Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice (review)

Abstract

Making Wise Simple: The in Christian Faith and Practice, by Johanna W. H. Van Wijk-Bos. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 2005. 329 pp. $20.00. Professor van Wijk-Bos is a prolific writer on intersection of Hebrew Bible and contemporary Christian, especially feminist, hermeneutical concerns. Her burden in this latest book is introduce Christian readers. Aside perhaps from a modest florilegium of Sunday school stories, Psalms, and comfortable prophetic bons mots recycled in Handel's Messiah, Tanakh remains for many Gentile Christians a remarkably unfamiliar book. Indeed, terms like and are in Protestant circles often freighted with half-digested theological baggage that make rehabilitation attempts an uphill struggle. Against Christian ignorance and suspicion of Law of Moses, van Wijk-Bos sets out present a winsome, accessible, and personally engaging presentation of Pentateuch as a divine word for Christians today. Her thesis is that Christians, like Jews, read Hebrew Scriptures as those who look back at time when intervened directly in human affairs; they encounter in Old Testament of Israel who is closely involved in his creation. Within this framework, God's care extends especially on behalf of poor and of God's covenantally chosen people who are called in accordance with Torah's formulation of divine design. Historical-critical issues are flagged up, but reading of text is primarily literary and theological. After two introductory sections, extensive Part III takes us into substance of beginning with Genesis 1-11, which sets context of Torah's narrative within making of its world: Israel's creation and preservation is for saving of all. So we read of world's making, marring, and mending, basic themes of creation and fallenness, covenant and sacrifice, promise and genealogy. The New Testament's Romans and 1 Timothy are singled out for their lamentably inadequate rendition of creation narrative-the lack of Adam and Eve typology in Romans, and 1 Timothy for its subordination of women, a move that is never made in Old Testament. While Christians can accept Gen 2-3 gratefully, 1 Timothy 2 is wholly superseded. In a further 100 pages, Part IV comprises entire rest of Torah's story as the making of a people. Structurally, implicit equation between Gen 1-11 and remainder of arguably begs certain questions; but Part IV on its own offers an attractive, if eclectic, Deuteronomic interpretation of remaining Pentateuch: Wandering Arameans of Gen 12-50, becoming of a people (Exodus 1-24), as well as God's bringing them to this (Num 11; Deut 34) and instructing them about in unconditional covenant (Exod 20-23; Lev 19; Deut) and place and manner of life with God, i.e., worship (Exod 25-40; Lev). A synthetic aggiornamento is offered in concluding Part V (Living with Torah, comprising God in Torah and Christ and Torah in Jesus and Paul). Where admirably stresses love for stranger, question of how then shall we live is for Christians normatively focused on postmodern political project: traditio legis, or canon within canon, is Gal 3.28-understood mandate sweeping away of old oppressive systems that perpetuate class and race divisions and construe women as other and the stranger. There is a modest 10-page bibliography which, like indexes, makes no reference such major contributors a Christian appreciation of Old Testament in New as Brevard Childs, Christopher Seitz, Walter Moberly, Bernd Janowski, Hartmut Gese, James Dunn, Richard Hays, Henning Graf Reventlow, Peter Stuhlmacher, and a number of others. …