THE DISCIPLINE OF OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

IN A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

David M. Howard, Jr.

When the Apostle Paul declared that "all Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3:16), he was referring to the Old Testament, directing Timothy to continue in his study of these "sacred writings" (vv. 14-17). When Jesus walked with the two disciples after his resurrection, we read that "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). He too referred to the Old Testament.

These words were for Christians. It is a Christian's obligation - indeed, our privilege! - to know as much about God's written revelation as possible, including the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, we are introduced to the vast, glorious richness of God's character. We learn of him and why and how we are to respond to him in love, gratitude, and worship. We understand the human condition and God's redemptive purposes. We learn of God's ways of dealing with humanity and we see instructive examples of human responses to God, both for good and for evil. We learn of God's expectations of us in living our lives, in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. We learn about the person, work, and significance of Jesus, the Christ, as he himself said.

In a Christian theological seminary, the study of the Old Testament is foundational. Because it is so often ignored in the Church, many students will come to seminary with little or no knowledge of what is found in the Old Testament, and a seminary has an obligation to immerse them in it, to give them the basic contents of its story line, to teach them the broad sweep of its larger message, including how it points to the New Testament. Students need to know the overarching themes and underlying theology of the Old Testament, in order to integrate these into their own lives and ministries. Almost every other discipline in the seminary curriculum will have its roots in one way or another in the Old Testament, and it is the task of both the Old Testament Department and each individual discipline to point students to such roots.

Knowledge of the contents and message of the Old Testament is not sufficient, however. Students also need to know how to interpret it in legitimate and helpful ways. They need to learn how to read the Bible in ways that penetrate as deeply as possible into its meaning. One of the many derivative benefits of such study is that students will cultivate skills of analysis and thinking, skills that are useful far beyond the boundaries of Old Testament studies.

The Old Testament was not written in English, and so Christians who aspire to lead the Church need to be able to read Hebrew, the language in which it was primarily written. The difference between reading a smooth, modern translation such as the NIV, on the one hand, and the Hebrew text, on the other, may be illustrated with an analogy. The NIV is like the modern interstate highway, which gives a rapid, smooth, easy ride, and one sees the broad contours of the landscape along the way. The Hebrew text is like the township road, where one must travel more slowly, in and out and up and down the terrain; it makes for more laborious driving, but one sees and feels many details that are missed on the interstate highway. Thus, for any pulpit ministry - where the goal should be to understand and exposit the meaning and relevance of God's Word as carefully and accurately as possible - as well as many other aspects of ministry, study of Hebrew is essential.

In my own teaching, I have come in recent years to emphasize the skills of reading and interpreting far more than I had previously or than I had been trained to do in my own master's-level work. The oft-used analogy of giving a person a fish (to feed her for a day) vs. teaching her how to fish (to feed her for a lifetime) is applicable here: my goal is to teach students how to think in depth and interact on their own with Biblical texts, rather than simply to be able to recite facts or others' opinions about the texts. I show them how to do it and give them practice in it; I do not merely tell them how to do it and have them read about it.

Thus, a Christian involved in any type of ministry who does not have an adequate knowledge of God's revelation in the Old Testament, and who does not possess the tools to interpret and apply it properly, is like a tree without adequate soil: this person is neither well anchored nor well nourished. A complete seminary education must be rooted in the entirety of God's Word.