Season 2: An Introduction to the Old Testament

Historical Background and Archaeology

introduction to the old testament assyrian palace

Any introduction to the Old Testament needs to take into account the world in which the Bible first came to be. Great cities, empires, and civilizations flourished in the Ancient Near East around 600 BCE, when much of the Old Testament was under construction. The illustration is from Austen Henry Layard‘s The Monuments of Nineveh (1853).

Our introduction to the Old Testament, or Tanakh, starts with an overview of the world that produced it. The ancient Judahites lived in a complicated place and time, as their tiny city state came into prominence after 720 BCE. To the east lay the massive empires of Assyria, and later Babylon. To the south, their perennial foes, the Egyptians, held sway. Mediterranean maritime cultures frequently dominated the western coastline. Episode 15: Canaan tells the captivating story of where the Bible came from.

Basic Architecture

A number of Old Testaments exist. From the short Tanakh, to the sprawling Tewahedo Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible takes on many different forms. Thousands of proper nouns swell the book’s pages. References to bygone places stud hundreds of chapters and verses. Yet all Old Testaments can be subdivided into four main parts. These parts are the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, the Poetic and Wisdom Books, and the Prophetic Books. Episode 16: Four Main Parts discusses this superstructure. Following these prefatory overviews, our introduction to the Old Testament proceeds through the book roughly as it’s organized in Protestant Bibles.

Introduction to the Old Testament: the Pentateuch

introduction to the old testament pentateuch

The Pentateuch is the Bible’s own introduction to the Old Testament, but the Bible’s first five books are nonetheless confusing and dense. Synagogues and Sunday schools everywhere teach the Golden Calf episode of Exodus, pictured here. The Pentateuch’s hundreds of regulations, however, have always been more obscure. (Henri-Paul Motte, The Israelites Dancing around the Golden Calf. (1899).)

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy can collectively be subdivided into two things. These books contain narratives. Additionally, they include commandments and regulations. The ratio of narrative to regulation is about 50/50. Thus, Literature and History subdivides the Pentateuch into two episodes. The first, Episode 17: The Roots of the Pentateuch reviews the narrative portions of (predominantly) Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers. The same episode then explores possible Ancient Near Eastern influences on these narratives. Then, Episode 18: The 613 Commandments reviews the Pentateuch’s gigantic catalog of rules, before discussing common scholarly theories on who wrote the Pentateuch.

Introduction to the Old Testament: The Historical Books

Episode 19: The One Who Struggles with God summarizes the massive stretch of text between Joshua and Chronicles. To historians, this span of the Bible is the most interesting of all. The Bible’s History Books offer an account of Ancient Near Eastern history from roughly 900-500 BCE. Some of this history is reasonably well supported by archaeology. Some of it is not. The tail end of Episode 19 discusses these concurrences and discrepancies.

Introduction to the Old Testament: The Poetic and Wisdom Books

The Poetic and Wisdom Books include Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. These five books are as diverse as they were important in later literary history. Our podcast thus covers most of them in detail. With Episode 20 on Job, Episode 21 on Psalms, Episode 22 on Ecclesiastes, and Episode 23 on the Song of Songs, Literature and History summarizes and analyzes each of these books at length. As a set, they show a fascinating evolution from earlier books in the Bible. The relaxed serenity of Ecclesiastes and the complex metaphorical landscape of the Song of Songs would not be at home in the Pentateuch. The more carefree and compassionate perspective of later books of the Bible is a mark of their time. As we see thoughout our introduction to the Old Testament, Persian- and Hellenistic-period books tend to be kinder, and gentler than their pre-exilic and exilic counterparts.

Introduction to the Old Testament: The Prophetic Books

introduction to the old testament ruth

Some books of the Old Testament, according to general scholarly consensus, were written much later than others. One later book is Ruth. This book’s relaxed attitude toward Israelites intermarrying with other peoples may mark it as a product of later, more prosperous, cosmopolitan times. (Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Ruth in Boaz’s Field. (1828).)

The Prophetic Books take up a gigantic stretch of any Bible. Like the greater Old Testament, the Prophetic Books are ideologically diverse. From bloodthirsty Zechariah to meek Jonah, the Prophetic Books show an evolving array of attitudes toward many subjects. Our approach to this portion of the Bible is simple. In Episode 24: God May Relent, we break down all of the Prophetic Books into a few categories of content. These include, first of all, the main two things in the Prophetic Books – oracles of doom against foreign nations, and oracles of doom against Israel. Secondly, the Prophetic Books include visions of better days to come. A very special subset of these visions, especially for Christians, are visions of an inbound messiah figure.

The Payoff

The Old Testament is an immense anthology of different kinds of content. Reading it carefully, and within its historical context, offers tremendous benefits. By the end of Season 2: An Introduction to the Old Testament, we’ve heard the long story of the Ancient Near East’s Iron Age, with Judah as the protagonist. We understand when and how the book’s narratives arose among similar ones. We understand how the evolving ideology of the book marks the impress of different imperial periods, from the Babylonian invasion down to Hellenistic cosmopolitanism. And we’re acquainted with the taproot of Abrahamic ideology, which, of course, would later blossom into Christianity and Islam. The season concludes with an announcement of The Astounding Apocrypha, a bonus series on the Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. Next up is Season 3: Classical and Hellenistic Greece.
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