Foremost among popular perceptions of the Old Testament in American culture today, especially within evangelical circles, are the notions that it is someone else’s “mail,” that it is obsolete, and that it is categorically irrelevant to a twenty-first-century Western readership. Thankfully, a number of recent publications (e.g., Brent A. Strawn’s Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at the Old Testament [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2021]) have sought to correct these misconceptions, pointing out that the New Testament itself views the Old Testament as written for Christian instruction (cf. Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:6, 11; 2 Tim. 3:16–17); that the word Old in “Old Testament” doesn’t mean “archaic,” “outmoded,” “superseded,” or the like (cf. Matt. 5:17–20); and that the Old Testament is brimming, at points, with the same kind of germane injunctions that we see in the New Testament (cf., e.g., Lev. 19 with Rom. 12).

Within this same scholarly tradition, Cameron B. R. Howard, associate professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, seeks to show in her recent book, The Old Testament for a Complex World, that “in today’s era of significant cultural upheaval, the Old Testament is of vital importance for the future of the church” (p. 2). In doing so, she examines three “modes of innovation” reflected in the pages of the Old Testament, means of biblical ingenuity that inspire similar creativity in the church today. They include: (1) the adaptation of popular culture, (2) the rethinking of theological assumptions, and (3) the development of a new literary genre—namely, apocalyptic literature.

Before addressing each of these novelties, though, Howard establishes the Old Testament’s “dynamic testimony” in chapter 1 by highlighting five of its generative, multivocal features: (1) its evidence of cross-cultural contact and influence, (2) its use of multiple text types, (3) its reflection of various historical-cultural settings, (4) its composite authorship and traditions, and (5) its complex redactional history. Whereas popular culture often depicts the Bible as a divinely inscribed stone tablet—a depiction cemented in the popular imagination by Cecil DeMille’s 1956 film, The Ten Commandments—these features vitiate against any static portrayal of or approach to the biblical text (pp. 9–13). Accordingly, rather than viewing exegesis as “drawing out” meaning or as “mining” texts for data, Howard likens the encounter between text and reader to an atomic particle collision—a collision in which every encounter, energized by the Spirit of God, “has the potential to form new molecules of interpretation, releasing energy as light and beauty” (pp. 13, 14). Far from signifying a destructive explosion, this analogy “emphasizes the explosive, transformative potential of reading Scripture,” says Howard (p. 15).

Transitioning, then, to the first mode of innovation, chapter 2 demonstrates how the Bible’s flood narrative (i.e., Gen. 6–9) and various court stories (i.e., Gen. 37–50; Esther, Dan. 1–6) adapt popular literary themes from the ancient Near East—represented, for instance, in Atrahasis, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the story of Ahiqar—to convey a distinct monotheistic message and to inspire hope for a community in crisis. Such adaptations of popular culture not only prompt faith communities today “to be both intentional and reflective about how they engage with the world around them” but also “to consider what the stories of their communities are, how they are told, and whom they exclude or include” (p. 108).

As for the second mode of innovation (i.e., the rethinking of theological assumptions by the Old Testament authors and editors), chapter 3 examines (1) the transition from localized worship to centralized worship in Jerusalem (cf., e.g., Exod. 20:24 with Deut. 12:10–11) and (2) the shift from Zion theology to an understanding of God’s mobility (cf., e.g., Ps. 84:1–2 with Ezek. 1; 10–11). Of course, these modifications in no way deny the “immovable foundations” on which the biblical authors theologized (nor do they deny the foundations on which we theologize today), but Howard nevertheless infers from them that “the lived experiences of faithful people require ongoing reorientation of our understanding of who God is, what God requires of us, where God can be found, and how we can best live in relationship with God” (p. 82).

Addressing the third mode of innovation, then, chapter 4 analyzes the literary and theological development of apocalyptic within the context of third- and second-century BCE Judea. Particular attention is paid to Daniel 7–12 and the function of apocalyptic as resistance literature—literature that resists “any totalizing system that holds sway by fear,” including, in our day, the systems of racism, addiction, and predatory capitalism (p. 101). “The apocalypse, then,” Howard avers, “can turn the church’s attention not only to the way it relates functionally to the powers of the world but also to the ways that its discourse—its speech or rhetoric—can resist those powers (or else may inadvertently support them)” (p. 103).

Finally, chapter 5 explores various Old Testament principles for creative change. Such “gestures” or “prompts,” as Howard also calls them, include (1) telling our stories in imaginative ways, (2) recognizing and celebrating ethnic and perspectival differences in our faith communities, (3) listening for and welcoming previously unheard voices within them, and (4) embracing uncertainty in our complex world (pp. 113–21). In the end (figuratively and literally), “the faithful people who shaped our sacred texts lived in turbulent times. They worked boldly and creatively to reckon with the changes that befell them and to continue to testify to God’s ongoing covenant relationship with them in the midst of great uncertainty. We have much to learn not only from the words they wrote but also from the struggles that gave life to those words” (p. 126). These are indeed the final words of Howard’s book.

Upon evaluation, The Old Testament for a Complex World is a novel, timely, well-crafted, and perceptive foray into the relevance of the Old Testament for Christians today—not primarily the relevance of the Old Testament’s content but rather the relevance of the ways in which that content came about. Particularly insightful is Howard’s argument that “biblical texts are not blank slates when we interpret; the texts themselves [in their original languages] are already interpretations, and readers are participants in that act” (p. 64). Also astute is her observation that “given that our experiences and even some elements of our identities will change over time, our interpretations will also shift. Indeed, no two encounters between a text and a reader—even the same text and the same reader—are ever quite the same” (p. 27).

That said, Howard’s book has not been produced without conceptual concerns or historical and editorial infelicities. First and foremost, one might wish Howard had been able to temper her emphasis on innovation, both in Scripture and in the church’s life today, with the cautions of one of her colleagues’ recent works—namely, Andrew Root’s The Church after Innovation: Questioning Our Obsession with Work, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022). Second, one wonders occasionally why Howard has chosen certain phenomena to analyze over others. For instance, why focus on flood stories and court tales rather than creation narratives, temple structures, treaty relations, or other cultural phenomena? (See, e.g., Richard S. Hess, “The Old Testament as a Model for Cultural Transformation: Perspectives from Archaeology,” Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin 46 [2001]: 1–7.) Third, one can find the mistaken assertion on page 16 that “Cyrus the Great conquered Jerusalem,” whereas no rationale is given for the claim that “any written account of a flood from ancient Israelite tradition could not predate the tenth century BCE” (p. 35). Finally, various editorial infelicities include the page-long distance between the first mention of the Holiness source and its abbreviation as the “H” source (pp. 72–73), inconsistencies in tense when retelling a biblical story (p. 74), and discrepancies in citations of the New Interpreter’s Bible (cf., e.g., p. 52n27 with pp. 78n22 and 79n23).

These concerns and infelicities aside, though (and others as well), The Old Testament for a Complex World is a fitting complement to Strawn’s Lies My Preacher Told Me and any other resource that upholds the significance of the Old Testament text today. Insofar as Howard’s work rounds out that tradition—underscoring the relevance of how the Old Testament text came about—it is a welcome and original contribution indeed.

Brandon C. Benziger
Associated Faculty, Old Testament Department, Denver Seminary
PhD Resident, Biblical Theology Emphasis, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Freelance Editor, Baker Academic & Brazos Press, etc.
July 2024