A Response To Gerstenberger

Abstract

AbstractProfessor Gerstenberger has now published a reflective summary of his long preoccupation with religious questions in the Old Testament, with particular reference to sociological issues. His five-fold sociological typology that stretches from the family to the state is by now a familiar one that he has developed over time and long championed. But here he works matters out in detail. Gerstenberger has opened up new vistas of interpretive possibility that put to rest the run of monolithic and, therefore, reductionist interpretations that have long dominated the discipline of Old Testament theology. His accent on pluralism and contextualism is enormously important, and my primary response to his work is one of immense appreciation for a publication that is in many respects daringly experimental. What follows is an attempt to raise issues in a collegial way that are in the context of an overriding appreciation, with congratulations to him for what he has written.