This second edition of our text grows out of the gratifying response to the publication of the first edition. We are pleased that so many colleagues have commented to us on their use of the first edition in seminary courses, as well as in some college and university settings.
We have had the opportunity to use this text in our own teaching as well. Reviews have offered challenging and helpful suggestions.
Out of this response we believe we have some ideas for making this volume even more useful, and accessible to introductory students, and some revisions and expansions that more adequately cover the range of theological issues we hoped to discuss.
The changes do not dramatically alter the approach or character of the volume, but we hope the changes will make it more adequate to the purposes for which it was written.
In an effort to enhance the use of this volume as a textbook, we have added additional maps and charts throughout the volume. We also have expanded the endnotes in some chapters in order to give a fuller guide to students who wish to explore further key issues and discussions in Old Testament studies.
This will make more visible our own engagement with those issues, although limited space in a single volume will not allow a full airing of many complex ongoing scholarly discussions.
Bibliographic suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter have been expanded and updated to reflect the continued appearance of excellent resources.
We still believe that in teaching an introductory course this volume must be supplemented by additional resources.
We have not tried to make this volume cover all of the purposes served by appropriate histories of ancient Israel, treatments of material culture, discussions of linguistic evidence, or examinations of ancient Near Eastern texts.
All of these matters have been influential in our work and are touched upon but not given full treatment. We know that most introductory Old Testament courses use a variety of resources already, and they do so with different operative pedagogical approaches by our teaching colleagues.
We simply hope to offer a volume that provides a theological perspective on the biblical texts that has often been missing in textbooks that have given more comprehensive treatment to other matters. We still do not believe we can take up this wider range of issues without diluting the particular voice we believe we might add to the mix.
Some reviewers of the first edition of this book suggested that we devoted too much space to the Pentateuch. While we thoughtfully considered this observation, on reexamination we think the theological themes that emerge from the Pentateuch are too significant to be given shorter shrift.
Setting aside the introductory chapter, the texts of the Pentateuch occupy only four of the remaining eleven chapters.
The themes of creation, brokenness, promise, deliverance, covenant, and wilderness simply seem too major and defining of Israel's experience of God and the church's reading of Israel's witness to that experience for us to deal with in less than four chapters.
Five of the remaining chapters use the historical framework of Joshua through 2 Kings and take up the individual prophetic voices of Israel at appropriate points in that framework.
We have tried to give a fuller treatment to many individual prophets rather than simply the more general discussion of the prophetic movement in Israel.
Two chapters deal with material drawn from the final segment of the Hebrew canon, the Writings.
