OT 520 Old Testament Introduction

Authors

Lawson G. Stone

Files

Summary

Course Aspirations and Place in the Curriculum Aspirations: OT 520 seeks to equip students for ministry by providing knowledge and tools fundamental to responsible interpretation of the OT. The course neither offers a comprehensive approach, nor emphasizes direct textual study, but enhances both by developing a framework within which competent interpretation can take place. Students explore contemporary approaches to the literary character, historical and cultural setting, composition, authorship, and literary unity of these books, their various literary types, settings, and functions, and how these affect Christian reading of the OT. An important axiom of the class is that the OT emerges from a cultural and ethnic setting significantly different from those of any contemporary culture. To study the OT in connection with the the ancient cultures that shaped it is to learn to receive God's word crossculturally, which forms a necessary preparation for testifying to the message of God's word crossculturally. Thus the very act of responsible and holistic interpretation involves grasping, affirming, and moving creatively between the text's ethnic and cultural framework and our own. Because the OT is a multi-dimensional text, embracing language, literature, culture, religion, politics—all seen as divine revelation—biblical exegesis must of necessity be multi-disciplinary, hence we will draw eclectically, but not chaotically, from a wide range of subject areas.

Publication Date

January 2008

Publisher

Asbury Theological Seminary

Keywords

OT, 520, OLD, TESTAMENT, INTRODUCTION, SU1, 08

Language

English