The Old Testament for a Complex World: How the Bible's Dynamic Testimony Points to New Life for the Church by Cameron B. R. Howard

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Old Testament for a Complex World: How the Bible's Dynamic Testimony Points to New Life for the Church by Cameron B. R. Howard Reed Lessing cameron b. r. howard, The Old Testament for a Complex World: How the Bible's Dynamic Testimony Points to New Life for the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021). Pp. ix + 142. Paper $17.49. Cameron Howard explores how to connect critical biblical scholarship with the needs of today's church. In three case studies, the author demonstrates how her interpretive strategies point a way forward for a Christian application of Israel's Scriptures. H. sets out to answer this ongoing dilemma for all who study Israel's texts: "In a world that changes by the minute, what good is the study of the Old Testament?" (p. 1). The author believes that uncovering how the Hebrew texts evolved—along with the different perspectives that shaped them—holds the key for making Israel's ancient story relevant. Undergirding H.'s methodology is the belief that OT scribes "took existing texts, themes, and even theological assumptions and reworked them to meet the needs of a new day" (p. 9). H. eschews the viewpoint that Israel's oracles were "set in stone," which misses this key interpretive insight; later generations updated, modified, and changed earlier texts. "The more we emphasize the singularity of the Bible without acknowledging and affirming the multiplicity within it, the more we risk overlooking elements of Scripture that can broaden and deepen our knowledge of God" (p. 13). Harmonizing textual differences, therefore, obscures divergent voices, and this, in turn, hampers the church from fully appropriating the biblical message. Flattening the Bible into a single coherent narrative overlooks this inner dynamic of the OT. It is a collection of books with different perspectives, theologies, and ideologies that often go unresolved. [End Page 485] Howard employs several metaphors to describe her approach. The first is to compare the Hebrew Scriptures to a musical remix, a process that takes older songs and tweaks them for today's audience. Remixing music does not seek fundamentally to change things. Instead, it looks to make music more contemporary, more relatable. Just so, OT scribes remixed earlier traditions so as to make them more relevant and applicable—putting a new spin on what was old. Additionally, H. holds that—metaphorically speaking—the OT is less like a list of directions and more like a set of painted landscapes intended to ignite readers' imaginations. With her methodology clearly and compellingly defined, H. proceeds to examine the genres of flood and court stories—paying special attention to Genesis 6–9 and Genesis 37–50, Daniel 1–6, and the Book of Esther. She presents studied reflections on pertinent ancient Near Eastern texts, thus demonstrating how Israel's tradents adapted new ways of storytelling for the purpose of conveying divine truth in their current context. In this way, "we are alerted to the Bible's many inherent multiplicities and the broadness of its thought, making us better equipped to discern for our own contexts what constitutes biblically informed innovation" (p. 65). Howard's chapter on worship highlights the Book of Ezekiel and its propensity to describe God using similes (e.g., "something like a dome," "something like a human form"). "The glory of God is at once too dazzling to comprehend and too faithful to shake off" (p. 81). Just as Ezekiel modified previous notions of God's presence in worship while living through Judah's cataclysmic events in the six century b.c.e., H. encourages the church to "reimagine new possibilities when the order of the world as we know it begins to crack" (p. 83). The chapter on Hebrew poetry reiterates H.'s theme—the OT cannot be controlled, contained, and placed into a monolithic doctrinal system. The cumulative effect of poetry is to "show" rather than "tell." It bursts the bounds of reason and logic and imagines what prose often cannot. Israel's poets present readers with tensions and contradictions that, H. maintains, furthers her thesis. "We have much to learn not only from the words they wrote but also from the struggles that gave life...