For the past month, I have been trying to get through From Gaza to Jerusalem: An Old Testament Theology. I bought the book a few years ago at the annual SBL meeting. This is my second attempt at reading it, and for the second time I am giving up.
The book is authored by Donald Keyser, professor of religion at Campbell University, who died in March 2006. As far as I can tell, this is the only book he wrote. Being a church history professor, he asked Wayne Ballard,1 an OT scholar, to help him with the book. Although he began as an assistant, Ballard eventually became the co-author.
Unfortunately, I am rather disappointed with the book. The book is intended to be used as an introductory OT theology. Keyser wrote it because he did not find any OT theology books he could use when teaching OT. But the book comes out sounding like Sunday School material.
The trend in recent OT theologies is to highlight the multiple voices that are found within the OT. This leads to a very textured reading of the Bible. By contrast, Keyser’s theology comes out rather two dimensional. This may, in part, be due to Keyser’s decision to structure the book according to the standard categories of systematic theology (e.g., God, humanity, creation, sin). While these concepts are certainly part of the OT, the OT does not center its own discussion around these loci.
The book is intended to be very basic, so I can’t fault it for not being a more in-depth treatment. But I can’t recommend it even for church Bible studies, at least not ones that want to study the theology in the Bible. It seems to me that what the book presents is not a theology of the OT so much as a theology that has been informed by the OT. The latter is certainly a valuable thing, but it is not an OT theology.
I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has used this book to teach OT theology, especially if they had a more favorable reaction to it than I did.
- Ballard currently teaches at Carson-Newman College, my alma mater. [back]