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The Old Testament and the World
By Walther Zimmerli
Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1976. 172 pp. $8.50.
Walther Zimmerli, who recently retired from the Old Testament chair at the University of Göttingen, has long been recognized as one of the most learned and insightful interpreters of the Bible in Germany. Much of his best work has unfortunately remained up to now still untranslated. It is, therefore, especially gratifying to have this interesting book appear in a lucid English translation.
The initial impetus for writing this book arose from the challenge of Rudolf Bultmann's thesis that the Old Testament has significance for Christians only as a negative example. Bultmann argued that the Old Testament could only be considered prophetic in its failure as law to achieve salvation. The Old Testament confused the nature of promise because it misunderstood the meaning of eschatology. By identifying the worldly and the eschatological, it failed to grasp the truth that salvation was a radical eschatological dimension beyond this world; in fact, authentic New Testament faith involves a dissociation from the world. Zimmerli devotes the final chapter of his book in an attempt to refute this understanding of the Old Testament.
However, the main concern of the book is not to offer another scholarly debate between academics but rather to address the wider issue of how the Christian faith understands its relation to the world. Because there have always been some Christians who interpreted spirituality as a turning away from the world toward the heavenly, Zimmerli uses Bultmann's thesis as a springboard from which to approach this fundamental theological issue. The book is written in a semipopular style which reflects the original university setting for lectures to students made up from various non-theological disciplines.
The author attacks the issue from a variety of perspectives, each time grounding his discussion on a careful and penetrating interpretation of the Old Testament. He begins with a compact analysis of Israel's understanding of God, which did not derive from philosophic reflection but arose from concrete events of history and continued to
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be tied to a recitation of the experience of deliverance. Although Zimmerli's starting point is a very familiar one, his formulation is fresh and incisive.
He next turns to his first major topic which is the world as God's creation. The author offers a succinct analysis of the Yahwist and priestly accounts of creation, which he sets over against both Platonic speculation and Ancient Near Eastern mythology. Again this move is familiar, but it is executed in a sophisticated manner. Zimmerli stresses that God's intention is for humanity to enjoy the blessings of the world, a genuine biblical theme to which all Calvinists resonate. Somewhat more controversial is his discussion of the relation of man and woman under the caption "be fruitful and increase. . . ." Zimmerli emphasizes that marriage joins man fully to the world in a blessing shared with the animal kingdom. Marriage is neither idealized nor mythologized in the Old Testament but seen as a human richness between man and woman that is ordained by God for the joy of life.
One of the most interesting chapters within the discussion of creation is Zimmerli's treatment of the command to "subdue the earth." Although the author does not raise the issue of ecology directly, the issue is obviously in his mind. Zimmerli argues that one learns best what the Old Testament means by exercising power over the world by studying wisdom literature. In the language of Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Job, the reader learns how to seek after that order within the universe over which God rules and which humanity can never solely possess. Throughout the Old Testament there is a thoroughly positive attitude toward human curiosity, labor, and the search for beauty in the external world.
In the remaining chapters, Zimmerli treats a series of important and difficult questions. How does Israel relate to its enemies and what happens to the concept of a holy war fought for God? Who owns the land and what is the nature of a claim to an inheritance? What is understood by life and how does death become a threat? Finally, what is the hope of Israel and of the world?
It does not take much imagination to see that many of the burning ethical issues of our age-nationalism, energy, poverty, racism-are involved in some fashion in the range of topics discussed by the author. Although he seldom addresses them directly, the solid information and mature reflection provided will undoubtedly be of great value in coming to grips with these modern problems. The book is packed with insight and serious reflection that demonstrate once again the author's mastery of the field.
In spite of the consistently high quality of the analysis, there remain certain areas that, in this reviewer's opinion, are vulnerable to criticism. In the first place, I wonder whether the focus on many of the biblical issues has shifted in recent years to a new series of concerns not fully handled by Zimmerli? Thus, most modern readers find it entirely obvious that asceticism should be repudiated by the Old Testament. But is it so obvious that marriage is the normal state of human
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life and should remain so? I suspect that many people, even in our churches, are no longer convinced. Again, Zimmerli's handling of the creation stories seems unaware of the whole new front which recent feminist theology has opened up. What weight does one place on the temporal priority given Adam over Eve in the creation sequence of Gen. 2? Finally, in spite of the prophetic attack on Israel's nationalistic use of the holy war, does the Bible really address the problem of war in rigorous enough fashion to speak to the modern dilemma? In my judgment, the radical quality of the new questions calls for an even bolder and more aggressive handling of the biblical response.
In the second place, I am far from convinced that Zimmerli's use of the historical critical method to provide a basis from which to engage in Old Testament theology has been successful. Many of the crucial critical hypotheses on which he reconstructs the literature, for example, von Rad's "credo," Alt's "God of the Fathers," Robinson's "corporate personality," have been so severely eroded in recent years that the foundation seems extremely fragile. Nor do I think that the favorite theses of the Albright school, for example, covenant and suzerainty treaty, have fared any better. With this criticism I am not suggesting that the Fundamentalists were right after all, but rather the casual assumption that disregards the canonical shape of the literature in doing biblical theology needs serious rethinking. When the Bible is no longer handled as Scripture but only as a source for ancient tradition, historical events, or mode-of-consciousness, one can easily rearrange its data to support almost any current fad in theology.
In sum, this book is to be recommended as an excellent place from which to begin reflecting on what it means to be a Christian living in the world. That the final word has not been spoken should serve as a challenge rather than a deterrent.
Brevard S. Childs
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut