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This collection of essays is drawn from a series of previous collections to which the author has contributed that were designed to honor senior scholars in the discipline of Old Testament study. Each of these essays reflects a distinct intention depending on the nature of the original collection in which they appeared and the scholar who was being honored. Taken together, however, this collection amounts to an articulation of Brueggemann's distinctive approach to theological interpretation of the Old Testament. Already in his major volume on Old Testament theology, Brueggemann proposed a dynamism of tension, dispute, and contradiction as the text of ancient Israel sought to give voice to the mystery of God as a sustaining and disruptive agent in the life of the world. Over a long period of time, this collection reflects the author's growing clarity about the task of Old Testament theology. It further reflects on the nature of the biblical text and the way in which the God who inhabits the text runs beyond all of our attempts to define and explain. These essays reflect not so much on methodological issues, but take up the substantive questions that regularly occupied these ancient text-makers.
About the author
Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He has published widely on the Old Testament as well as contemporary hermeneutical reflections, including, from Cascade Books: David and His Theologian (2011), A Pathway of Interpretation (2008), Embracing the Transformation (2014), The Practice of Homefulness (2014), Truth-Telling as Subversive Obedience (2011), Virus as a Summons to Faith (2020), A Wilderness Zone (2021), and Resisting Denial, Refusing Despair (2022).
