Abstract
The Old Testament Is Dying is a lament, but not yet a dirge, about the prospect of the Old Testament dying. The prognosis is grim: The Old Testament shows “serious signs of morbidity” (56). However, as more fluent speakers of the Old Testament language know, (biblical) laments do not end in despair but conclude on a more hopeful note. So too this book, after explicating the moribund diagnosis in Part I (chaps. 1–3, pp. 1–80) and exploring the signs and consequences of the illness in Part II (chaps. 4–6, pp. 81–155), concludes with treatment recommendations that may resuscitate the patient in Part III (chaps. 7–9, pp. 157–242).
The Rev. Dr. Brent A. Strawn is professor of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University; and, let it be stated upfront, he has authored compelling reading for all who teach Scripture—including “those tasked with preaching, teaching, and worship leadership” in local congregations (215), biblical scholars at theological institutions (217), and religious artists, especially of poetry and song (237–38).
Central to the argument of the book is a linguistic analogy, explained in chapter 3. Strawn argues that the Old Testament is (like) a language—it can be “used in the creation of a biblical worldview, or … to perceive the world” (11)—and thus, like all languages, changes over time and can atrophy and even die (59). The processes by which languages die are important. The first way a language might die is through pidginization, the severe reduction of a language into something akin to baby talk, a pidgin. The second way a language might die is through creolization, the invention of a new language, distinct from the original, called a creole, on the basis of an already pidginized form of the original language. Strawn’s thesis is that most Christians in North America speak a pidgin form of the Old Testament or, worse still, a creole. The Old Testament is dying, if it is not already dead!
Chapter 2 presents two sets of data to support the thesis. The first data set comes from the 2010 Pew study, U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, which finds that “large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history, and leading figures of major faith traditions—including their own” (24). The second set of data surveys, admittedly in a non-scientific manner, the representation of the Old Testament in the sermons, hymnody, and lectionary of North American churches. What Strawn finds is absence or, more accurately, neglect of the Old Testament so that what Christians actually learn at church is “how not to speak … practice … hear … or learn the language that is the Old Testament” (57).
Chapters 4–6 analyze heuristic signs of the morbidity of the Old Testament as a language and the grave consequences of its death. In chapter 4, Strawn finds that the New Atheist Richard Dawkins speaks a pidginized Old Testament—“taking just a part, just a bit, and the worst bit at that” (97)—to argue that the God of the Old Testament is “a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” (84). This would be harmless were Dawkins’s audience fluent speakers of the Old Testament and able to see the serious deficiencies of Dawkins’s argument. Sadly, because few are fluent, “the pidgin [of Dawkins] sounds sufficient if not altogether compelling” (101).
In chapter 5, Strawn spells out clearly the deadly ramifications of Marcionism, the Christian heresy that disavows the canonicity of the Old Testament: “the anti-Semitism of Germany, which came to its most horrific result in the Final Solution of the Nazis” (127). Marcionites of the past and today who disavow the Old Testament in favor of (parts of) the New Testament, like the New Atheists, speak a pidginized Old Testament. Alarmingly, “many Christians continue, unthinkingly, to speak” a similar pidgin (129).
In chapter 6, Strawn argues that proponents of the prosperity gospel (Strawn calls them happiologists), exemplified by Joel Osteen, speak a creolized form of the Old Testament. As a full language—not a reduction of one, as is pidgin—creole can displace the original language. This is the reason that Strawn argues that the prosperity gospel represents a more serious threat to the survival of the Old Testament than the pidginized cousins of the New Atheism or Marcionism—and the reason that Strawn likens Osteen and other happiologists to Satan (142–43)!
Strawn provides a “path to recovery” for the dying Old Testament in Part III. He draws treatment recommendations from, fittingly, the Old Testament itself and also from linguistics, and readers who agree with Strawn’s diagnosis that the Old Testament (as a language) is dying will want to read this section and, just as important, put the lessons to practice. For there is hope for the Old Testament, as there is for a tree.
Paul K.-K. Cho
Wesley Theological Seminary