alternatively posed, is there a marked lack of continuity between Jesus own mission and the Easter faith of the first disciples? In NT theology terms, are Jesus own mission and preaching a part of that theology or should they be regarded as part of it? Bultmann famously said No Jesus message belongs only to the presuppositions of NT theology. And certainly, a NT theology cannot ignore, for example, the fact that the main theme of Jesus preaching (the kingdom of God) features much less elsewhere in the NT (Johns gospel being a key case in point). Or that according to the Synoptic tradition, Jesus did not proclaim himself or call for faith in himself, whereas in the rest of the NT the proclaimer has typically become the proclaimed; for the NT writers, saving faith is faith not simply in the God whom Jesus proclaimed, but faith in Jesus. Or again that Jesus focus on his own mission to Israel was soon transformed by the successful mission to the Gentiles. It is true that Bultmanns dismissal of Jesus own theology from the arena of NT theology has had to be heavily qualified, for the Gospels themselves are certainly central within NT theology, and Jesus own mission is central to their subject matter. The issue cannot be handled with the old antithesis between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. The historical Jesus does not belong to some irrelevant back room whose door was closed with the event of Easter and ever after remains inaccessible to us, blinded as we are by the light of Easter faith. The Gospels are gospel and as such they contain rich accounts of Jesus teachings and deeds, of his theology as lived out and taught. The variations within the Synoptic tradition provide clear evidence of how the Jesus tradition was handled and continued to have a living role in the life and faith of the earliest churches. Apart from the gospel framework itself, there is remarkably little modification of the substance of the Jesus tradition in the Synoptic tradition. The fact that these early tradents could express their Easter faith in and through the Synoptic tradition, and do so without significant modification of individual items of the

tradition, clearly indicates that Jesus message and mission functioned as fully part of both the preand post-Easter theologizing of the first disciples, i.e., part of NT theology. d. Theology or Theologies? To talk of biblical theology or NT theology can itself be misleading, since it may seem to imply a single, unified entity. In talking about the New Testament there is a danger of implying that there is the NT view of any issue, the NT belief about Jesus, the NT attitude to womens ministry, and the like. On the contrary, one of the primary concerns of a NT biblical theology should be to allow each of the NT writers to speak with his own voice, to make clear the diversity of the NT and biblical witness. The alternative would be to reduce NT biblical theology to the lowest common denominator of what they all agreed, or to assume uncritically that what one said explicitly, all the rest affirmed too so NT theology and not simply the theology of Matthew, James, Paul, Luke-Acts, John, or Hebrews. In contrast, it is important that the biblical theologian makes clear the divergent or discordant views of Matthew and Mark, or of Paul and James, precisely because such discordance is part of the NT testimony, an integral part of NT theology. So a central issue for NT biblical theology is whether there is a center, common theme, shared concern, or unifying principle which binds together the diversity (Hahn; Marshall; Matera). From a NT or Christian perspective, Jesus (or faith in him) is the obvious answer, though the extent to which the diversity of the Jewish Scriptures can be held together by the messianic hope which found fulfillment in Jesus is open to question. Other suggestions, such as justification by faith, apostolic succession, or anthropology, are even more problematic. And the more recently popular conception of a meta-narrative, presupposed by more or less all the biblical writers and binding them together, simply poses the issue afresh: a single narrative or diverse narratives? Equally important is the question of whether a biblical theology should attempt to articulate a theology presupposed by the biblical writers/writings or should deal only with the theology actually articulated by them. e. Theology or Theologizing? A prominent debate in biblical and NT theology is whether the task is purely historical and descriptive (as Wrede so vigorously argued), whether what it meant should be held sharply distinct from what it means (Stendahl). It is itself a historical fact that historical criticism was modeled on the pattern of scientific inquiry, exalting accurate observation and dispassionate objectivity into an ideal. Personal involvement in the subject matter, summarized as faith, was to be bracketed out as liable to distort perception. Description rather than prescription was the order of the day, and NT theology could be treated as a subset of a historical sociology of religion.

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A first response is the observation that faith is itself part of the historical phenomena to be observed the faith which Jesus mission, death, and resurrection excited is itself part of the data to be described (Balla). So NT theology can be justifiably defined as a descriptive account of the theological thinking (of the faith) of the first Christians. But the real questions are whether NT theology should not only speak of but speak to faith (Morgan; Watson), and to what extent the NT biblical theologian should allow himself/herself to interact with the text, to bring his/her own faith (of whatever character) into interaction with the faith expressed in the text? Bound up with this are classic hermeneutical issues, compounded in this case by the fact that the texts in view are not only historical writings but have functioned as Scripture for faith communities, some of them for more than two millennia. Is the NT biblical theologian to be concerned only with the Sprache of the text, or also/more precisely with its Sache? Should biblical theology take into account the way the text has been understood throughout the intervening centuries (Scripture and tradition), the way it has shaped the very presuppositions (linguistic, cultural) which most 21st-century readers bring to their reading of it? To what extent does a reading today create the meaning heard from the text (the challenge of postmodernism)? Can the biblical theologian truly engage with the text without asking what it means for himself/herself and his/ her community above all, to believe in God or in Jesus as they did? How different is a faith activist practicing a rigorous critical methodology from any critic seeking to enter into a text empathetically? In short, can one do biblical or NT theology without theologizing with (or in reaction to) the biblical/NT writers as they did? Is the a in a biblical theology unavoidable since the theology in question is my or your biblical theology, rather than, in the most proper sense, the Bibles theology? 2. The Central Subject Matter of Biblical Theology. Any NT biblical theology will be determined by the way the questions of continuity-discontinuity and unity-diversity are handled. Central to its concerns will be the way the NT writers interact with and transform what have proved to be the key distinctive features of Israels theology and religious tradition: (a) God; (b) salvation temple and cult; (c) Israel the people of God; and (d) Torah how the people of God should live. The fundamental issue for a NT biblical theology is whether Jesus message or the gospel about him introduced a radical disjuncture with these central features of what we may fairly call Israels biblical theology. a. God. God is one of the fundamental presuppositions of the NT writers, so much taken for granted as part of the heritage taken over from Second Temple Judaism, that it is often neglected

as a feature of NT theology. This theo-logy includes belief in God as Creator and final judge, as both transcendent and invisible and yet also immanent through the Spirit, and a developing readiness to talk of God enacting his creation, revelation, and redemption through a range of angelic intermediaries and/or through his wisdom and word. Within the ancient Near East, the most distinctive and fundamental defining characteristic of Jewish faith and religion was the belief in the oneness of God, as classically expressed in the Shema. Monotheism is a difficult concept to use for this period, and the language sometimes used of great angels and of divine wisdom may seem to call Israels monotheism into question. Here it must suffice to note that apocalyptic writers made a point of depicting angelic intermediaries refusing worship, and that the wisdom writers and Philo, even when they made great play with the personifications of Wisdom and Word, were careful to retain and maintain the fundamental Jewish belief in the invisibility and oneness of God. The whole subject is a good example of reading NT texts against the background not only of the OT but also of Second Temple Judaism. The key issue here for a NT biblical theology is whether Christian faith in Jesus as expressed within the NT breaches that monotheism. It is a key issue, for if the conclusion is affirmative, then the coherence of NT Christology with the biblical theology taken over by the NT writers becomes questionable. It could only be so in terms of a Christian faith which rode roughshod over one of the fundamental Jewish axioms; it could only be a biblical theology in which Jewish Scripture was no more than Old Testament, wholly subservient to New. It is a key issue, in other words, because it poses and defines the challenge of biblical theology. In fact it can be strongly argued that NT Christology stays within the bounds of the monotheism of Jewish Scriptures that the high wisdom Christology of Paul or John, or the angel Christology of Revelation, simply extended the vigor of the wisdom reflection and the powerful impact of apocalyptic visions already present in the Jewish Scriptures, and extended beyond them in alternative patterns by other Jewish writers of the Second Temple period (Jewish apocalypses, Philo). It is true that Jesus himself is an object of worship in the NT, most obviously in John and Revelation, but never as an alternative to the worship of the one God, only as to the glory of God the Father. The incarnation of the Word in Jesus (John 1 : 14) is at least in some degree comparable to the incarnation of Wisdom in the Torah (Sir 24 : 23). In any case, the issue as to whether Christian belief in Jesus as divine (and in what sense) breaches OT monotheism, or reveals a still greater complexity in human apprehension of God, is clearly posed in the NT

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(christological monotheism) and presents itself as a primary candidate for biblical theologizing. b. Salvation. Salvation is an appropriate summary title for the belief that God makes provision for human beings in face of the many dangers which threaten them. Its status as a terminus technicus of Christian theology is well rooted in biblical usage, not least in the Psalms exaltation of God as savior. The theology of salvation taken over by the NT includes several central features, one being that salvation is at Gods initiative. For biblical theology, the archetypal examples are the promises (land, seed, blessing to the nations) made repeatedly and wholly gratuitously by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The exodus and settlement in Canaan are repeatedly affirmed to take place not because of any goodness or greatness in the Israelite tribes, but solely because God had made an oath to the patriarchs. Since NT theologians have often regarded Israels relation with God to be solely dependent on Israels Torah obedience (Jewish legalism), this biblical witness that God made his covenant with Israel as an act of purely gracious initiative needs to be stressed. Gods faithfulness to the covenant commitment, despite Israels failings, is much praised in the Psalms, Hosea, and Second Isaiah, and is an assumption which Paul in particular regards as an unshakeable given in Romans. Pauls concept of Gods saving righteousness, which he saw as defining the gospel (Rom 1 : 1617) and which came as such a revelation to Luther, is entirely drawn from the OT. The crunch issue for a NT biblical theology focuses most sharply on the provision made by God for Israels transgressions in the temple cult and atoning sacrifice. Here again the NT writers take over the theology of redemptive sacrifice (the Passover) and atonement (sin offering), as is evident in, for example, Rom 3 : 25, Hebrews, 1 Pet 2 : 24, and 1 John 2 : 2. The question for a NT biblical theology, however, is whether the categories of priest and sacrifice are exhausted by reference to Jesus death on the cross, and either transferred to believers daily service of the gospel (e.g., Rom 12 : 1; 15 : 16; Phil 2 : 15; 1 Pet 2 : 5; Rev 1 : 5) or simply discarded. Does Jesus (or do his followers) take the place of the temple, so central to biblical theology, and leave no further room for it in Gods salvation plan? Again, to what extent is Christian baptism simply continuous with circumcision and the Lords Supper with the Passover? Is the new covenant a renewal of the old or one of an entirely different kind? Are there genuine novums here which move the talk of salvation on to a wholly new plane? Bound up in all this is the issue of eschatology the extent to which the fulfillment claimed in the NT, from the Gospels and throughout, is a/the fulfillment of Israels/the OTs hopes, and the extent to which the failure of the NT hopes for the Son

of Man or Jesus to come (again) on clouds simply continue the biblical tradition of hope deferred and renewed. The rootedness of biblical theology in what has happened in the past (exodus, Easter) is combined with the openness of theologizing to the unknown future of hope. c. Israel. A third defining theme of biblical theology has to be Israel, as constitutive of the Jewish Scriptures. Christians did not attempt to decide the canonical status of Israels Scriptures (even as OT) independently of the de facto prior decision of Israel on the subject. And the theme of Gods choice of and expectation for the people of Israel is an integrating motif running through the bulk of these Scriptures. Of course the horizon of the Jewish Scriptures stretches beyond Israel herself a crucial factor in biblical theology. Of major importance within the Jewish Bible is the recognition of the one God as God of all creation and all peoples, and its soteriology extends to new creation and includes thought of Israel itself as a light to the nations. Nevertheless, the election of Israel, and the understanding of God as the God of Israel, is so fundamental within Jewish self-understanding, so axiomatic for Jewish biblical theology, that the issue of continuity between Jewish and Christian self-understanding on this point is inescapable as a fundamental question of biblical theology. In blunt terms, the issue is whether Christianity can somehow claim to be part of Israel, incorporated within (eschatological) Israel. It comes to focus in such specific questions as whether Jesus hope was (simply) for the restoration of Israel, to what extent Pauls argument in Rom 911 is an affirmation (or denial?) of Israels election, and how to evaluate the assumption of Jas 1 : 1 and 1 Pet 1 : 1 that the letters were addressed to (the 12 tribes[!] in) the Diaspora. Of course it would be possible to develop the old/new covenant antithesis of Hebrews in particular, and to argue with the most emphatic voices of the 2nd century CE (Barnabas, Justin, Melito) that the Christians have replaced the Jews as the real people of God. But that early line of Christian self-understanding opened up the whole fateful adversus Judaeos tradition with its evil outworking in Christian anti-Semitism, so that for other than biblical theology reasons it must be resisted. In fact, however, biblical theology considerations are sufficient to refute such a line of interpretation. The attempts of the first Christians to define themselves were wholly within the parameters provided by the Jewish Scriptures; the very attempt was itself an exercise of biblical theology. In particular, the question of whether Pauls argument in Gal 3 and Rom 4 (that the gospel fulfils the third strand of the promise to Abraham [the blessing for the nations]) is viable and persuasive is first and foremost a question for biblical theology. If it were

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simply a matter of Christian exegesis of the patriarchal promises, the nerve of Pauls own biblical theology would be cut, for he certainly wanted the argument to be persuasive as an exegesis of his own peoples Scriptures. The question Who is Israel? is therefore integrally bound up with the issue of What is biblical theology? The fact that the former is still a vital question for Israel today (is it a geographical/national or a religious entity? do non-religious Jews belong to it, or proselytes to liberal Judaism? etc.), as well as retaining foundational significance for Christianity (where do Christians come in the Jew/ Gentile dichotomy?), also means that NT biblical theology cannot be content to serve a merely antiquarian, descriptive function in the modern world. d. Law. The Law is a fourth fundamental issue for biblical theology. The fact is (and remains indisputable) that the Torah, the book of Law, is central to both the Jewish Scriptures and to Jewish self-understanding. The Torah is the heart of the Jewish Scriptures, the canon within the canon of the Jewish Bible; the Prophets and Writings are simply the first and second commentaries on it. The Torah/ Law stands at the centre of the covenant with Israel and of Jewish life. Consequently, a Christianity which disowns the Law/Torah disowns a fundamental part of its own defining heritage. This was not seen clearly enough in a Christianity which defined itself too straightforwardly as Gospel vs. Law, and which tended to heap on the religion of law (= Judaism) the antipathy and moral outrage which the justified/righteous reserve for the self-made/godless. Consequently, here too Christianity gave scope and comfort to anti-Semitic forces within the church and here again the nerve of biblical theology was cut. The tendency was misguided since closer attention to some broad themes in the NT should have prevented it particularly the recognition of the concern in Matthew and Acts to demonstrate that Jesus and Paul are not to be dismissed as hostile to the law (e.g., Matt 5 : 1720; Acts 21 : 2326), and Pauls own concern to argue that faith sustains the law and love fulfils it (Rom 3 : 31; 13 : 810). It is fundamental to a correct exegesis of these texts to recognize that they were not written as Christian texts already self-consciously distant from Jewish concerns. Rather they saw themselves as engaged in what we can properly call an intra-Israel debate about the meaning and application of the Torah. In other words, it was a debate about biblical theology. As such it was taking place within the NT writings and is in greater or lesser degree constitutive of the gospel they sought to proclaim and the theology they expressed. Within the NT the debate between Paul and James sums up the tension which runs through the

Bible as a whole between divine promise and human obedience, covenant and obligation, gospel and law. New Testament theologians have been much more ready to recognize this tension in the OT, and the degree to which doing what the law demands is a factor in final salvation. They have been much less willing to recognize that the same tension is present equally in the NT, in Jesus talk of reward as much as in Pauls talk of judgment according to works and his concern for moral transformation and warnings against moral laxity. A NT biblical theology is bound to have a nomistic element as part of it. 3. Conclusions. Biblical theology does not comprise the whole task of theology, nor does it break down simply into Jewish and Christian biblical theology (of different kinds and periods). Its beginning is the recognition that the texts in focus constitute the Bible of two world religions. At the heart of biblical theology is the interface between a Jewish and a Christian biblical theology the interface being the NT itself. The fundamental issue in biblical theology is whether the NT belongs to both Bibles, to both biblical theologies; whether the NT is properly speaking part of the revelation given by the one God of Israel to his people Israel, part of Israels reflection on and response to that revelation. Inescapable in biblical theology is the ambiguity of selfunderstanding: Does Jesus mark the continuity, even climax of Israels prophetic tradition, or its completion and rounding off? Is Paul the Jew become Christian apostle an apostate or the one who in the event fulfils most fully Israels vocation to be a light to the Gentiles? Is Christianity an/the eschatological renewal of Israel or the abrogation of Judaism? It is the mark of biblical theology that such crucial questions can never be completely resolved, will never be resolved until the coming (parousia) of the Messiah, and that such ambivalence infuses and influences all other issues within biblical theology. But it is also the deep and deeply felt concern to be true to sacred tradition, while being open to new insights, solutions, and even revelation, which makes biblical theology so invigorating and challenging, for today as it was in the biblical period itself.
Bibliography: I Balla, P., Challenges to New Testament Theology (WUNT 2/95; Tbingen 1997). I Bartholomew, C. et al. (eds.), Out of Egypt (Milton Keynes 2004). I Berger, K., Theologiegeschichte des Urchristentums (Tbingen 1994). I Breytenbach, C./J. Frey (eds.), Aufgabe und Durchfhrung einer Theologie des Neuen Testaments (WUNT 205; Tbingen 2007). I Bultmann, R,. The Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols. (London 195255); trans. of id., Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Neue theologische Grundrisse 1; Tbingen 194853). I Caird, G. B., New Testament Theology (Oxford 1994). I Childs, B. S., Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (London/Minneapolis, Minn. 1992). I Dohmen, C./T. Sding (eds.), Eine Bibel zwei Testamente (Paderborn 1995). I Dunn, J. D. G., Unity and Diversity in the New Testament

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(London 2006 [= 1977]). I Dunn, J. D. G., New Testament Theology: An Introduction (Nashville, Tenn. 2009). I Hahn, F., Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 2 vols. (Tbingen 2002). I Hbner, H., Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 3 vols. (Gttingen 1990/93/95). I Kraftchick, S. J. et al. (eds.), Biblical Theology, FS J. C. Beker (Nashville, Tenn. 1995). I Marshall, I. H., New Testament Theology (Downers Grove, Ill. 2004). I Matera, F. J., New Testament Theology (Louisville, Ky. 2007). I Mead, J. K., Biblical Theology (Louisville, Ky. 2007). I Merk, O., Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments in ihrer Anfangszeit (Marburg 1972). I Morgan, R., The Nature of New Testament Theology (London 1973). I Penner, T./C. Vander Stichele (eds.), Moving Beyond New Testament Theology? (Helsinki/Gttingen 2005). I Risnen, H., Beyond New TesI Reventlow, H. Graf, tament Theology (London 1990). Hauptproblem der alttestamentlichen Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt 1982). I Rowland, C./C. Tuckett (eds.), The Nature of New Testament Theology, FS R. Morgan (Oxford 2006). I Schnelle, U., Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Gttingen 2007). I Scobie, C. H. H., The Ways of Our God (Grand Rapids, Mich. 2003). I Stendahl, K., Biblical Theology: Contemporary, IDB 1 (Nashville, Tenn. 1962) 41832. I Strecker, G. (ed.), Das Problem der Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Darmstadt 1975). I Stuhlmacher, P., Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 2 vols. (Gttingen 1992/99). I Stuhlmacher, P., How to Do Biblical Theology (Allison Park, Pa. 1995). I Watson, F., Text and Truth (Edinburgh 1997). I Wilckens, U., Geschichte der urchristlichen Theologie, vol. 1 of id., Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 4 vols. (Neukirchen-Vluyn 2005). I Wrede, W.,ber Aufgabe und Methode der sogenannten Neutestamentlichen Theologie (1897), in Das Problem der Theologie des Neuen Testaments (ed. G. Strecker; Darmstadt 1975) 81154.

James D. G. Dunn

III. Judaism
The first thing to say about biblical theology from the point of view of Judaism is: Why would one be interested in such a thing? In what way would a specifically biblical theology be relevant? For Judaism, as also for Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, tradition is as important, authoritative, and even sacred, as Scripture itself, and so any Jewish theology must be based at least as much on the rabbinic texts that form the core of Jewish tradition as it is on the Bible. For classical Judaism, tradition (or Oral Torah) and Scripture (Written Torah) are a unity (see, e.g., Sifra ad Lev 26 : 46; SifDev 306). Any theology which artificially divides them cannot aspire to authenticity. Nevertheless, one can imagine a Jewish theology that attends to Scripture along with tradition, or to Scripture as one part of tradition. Such a theology would recover, renew, or highlight biblical voices that might be lost in Jewish thought while placing them in the larger context of Jewish tradition. In the interaction or dialogue between biblical and postbiblical Jewish thinkers, something we might loosely call a Jewish biblical theology can arise, and to some extent has arisen. This sort of Jewish theology, which is more attuned to Scripture than has been the norm in the past 20 centuries, is especially fitting for post-1948

Judaism. Scripture is a product of the Jewish community in its own land and, to a significant extent, under its own sovereignty, whereas rabbinic literature is largely the product of exilic Jewish communities (some in the Diaspora, some in the land of Israel under foreign rule). Consequently, a theology that attends more to Scripture is appropriate, since for the first time in over 20 centuries a Jewish community once again knows political sovereignty in its own land. 1. A Rose by any other Name. Up until the 1980s, Jewish theologians and biblical scholars showed relatively little interest in the academic field of biblical theology, which had been almost entirely a Protestant enterprise (Goshen-Gottstein 1987; Levenson 1993: 3361). There were several reasons for this lack of interest. Of particular import were three characteristics of most biblical theologians: (i) their Christian assumptions (to wit, that which Jews called the Bible or Tanakh served as a anticipatory witness to Jesus as Christ and Son of God); (ii) their more specifically Protestant attitudes toward the importance of Scripture (which stemmed from the notion of sola scriptura [see Hebrew Bible/Old Testament above]); and finally (iii) the anti-Judaism so prevalent among them (on which see especially: Levenson 1993: 1623, 4045; Sommer 2009b: 8 12). Nevertheless, it is not quite correct to say that no Jewish scholars wrote on biblical theology (Gesundheit; Sommer 2009b: 28). The term biblical theology has been variously defined, but at the core of all work that goes by this name is the attempt to synthesize two approaches to the interpretation of biblical texts. On the one hand, religious Jews and Christians approach the Bible as Scripture as a document that relates to their own lives or to the life of their community at an existential level. Modern biblical critics, on the other hand, approach the HB as an artifact as a collection of Northwest Semitic texts from the Iron Age. This collection sheds light on a particular culture that existed near the eastern edge of the Mediterranean over several centuries. One of the hallmarks of the academic field of biblical theology has been its insistence on integrating what we know about the Bibles artifactual nature into our view of it as Scripture. Throughout the 20th century, Jewish scholars have written biblical theology in this sense of the term; they have attempted to articulate Jewishly interesting teachings of the Tanakh that emerge from biblical critical analyses. These Jewish scholars did not use the term biblical theology in their titles, however, and the structure of their works differed considerably from those of most Protestant biblical theologians. Examples of such works from the middle of the 20th century include works by Leo Adler (2007; orig. 1965 [German]), Abraham Joshua Heschel (1962; repr. 2001 [in one volume]), and Martin

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Buber (1949; 1958; 1967). It will be noticed that none of these authors was a biblical scholar. Adler was the rabbi of the Jewish community of Basel, and also published on modern analytic philosophy. While Heschel and Buber defy easy categorization, the label biblicist does not fit either one especially well. (Of the three, Buber is in fact the only one who might potentially be described as a biblical scholar, since his studies of biblical Hebrew narrative style remain significant to this day. Nonetheless, his work on the Bible comprises only a small percentage of his output.) Yet all these authors devote considerable space to explicating biblical passages for theological purposes, and they attend to modern biblical scholarship when doing so. Jewish scholars whose training was primarily in Biblical Studies also produced works that can be seen as belonging to the field of biblical theology. I think first and foremost of the most influential Jewish biblical scholar of the modern era, Yehezkel Kaufmann, and his four-volume Toledot ha-emunah ha-yis re elit (193756; an English translation and abridgement [1960] and a full English translation of the last volume [1970] are also available). The title of this work is usually translated into English as The History of Israelite Religion, but it might be more accurately rendered, The History of Israelite Belief or even The Generations of Israelite Faith. One might object to my characterization of this work as a biblical theology by pointing out that Kaufmanns study is historical in nature, and thus presumably not theological. But Toledot shares essential features with many works of biblical theology. Kaufmann investigated the growth and permutations of one central biblical idea: Israels monotheism and concomitant rejection of mythology. So too: Eichrodt investigated covenant as the central idea of biblical thought; von Rad investigated two related ideas that form the pivotal concern of the canon and its theological interpreter: the concept of Heilsgeschichte (salvation history) and the process of the transmission and transformations of biblical material; Terrien investigated the interplay between divine manifestation and absence in Scripture; and Brueggemann investigated the process of conflict and disputation through which Israel arrived at complex truth-claims about YHWH. (Kaufmann further shares with von Rads Theology an explicitly historical approach; von Rad described a diachronic process of transmission and transformation, just as Kaufmann described how the monotheistic idea works itself out so that mythology is rejected ever more clearly over the course of the biblical period.) Biblical theologians such as Eichrodt, von Rad, Terrien, and Brueggemann uncover unity whose nature is theological, involving some relatively consistent statement about God or about Gods relationship with Israel or humanity. In each case, the

unifying element is relevant for a contemporary religious community, and the scholars focus on that particular element results from the pre-existing concerns of that community. Eichrodts stresses covenant. This theme, while hardly lacking legitimacy in the biblical texts themselves (as GoshenGottstein notes [1987: 642, n. 52]), emerges from and gives succor to Reformed theology. Brueggemann emphasizes the value of theological disputes within Scripture, and he insists on the positive religious role played by the doubt, despair, and anger that those disputes evince. Brueggemanns emphasis fits quite well with trends among liberal Protestants in the last quarter of the 20th century. Precisely the same point can be made about Kaufmann. The idea he identifies as pivotal in the Bible reflects central tendencies in modern Jewish thought, even as his work implicitly provides scriptural support for those tendencies. Kaufmann asserts that monotheisms emergence in premonarchical Israel represented a revolutionary change from its cultural environment, but he also describes an evolution within Israelite monotheism from early priestly texts found in the Pentateuch to later prophetic ones. Earlier texts do not fully articulate the implications of monotheism, but classical prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah espouse ideas that necessarily follow from the Bibles radical monotheism. These include the primacy of morality over cult and the eventual recognition of the one God by all humanity. In arguing for the centrality of a monotheism that was above all ethical and universal in its implications, Kaufmann recalls late 19th- and early 20th-century German-Jewish thinkers such as Hermann Cohen (Haran: 76; Schweid). If Eichrodt, von Rad, Terrien, and Brueggemann can be called biblical theologians, so can Kaufmann. Kaufmann is not the only Jewish biblicist whose work can be understood as belonging to the field of biblical theology. Already before the publication of Levensons provocative essay, Why Jews are not Interested in Biblical Theology (1993: 3361; first published 1987), Moshe Greenberg (1984; 1985; 1995), Yochanan Muffs (1992 [first published 1984]; 2005), and Jacob Milgrom (1976; 1983; 2004) began to treat crucial issues of biblical theology in a specifically Jewish manner. Muffs, for example, identifies the genius of biblical religion in its insistence on the personhood of God. On the basis of his historically nuanced and culturally contextualized reading of Scripture, he calls for a remythologization of Jewish theology (2005: 2225, 17678, 19293). In the years that followed, additional contributions to the burgeoning field of Jewish biblical theology appeared. These have been surveyed ably (see in particular the reviews and discussions in Barr [1999: 286311] and Perdue [2005: 183238]). Of particular import have been insightful studies by

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Levenson himself. Levenson (1987) examines the productive tension between two notions of covenant in the Tanakh and their relationship with foundational ideas of rabbinic Judaism. Levenson (1988) examines the relationship between God and creation in the Bible in light of later rabbinic and kabbalistic ideas. Similarly, Michael Fishbane (1989; 1998) explores theological dimensions of biblical texts in light of a characteristic central to biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish texts: their shared origin in the process of textual interpretation, revision, and redaction. Zachary Braiterman (1998: 3559) and Marvin Sweeney (2008) examine questions of theodicy in Jewish scripture in light of the holocaust. Some such studies predate Levensons 1987 essay, and others were published after it. Moshe Weinfeld (1964; 1968; 1969; 1970; 1976), Stephen Geller (1996; 2000), and Baruch Schwartz (2000) use historical and literary approaches to identify the main theological currents in biblical thought. Benjamin Sommer creates a dialogue between fundamental issues of biblical thought as recovered by biblical criticism on the one hand and classical rabbinic and kabbalistic literature on the other, discussing revelation and authority in Scripture (1999; 2004; 2007), the nature of Jewish Scripture (1996), and perceptions of God in Scripture and later Jewish thought (2009a). Questions of revelation and the authority of Scripture also receive attention from Heschel (1955: 25778, esp. 25966), Goshen-Gottstein (1992), Greenberg (1984: 34449; 1995b: 40520), and Levenson (1993: 6281). In a manner reminiscent of more familiar biblical theologies, Israel Knohl (2003) attempts to summarize crucial aspects of biblical thought that recur throughout the Bible. He explicitly links particular strands of biblical thought with postbiblical literature, showing that the book of Job and the Priestly Torah in the Pentateuch point toward an abstract deity and depict worship as a human responsibility wholly disconnected from any hope of benefit. These austere views, he claims, link up with the Essenes and with rabbinisms somewhat peripheral Shammaitic school. The Pentateuchs Holiness School and Deuteronomy depict a more approachable God and emphasize religious ethics. This more popular religiosity links up with Pharisaism and with rabbinic Judaisms mainstream Hillelite stream. Oddly, Knohl does not pause to discuss another connection that is, I suspect, the main engine for his comparison: the Priestly Torah avoids attributing actions or emotions to God (other than the act of commanding), and thus it is a predecessor for the leading philosopher of Jewish tradition, Moses Maimonides, and of a leading 20th-century Jewish thinker, Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Richard Elliot Friedman (1995; repr. with a new title 1997) argues that the HB portrays God as becoming ever more distant from humanity through

time, and humans as becoming ever more independent as a result. His book is a study of divinehuman interaction in the Bible, and thus it is a theology in the most basic sense of the term. The books starting point is the tripartite biblical canon as preserved in Jewish tradition. Its thesis is that God slowly disappears as one moves through the Jewish canon from Torah to Prophets to Writings. Not only does he use the Jewish order of the canon as the basis for his argument (his thesis is considerably less striking if one reads through the Old Testament canon as ordered in Christian Bibles), but he moves on to compare the canonical Bibles disappearing God to the God of classical Jewish mysticism. Further, the upshot of his study of God recalls a view of humanity and its responsibilities, and this feature of his work typifies Jewish thinking about God generally (on which see: Gesundheit 2005: 76; Heschel 1955: 41213 and passim; 1966: 127, 137, 142). James Kugel studies the way biblical texts narrate divine manifestations to humans. Early biblical texts do so in a manner strikingly different from later biblical and postbiblical texts. Like Friedmans (1995), Kugels book studies biblical theology in the most straightforward meaning of the term. All these works can rightly be termed examples of Jewish biblical theology. They draw upon both modern biblical scholarship and later Jewish thought (more explicitly in some cases and less so in others) to create comprehensive syntheses of biblical beliefs on particular issues. 2. Dialogical Biblical Theology. Is there a method to Jewish biblical theology? Does some thread hold together the work of modern Jewish scholars who attempt to read the Tanakh at once as Scripture and as artifact? Most of the works described in the previous section create a conversation between scriptural and post-scriptural texts. This is a sensible model for a religion to which sola scriptura is completely foreign. We might term such a model dialogical biblical theology. Dialogical biblical theologians describe Israelite thought found in the Bible, compare it and contrast it to later Jewish thought, and sometimes use each side of the comparison as a tool for judging and refining the other. They usually do all this in a manner that is implicitly or even explicitly constructive. Any work of dialogical biblical theology draws on and contributes to both biblical scholarship and the study of postbiblical thought. Such a model for biblical theology need not be limited to Jews; indeed, something similar has been proposed both by Krister Stendahl and Manfred Oeming, while projects that create a similar sort of dialogue have been produced by John J. Collins (91 104 and 11726) and by James Barr (1993). To some degree this model even describes older works of biblical theology; thus Eichrodt implicitly puts the OT in dialogue with Calvin, while all Christian biblical theologians put the OT in dialogue with the

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NT. What characterizes the dialogical biblical theology as practiced by some Jewish scholars (who did not necessarily see themselves as biblical theologians, dialogical or otherwise) is the transparent and unembarrassed nature of the dialogue. Space permits us to explore the dialogical side of the work of only one Jewish biblical theologian in greater detail. When we define biblical theology dialogically, it becomes clear that Moshe Greenberg is, along with Kaufmann and Muffs, one of the most important Jewish biblical theologians of the 20th century. Greenbergs work on biblical texts is not only deeply informed by rabbinic concerns but in part motivated by them (in the same way that studies by Collins and Barr of the Bibles natural theology are motivated by a movement in Christian thought). A typical case is his classic essay on capital punishment in biblical and Mesopotamian law, Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law (in Greenberg 1995b: 2541 [first published 1960]). That study reveals central values of biblical thinking that were developed more fully in rabbinic literature. Biblical texts regard human life as sacred and therefore incommensurable. Hence legal corpora in the Bible insist that murder must be punished in every case by the execution of the murderer; fines, substitutions, and other sanctions permitted by Mesopotamian law in certain cases of murder are rejected by the Bibles law codes. Of course, the punishment that results from the notion of the sanctity of human life is rather paradoxical, since it compels human courts to destroy precisely what it exalts. Much later, the rabbis would institute laws of evidence and narrow definitions of capital crimes which severely limited (indeed, came close to abolishing) the application of the death penalty. In so doing, the rabbis were not so much overturning the biblical legal system as taking its logic quite seriously, in a sense more seriously than the biblical law codes themselves. Greenbergs essay suggests that this later development, on the surface, seems to go against the grain of particular laws (to wit, the mandates for capital punishment), but that it also allows an overarching element of biblical law to express itself more fully (to wit, the sacrality of human life). In Postulates, Greenberg refers only in passing to the rabbinic texts that serve as the main dialogue partner, but elsewhere he creates a much more explicit discussion among biblical, rabbinic, and medieval voices. Particularly fine examples of this tendency are the essays, Using Rabbinic Exegesis as an Educational Resource When Teaching the Book of Joshua and How Should One Interpret the Torah Today? (1985: 1118 and 4967; cf. 1995a; 1996). In the former, Greenberg delineates how rabbinic voices temper and even overturn biblical teachings regarding the Canaanites. His attention to exegetical technique heightens our ability to

sense multiple voices on the issues at hand in the biblical texts themselves. In the latter, Greenberg notes biblical and rabbinic attempts at articulating the central value-concepts that should guide Jewish reading of the Bible. Here a rabbinic discussion regarding the fundamental principle in the Torah (kelal gadol ba-Trah; e.g., in Sifra ad Lev 18 : 19; bMak 23b24a) has made a modern biblical critic more aware of an analogous discussion in the Bible itself (e.g., in Ezek 18). Greenberg does not merely correct the Bible in light of later values but reads the Bible more closely in light of later texts. Greenberg typifies Jewish biblical theology in a crucial respect: the main dialogue partner is not dogmatic theology but rabbinic exegesis. Granted, one can imagine a Jewish biblical theologian putting philosophical texts (e.g., Saadiah Gaon, Maimonides, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig) or mystical ones into discussion with biblical texts, but never at the expense of classical and medieval rabbinic exegesis. 3. Comparison with Old Testament Theology. Jewish biblical theology differs in crucial respects from classic works of Protestant Old Testament theology. In its dialogical mode, it is not totalizing, comprehensive, and grand in the style of the major biblical theologies of the 20th century. It often attends to discrete texts or to particular issues as they appear throughout the Bible or in one section of the Bible. Further, Protestant biblical theologians have often focused their attention on what we may call centripetal forces within Scripture. They do not deny that the components of Scripture are diverse, but they regard one of their most crucial tasks as finding the idea that holds Scripture together, identifying a group of texts out of which other texts flow, or privileging the final form of a biblical book as the most important interpretive unit. (One thinks, for example, of the idea of covenant in Walter Eichrodts work, or the role of the so-called little credo in Gerhard von Rads; and of course one recalls Brevard Childs emphasis on the final shape of the Bible, rather than its diachronic components, as the key to understanding how Scripture is understood by the community of faith.) Jewish biblical interpretation tends to move in a different direction. The rabbinic texts that comprise the core of tradition in Judaism emphasize multiplicity. The hallmark of midrashic collections is their tendency to preserve several interpretations of a single passage. The Talmuds consist largely of debates. Moreover, because tradition or Oral Torah is not fixed but continues to grow in each generation, it never achieves the stasis that is characteristic of true unity; one cannot know what surprise the Oral Torah has in store for us tomorrow. Insofar as Jewish biblical theologians create a dialogue between Written Torah and Oral Torah (that is, between Scripture and tradition), they should be far less committed to the canons unity and centripetal forces than

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many of their (pre-Brueggemann) Protestant counterparts. In this regard, they also may have less reason for tension with diachronic methods of modern biblical criticism. The multivocality of the Tanakh as recovered by biblical criticism parallels that of rabbinic texts (Greenberg 1984: 34549; Levenson 1993: 5356), and this circumstance facilitates the attempt of the Jewish biblical theologian to integrate findings of modern biblical criticism into a theologically relevant reading of Scripture. If, in classic rabbinic fashion, vigorous debate provides the model for Jewish biblical theology, then the participants on the biblical side need not be limited to canonizers or redactors. On the contrary: the goal of this venture is to foster discussion among ancient, medieval, and modern voices, and for this reason too much attention to the voice of the redactor or canonizer would squelch other voices who deserve a place at the table. It is not only the final form of, say, the Torah or the book of Kings that is relevant to this project; the discrete entities within those collections may be just as interesting conversation partners. P, or J, or Dtr2, have just as much a right to participate in this conversation as the redactors or canonizers do. Fostering a discussion among voices from Scripture and tradition will prove useful not only for Jews but also for Christians. Doing so focuses attention on aspects of biblical thought that we might have missed otherwise. It shows that certain modern religious concerns are not solely modern, but were concerns of ancient authors as well. The dialogical biblical theologian, whether Jewish or Christian, will find surprising points of contact between later religious readings and overlooked aspects of the biblical texts recovered by modern critical methods. For Jews, renewing older voices embedded within Written Torah will create new Oral Torah, thus proving itself to be an authentic Jewish theology.
Bibliography: I Adler, L., The Biblical View of Man (Jerusalem/New York 2007); trans. of id., Der Mensch in der Sicht der Bibel (Mnchen/Basel 1965). I Barr, J., Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford 1993). I Barr, J., The Concept of Biblical Theology (Minneapolis, Minn. 1999). I Braiterman, Z., (God) after Auschwitz: Traditions and Changes in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton, N.J. 1998). I Brueggemann, W., Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Advocacy, Dispute (Minneapolis, Minn. 1997). I Buber, M., The Kingship of God (New York 1967); trans. of id., Knigtum Gottes (Berlin 1936). I Buber, M., Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (New York 1958); trans. of id., Moshe (Jerusalem 1945). I Buber, M., The Prophetic Faith (New York 1949); trans. of id., Torat haNevi im (Tel Aviv 1949). I Collins, J. J., Encounters with BibliI Eichrodt, W., cal Theology (Minneapolis, Minn. 2005). Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, Pa. 1961 67); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Leipzig 193339). I Fishbane, M., The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Bloomington, Ind. 1989). I Fishbane, M., The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, Mass. 1998). I Friedman, R. E., The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery (Boston, Mass. 1995).

Friedman, R. E., The Hidden Face of God (New York 1997). Geller, S., Sacred Enigmas: Literary Religion in the Hebrew Bible (London 1996). I Geller, S., The God of the Covenant, in One God or Many? Conceptions of Divinity in the Ancient World (ed. B. N. Porter; Casco Bay, Maine 2000) 273319. I Gesundheit, S., Gibt es eine jdische Theologie der Hebrischen Bibel?, in Theologie und Exegese des Alten Testaments/der Hebrischen Bibel: Zwischenbilanz und Zukunftsperspektiven (ed. B. Janowski; SBS 200; Stuttgart 2005) 7386. I GoshenGottstein, M., Tanakh Theology: The Religion of the Old Testament and the Place of Jewish Biblical Theology, in Ancient Israelite Religion, FS F. M. Cross (eds. P. D. Miller et al.; Philadelphia, Pa. 1987) 61744. I Goshen-Gottstein, M., Scriptural Authority: Biblical Authority in Judaism, ABD 5 (New York 1992) 101721. I Greenberg, M., On the Bible and Judaism (Tel Aviv 1984). [Heb.] I Greenberg, M., Particularism and Power (Oranim 1985). [Heb.] I Greenberg, M., On the Political Use of the Bible in Modern Israel: An Engaged Critique, in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature, FS J. Milgrom (eds. D. N. Freedman et al.; Winona Lake, Ind. 1995a) 46171. I Greenberg, M., Studies in the Bible and Jewish Thought (Philadelphia, Pa. 1995b). I Greenberg, M., A Problematic Heritage: The Attitude Toward the Gentile in the Jewish Tradition An Israel Perspective, Conservative I Haran, M., Judaism and Judaism 48/2 (1996) 2335. Scripture in the Outlook of Yehezkel Kaufmann, Maddaei Ha-Yahadut 31 (1991) 6980. [Heb.] I Heschel, A. J., God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York 1955). I Heschel, A. J., The Prophets, 2 vols. (New York 1962). I Heschel, A. J., The Concept of Man in Jewish Thought, in Comparative Philosophy (eds. S. Radhakrishman/P. Raju; Lincoln, Nebr. 1966) 12271. I Heschel, A. J., The Prophets (New York 2001). I Kaufmann, Y., The History of Israelite Religion, 4 vols. (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv 193756). [Heb.] I Kaufmann, Y., The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (Chicago, Ill. 1960); trans. and abridgement of id., vols. 13 of The History of Israelite Religion (Jerusalem/ Tel Aviv 193756). [Heb.] I Kaufmann, Y., The Babylonian Captivity and Deutero-Isaiah (New York 1970); trans. of id., The History of Israelite Religion, vol. 4 (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv 193756). [Heb.] I Knohl, I., The Divine Symphony: The Bibles Many Voices (Philadelphia, Pa. 2003). I Kugel, J., The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible (New York 2003). I Levenson, J., Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco, Calif. 1987). I Levenson, J., Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco, Calif. 1988). I Levenson, J., The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville, Ky. 1993). I Milgrom, J., Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance (SJLA 18; Leiden 1976). I Milgrom, J., Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology (SJLA 36; Leiden 1983). I Milgrom, J., Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics (CC; Minneapolis, Minn. 2004). I Muffs, Y., Love and Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York/Cambridge, Mass. 1992). I Muffs, Y., The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith and the Divine Image (Woodstock, Vt. 2005). I Oeming, M., Gesamtbiblische Theologien der Gegenwart: Das Verhltnis von AT und NT in der hermeneutischen Diskussion seit Gerhard von Rad (Stuttgart 1985). I Perdue, L., Reconstructing Old Testament Theology: After the Collapse of History (Minneapolis, Minn. 2005). I Rad, G. von, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (Edinburgh 196265); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments (Mnchen 195760). I Schwartz, B., The Origin of the Laws Authority: Grundnorm and Its Meaning in the Pentateuchal Traditions, Shnaton Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri 21 (2000)

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I Schweid, E., Biblical Critic or Philo24165. [Heb.] sophical Exegete? The Influence of Herman Cohens The Religion of Reason on Yehezkel Kaufmanns History of Israelite Religion, in Massu ot: Studies in Qabbalah and Jewish Thought in Memory of Professor Efraim Gottlieb (eds. M. Oron/A. Goldreich; Jerusalem 1994) 41428. [Heb.]. I Sommer, B., The Scroll of Isaiah as Jewish Scripture, Or, Why Jews Dont Read Books, in Society of Biblical Literature 1996 Seminar Papers (Atlanta, Ga. 1996) 22542. I Sommer, B., Revelation at Sinai in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Theology, JR 79 (1999) 42251. I Sommer, B., Unity and Plurality in Jewish Canons: The Case of the Oral and Written Torahs, in One Scripture or Many? Perspectives Historical, Theological and Philosophical (eds. C. Helmer/C. Landmesser; New York 2004) 10850. I Sommer, B., Prophecy as Translation: Ancient Israelite Conceptions of the Human Factor in Prophecy, in Bringing the Hidden to Light: The Process of Interpretation, FS S. Geller (eds. D. M. Sharon/K. F. Kravitz; Winona Lake, Ind. 2007) 27190. I Sommer, B., The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (New York 2009a). I Sommer, B., Dialogical Biblical Theology: A Jewish Approach to Reading Scripture Theologically, in Biblical Theology: Introducing the Conversation (ed. L. Perdue; Library of Biblical Theology 1; I Stendahl, K., Nashville, Tenn. 2009b) 153, 26585. Biblical Theology, Contemporary, IDB 1 (Nashville, Tenn. 1962) 41832. I Sweeney, M., Reading the Hebrew Bible after the Shoah: Engaging Holocaust Theology (Minneapolis, Minn. 2008). I Terrien, S., The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (San Francisco, Calif. 1978). I Weinfeld, M., Universalism and Particularism in the Period of the Return to Zion, Tarbiz 33 (1964) 22842. [Heb.] I Weinfeld, M., God the Creator in Gen. 1 and the Prophecy of Second IsaI Weinfeld, M., iah, Tarbiz 37 (1968) 10532. [Heb.] Theological Currents in Pentateuchal Literature, PAAJR 37 (1969) 11739. I Weinfeld, M., The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East, JAOS 90 (1970) 184203. I Weinfeld, M., Jeremiah and the Spiritual Metamorphosis of Israel, ZAW 88 (1976) 1556.

Benjamin D. Sommer

IV. Christianity
Biblical theology, while notoriously difficult to define, generally denotes an approach to Scripture that emphasizes and synthesizes the historical and progressive forms of biblical revelation, usually on the basis of a Christian reading of the canon (OT and NT). The result of biblical theology is a mainly descriptive account of ancient Israels religious history, beliefs, and practices, as opposed to the more prescriptive accounts of doctrine that arise from ecclesial traditions and confessional norms. Biblical theology is thus distinguished from dogmatic or systematic theology, on the one hand, and mere exegesis, on the other. The rise of biblical theology in the last half of the second Christian millennium is one of the most notable recent phenomena in the history of the Bibles reception. At the same time, its development over the last four centuries is anything but uniform. In this brief and selective survey, certain key figures and themes are summarized (by tracing a series of seven [overlapping] periods) but not before three antecedent factors are treated, all of which exerted

a formative role in the rise and development of biblical theology over the last four centuries. 1. Background. First, a philosophical shift occurred in the late medieval period (13001400s) away from the scholastic theology associated with Thomas Aquinas (via antiqua) to a philosophical theology rooted in logic, language, and dialectic (via moderna), which contributed to the relative decline of theologians writing scriptural commentaries, and a de-emphasis on the theological integration of Scripture (Buridan; Biel). By the end of the 15th century, the unity of faith and reason that characterized the so-called medieval synthesis gave way to a division between the dialectical reason of scholars, on the one hand, and a resurgent piety among devout commoners (devotio moderna), on the other, who tended to read the Bible in more individualistic, pietistic terms ( Kempis). Second, a historical shift of seismic proportions occurred in the 16th century with the Reformation, causing a dramatic revival of interest in Scripture (sola scriptura). At the same time, Protestantism was soon divided by diverse interpretive approaches (Lutheran, Calvinist, Zwinglian). By the end of the century, these competing theological traditions had solidified into new forms of Protestant scholasticism, characterized by proof texting and theological system-building (Chemnitz; Turretin). Third, the Enlightenment (Aufklrung), beginning in the 17th century, produced even greater cultural and religious upheavals, giving rise to rationalist readings of biblical history, with little regard for faith, dogmas, or ecclesiastical traditions (Hobbes; Spinoza). 2. Periods of Development. a. First Period. The birth of biblical theology as a distinct discipline is usually identified with J. P. Gabler, and his famous 1787 inaugural lecture (An Oration on the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each), which he gave at the German University of Altdorf. As a purely historical account, the primary task of biblical theology is to apply human reason to the religious ideas of Scripture, while the secondary task is to separate the timeless universal truths from the culturally conditioned beliefs of the human authors. In this way, biblical theology serves to free biblical scholars from ecclesial authority and dogmatic constraint. Notably, Gabler laid the foundation for biblical theology, but never got around to building one. b. Second Period. The second period is marked by the application of Hegels philosophy of dialectical idealism to biblical theology in the first half of the 19th century, which resulted in a more sharply critical approach to historical development in evolutionary terms, for both the OT (Vatke) and the NT (Baur). Vatke argued for the evolution of Israelite religion (1835), long before Wellhausen succeeded

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in popularizing a similar (albeit moderated) version three decades later. Baur applied the Hegelian dialectic even more rigorously by interpreting NT history in terms of an ongoing conflict between the law-free Paul (thesis), and the legalistic Peter and James (antithesis), which is not overcome until the 2nd century CE by the catholic mysticism of the Johannine tradition (synthesis). Baurs views were embraced by other scholars of the so-called Tbingen school throughout this period. c. Third Period. The dialectical excesses of the Tbingen school ironically generated something of a conservative antithesis in mid- to late 19th-century Germany. E. W. Hengstenberg argued for integrating the historical approach to the OT with the idea of divine revelation and Christology. J. C. K. Hofmann elaborated a biblical theological synthesis in similar terms, joining a high view of divine inspiration with salvation history (Heilsgeschichte). Both scholars wielded considerably more influence among pastors than among their own academic peers. Nevertheless, the attempt to steer a middle course between the opposite extremes of dialectical criticism and proof texting gave rise to the so-called Erlangen school (Bengel; Beck), along with a growing circle of other conservative scholars intent on doing biblical theology (Oehler; Tholuck; Zahn; Delitzsch). Their scholarly influence survives into the 20th century (Schlatter; Stauffer), even beyond Germany (Vos). d. Fourth Period. A fourth stage, liberal historicism, also emerged in the second half of the 19th century, associated with a loosely knit collection of biblical scholars who wanted nothing to do with the perceived excesses of Tbingen or Erlangen. Favoring the anti-metaphysical approach to religion (as rational and experiential) as taught by Kant, Schleiermacher, and Ritschl, many of these scholars exchanged biblical theology for the history of religions approach to the OT and the NT. Most notably, J. Wellhausen, after studying theology at Gttingen under Ewald, developed his now classical reconstruction of Israels religious history (JEDP), which was dominant for the next century of biblical scholarship. This fourth stage marks the eclipse of biblical theology throughout Europe, as attested by the virtual absence of the term in titles of academic books and articles. In point of fact, the few scholars who did include theology in the titles of their studies of the OT (Kayser; Stade) avoided any theological order in the arrangement of the biblical material, opting instead for a history of Israelite religion. A similar trend may be traced in NT studies, especially the influential work on the Synoptic Problem and Markan priority (Q) by H. J. Holtzmann (189697). It is difficult to exaggerate the effects of this stage for the study of biblical theology into the 20th century, even in the English speaking world, for OT and NT scholars alike (Oesterly and Robinson; Knudson; Stevens; Gould).

e. Fifth Period. A small-scale revival of European biblical theology begins with the multi-volume OT theology by W. Eichrodt (193339), a German professor who taught at Basel (192260). With the idea of covenant serving as his ordering principle, Eichrodt tried to demonstrate the theological unity of Israelite religion. After the war, a series of other OT theologies were published. O. Prockshs massive volume was published posthumously (1949), while a younger Dutch scholar, T. C. Vriezen (Utrecht), wrote an OT theology (1949) that united theology and history (like Eichrodt) in terms of the covenant communion between God and Israel. E. Jacob (Strasbourg) wrote an OT theology (1955) that emphasized Gods presence and saving acts. Far more influential than any of these, however, was the work of G. von Rad (195760), who presented a theology of Israels historical and prophetic traditions on the basis of a carefully developed methodological synthesis. Von Rad used Wellhausens sourcecritical approach along with Gunkels form-critical insights in order to explicate salvation history (Heilsgeschichte) in terms of Israels cultic memory and tradition history. Perhaps no other 20th century book on the OT was more carefully read and debated than von Rad. Indeed, he shaped the conversation of European OT scholars for the rest of the century, even for those who tried to take OT theology in new directions (Fohrer; Zimmerli; Gerstenberger; Preuss). The revival of European biblical theology also affected NT scholarship, but on a smaller scale. For much of the 20th century, NT scholars worked under the shadow of R. Bultmann (Marburg), whose influential teaching linked the NT kerygma to Heideggers existentialism, while combining form criticism with a history of religions approach to the Gospels and Paul. Bultmann published a masterfully written NT theology (194853), but instead of constructing a theological synthesis, he applied his views of form, development, and myth to the NT (Jesus, Paul, and John) to show how early Christianity was formed by a wondrous syncretism of Jewish eschatology, stoicism, and Hellenistic mystery religion. Bultmanns work set the agenda for European NT theologians through the second half of the 20th century, both for his academic friends (Conzelmann) and post-Bultmannian foes (Kmmel; Lohse; Jeremias; Goppelt; Hengel; Stuhlmacher). Apart from the aforementioned works in OT and NT theology, the revival in this period among European scholars who actually attempted to write a biblical theology of both the OT and the NT (to demonstrate the unity of the testaments) occured on a still smaller scale. Early hopes were raised by a pre-war doctoral dissertation successfully defended by L. Goppelt at Erlangen (1938), in which he tried to prove on critical grounds the unity of the testaments, by means of typology. Due perhaps

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to the war and its post-Holocaust aftermath, no subsequent attempts were made by European scholars to use typology as a foundation on which to base a biblical theology. Modest efforts were taken to redeploy Heilsgeschichte (Cullmann) or tradition history (Gese), but European scholars undertaking a biblical theology of the OT and NT in the post-war period were in short supply. On the other hand, prominent works by European biblical scholars did appear, only to announce (in their very titles) the problems of biblical theology (Reventlow; Wolff). To this day, the fields of OT and NT theology remain divided among specialists. f. Sixth Period. The sixth period also occured in the last half of the 20th century, with a large-scale revival of biblical theology in America, which, in retrospect, almost seems like an export item from European scholarship. This period developed in three distinct stages. The first stage coincided with the emergence of the so-called Albright school, in which biblical archaeology was linked to exegesis and theology to produce what became known as the Biblical Theology Movement (194561). By drawing on the strengths of Kittels Wrterbuch for doing word studies and theological exegesis, some of Albrights former students established their careers by publishing works that tried to prove the theological unity of the Testaments on the basis of certain key biblical concepts: kingdom of God (Bright); the mighty acts of God (N. T. Wright); new creation (Anderson). The demise of the Biblical Theology Movement (BTM) happened with a sort of dramatic suddenness. A death blow was dealt by J. Barr (1961), whose linguistic analysis exposed the widespread misuse of word studies among (mostly American) scholars doing biblical theology (illegitimate totality transfer). The slamming of the coffin lid came later that year with an influential article by L. Gilkey in which he leveled criticisms against certain members of the Albright school (Anderson; G. E. Wright). Gilkey exposed how these scholars used historical criticism, and so acknowledged the mythopoetic nature of biblical language, but then turn around and re-invested this language with the ontological meanings assigned by the ancient creeds. In effect, Gilkey charged them with, at best, theological inconsistency, at worst, exegetical duplicity. The proverbial nailing of the lid came the next year with the publication of an influential article on Biblical Theology by Harvard professor K. Stendahl (1962), who went after Barth, Bultmann, Cullmann, and others, for confusing the descriptive task of biblical theology (what it meant) with the prescriptive task of preaching (what it means). Insisting on a critical hermeneutic for both believers and unbelievers alike, Stendahl assigned the task of biblical theology only to scholars who sought the

historical meaning of the biblical text; while preachers were left with the job of translating the text into something normative for believers, and meaningful to moderns. Lecturing preachers on how to become bilingual in order to preach with integrity (what they must first exegete critically), Stendahl concluded that an authoritative biblical canon should be seen by scholars as an ahistorical construct. The article had a greater impact on scholars (who now saw biblical theology as their exclusive province) than on preachers. The second stage of the American revival in biblical theology began at Yale with the development of canonical criticism by B. Childs. Childs first announced this method after he respectfully delivered his eulogistic account of the BTM (1970). In the final section of the book, Childs called for a new biblical theology, one that consciously sought to integrate critical exegesis with the churchs biblical canon. In Barthian fashion, Childs sought to demonstrate the unity of the Testaments on the basis of historical critical exegesis applied to the canonical witness of Scripture as such. In his subsequent (and voluminous) writings, Childs single-handedly brought about a virtual methodological transformation in biblical theology by this coordination of canonical criticism and theological exegesis. At the same time, we need to situate Childs accomplishment within the larger tradition of the socalled Yale school; for canonical criticism did not arise in an academic vacuum. Indeed, one senior colleague of Childs, P. Minear, was one of the earliest practitioners of biblical theology in America, whose career spanned five decades (mostly at Yale). After more than two dozen books and a hundred academic articles, Minear died five days after his 101st birthday (2007). One of the unsung heroes and forerunners of the new biblical theology, Minears work anticipates what later becomes a trademark of the Yale school. Several other colleagues of Childs contributed (less directly perhaps) to the Yale schools ascendency in biblical theology during the last quarter of the 20th century, including H. Frei, G. Lindbeck, and D. Kelsey. The third stage of the revival in American biblical theology is what is continuing into the 21st century, and shows no sign of abatement. Characterized by an evangelical majority, but with diverse denominational ties, most of these scholars strive to balance a commitment to historical criticism with a high view of Scripture as Gods inspired word. Meanwhile, the pluralistic spectrum is growing among American scholars. For example, W. Brueggemanns postmodern approach to OT theology has captured a wide readership among professors and pastors. Others adopt similar postmodern perspectives (Perdue). Not surprisingly perhaps, there are fewer American biblical scholars in the area of OT

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theology than the NT. The most prolific OT scholar is W. C. Kaiser, whose works over the last three decades treat OT theology and the unity of the testaments in terms of what he calls Gods promiseplan. A number of other (mostly evangelical) scholars have published major works of OT theology (House; Waltke). In the area of NT scholarship, several sizeable theologies have come from evangelicals in this period (Ladd; Thielman; Schreiner). Not to be missed, even in this brief survey, is the contribution also made by British biblical scholars, especially in the area of NT theology (Caird; Marshall; Esler; Dunn; N. T. Wright). g. Seventh Period. The seventh developmental period presents us with one of the subtle ironies of history, which is the Catholic contribution to biblical theology, particularly as it is found in recent official pronouncements of the Catholic magisterium. Admittedly, Catholic scholars are usually (and rightly) seen as late-comers to the field of biblical theology, even though a few (but not many) made some significant contribution early on, both in the theology of the OT (Imschoot) and NT (Bonsirven; Schelkle). The irony appears once it is noticed how, even after four centuries of development (mostly by Protestant scholars), biblical theology has yet to be officially recognized by any mainline denomination, except for the Catholic Church. Indeed, after Vatican II declared that the study of sacred Scripture is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology (Dei Verbum 24), the Roman Congregation for Catholic Education implemented this mandate by promulgating The Theological Formation of Future Priests (1976), which stipulates:
The basic fact which theological teaching must take into account is that Sacred Scripture is the starting point, the permanent foundation, and the life-giving and animating principle of all theology [Therefore] the teaching of Sacred Scripture must culminate in a biblical theology which gives a unified vision of the Christian mystery.

ology and philosophy, dogma and exegesis. In summary, we can draw one conclusion with certainty from this very brief survey of biblical theology over the last four centuries, and it is this: there will undoubtedly be more dramatic developments for centuries to come.
Bibliography: I Barr, J., The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford 1961). I Childs, B., Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia, Pa. 1970). I Eichrodt, W., Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, Pa. 196167); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 196064). I Frei, H., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven, Conn. 1974). I Gabler, J. P., An Oration on the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each, in The Flowering of Old Testament Theology (eds. B. C. Ollenburger et al.; Winona Lake, Ind. 1992) 492 502. I Gilkey, L., Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language, JR 41 (1961) 194205. I Goppelt, L., Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1982); trans. of id., Typos: Die typologische Deutung des Alten Testaments im Neuen (Erlangen 1939). I Kaiser, W. C., The Promise-Plan of God (Grand Rapids, Mich. 2008). I Kelsey, D., The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia, Pa. 1975). I Lindbeck, G., The Nature of Doctrine (Louisville, Ky. 1984). I Mead, J., Biblical Theology (Louisville, Ky. 2007). I Minear, P., Eyes of Faith (Philadelphia, Pa. 1946). I Rad, G. von, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (New York 196265); trans. of id., Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vols. (Mnchen 195760). I Reventlow, H. Graf, Problems of Biblical Theology in the Twentieth Century (London 1986); trans. of id., Hauptprobleme der Biblischen Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt 1983). I Stendahl, K., Biblical Theology, Contemporary, in The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible 1 (ed. G. A. Butterick; Nashville, Tenn. 1962) 41832.

Scott W. Hahn

Biblical Tree
The Bible speaks of two trees that stood in the middle of the garden of Eden the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2 : 9). The tree of life is a common motif in ancient Near Eastern iconography, whreas the tree of knowledge was coined for the story in Gen 23. The tree of knowledge represents the choice given to Adam. Adam and Eve disobeyed God as they ate from the forbidden tree of knowledge. Nevertheless, in Rev 22 : 2 there is a promise of abundance and eternal life with Christ on each side of the river of the water of life there are trees bearing crops of fruit every month. The holy tree or the world tree is an ancient concept that appears in many religions and cultures, and represents the axis of the world that unites the heavens (the crown), the earth (the trunk), and the underworld (the roots). An example is the cosmic tree Yggdrassil of Scandinavian mythology. Sacred texts are known in Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, the Aztec, the Maya, and the Yoruba religious traditions, the latter manifested in such trees as the Iroko in Brazilian Candombl religion. The tree symbolizes life, vitality, fertility, renewal,

Likewise, the Churchs magisterium mandates in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (350.2):
It is necessary that Sacred Scripture be like the soul of all of theology; therefore in addition to exegesis, an accurate methodology, the principal chapters of the economy of salvation as well as the principal themes of biblical theology are to be taught.

More recently, Pope Benedict XVI announced to the 2008 Roman Synod of Bishops:
Therefore, for the life and mission of the Church, for the future of faith, it is absolutely necessary to overcome this dualism between exegesis and theology. Biblical theology and systematic theology are two dimensions of one reality, which we call theology.

Only time will tell what becomes of this rather unexpected development. In retrospect, we can look back on what was presaged by the separation of faith and reason, the-