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Ancient Near Eastern Thought & the Old Testament

Reviewed by Alun Brookfield.

My father-in-law, a great preacher of the Old Testament, used to love to remind his congregation that "a text without a context is a pretext". Never is that more often true than in the exposition of the Old Testament.

And a key part of that often misunderstood context is the worldview of the original writers and readers. In this book, John H Walton strives to communicate the "common, cognitive environment" which was the backdrop for most, if not all, the Hebrew Scriptures. Readers of Ministry Today will be familiar with the importance of respecting the different types of literature which comprise the Old Testament, but Walton goes far beyond that, addressing himself to the perspectives held by the original writers and readers about gods, religion, the cosmos, people and history. Throughout, his emphasis is on helping us to preach the message of the Old Testament without misinterpreting it, and thus misleading our congregations.

The author's basic premise in writing this book is that, because we live so far distant in time and space from the context in which the Old Testament writings arose, we need to include comparative studies among our spiritual and academic disciplines if we are not to fall prey to the error of using, or worse, abusing, the text. I doubt if many readers of Ministry Today would disagree, but I can't help wondering how much most of us know about comparative studies when it comes to the Old Testament. The Old Testament is not a popular subject in theological colleges. Certainly in the 1980s, I was one of only two in my year-group to pursue Old Testament throughout the whole three years of the course. Most, with an almost audible sigh of relief, dropped it after a year.

For anyone wanting to remedy the gap in their understanding, this book is an excellent place to start. Arranged thematically, it is an easy-to-explore reference book on the cultural milieux in which the Old Testament was written. For example, I promise (warn?) readers that you will want to rewrite all your sermons on the first four of the Ten Commandments after reading Walton's comparative notes on pages 155-160! I certainly did.

The book contains a smattering of photographic illustrations which add little to its value, because this is a splendid reference book for preachers and Bible teachers, to be used alongside a good Bible dictionary as an essential aid to preaching from the Old Testament. I wholeheartedly recommend it.