Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament

Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament.
Ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. Pp. xxvii + 1239.
Hekman Library ThRef 511.3 .C653 2007

In one volume Beale and Carson and sixteen other New Testament scholars have produced a unique reference tool that will be helpful for pastors, theological students, and biblical scholars. Each contributor (typically one per gospel or epistle) focuses his attention on those places where the NT writer actually cites or alludes to the OT. In their introduction, Beale and Carson outline six questions each contributor was asked to bear in mind:

1. What is the NT context of the citation or allusion?
2. What is the OT context from which the citation or allusion is drawn?
3. How is the OT source handled in the literature of Second Temple Judaism?
4. What textual factors come into play in this use of the OT (e.g., MT, LXX, Targum, etc.)?
5. How is the NT writer using or appealing to the OT?
6. To what theological use does the NT writer put this OT allusion or citation?

A good number of the contributors use these six questions as an outline in treating clear OT allusions or citations, with more generic discussions of less obvious allusions which do not lend themselves well to such a prescribed format. Each contribution has its own bibliography, with convenient author-date references within the text for those who wish to pursue matters more deeply.

This work succeeds in its goal of being a good comprehensive survey of specific instances of the use of the OT in the NT. While the contributors are informed by contemporary debates over the nature of the exegetical methods used by the NT writers and developments in the field of typology, the book does not attempt to address these issues comprehensively. For good, quick summaries of such issues, one might consult the relevant articles and bibliography in the recently published Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. VanHoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005) :

• “Relationship between the Testaments,” by R. T. France, pp. 666-672
• “Intertextuality,” by Paul E. Koptak, pp. 332-334
• “Jewish Exegesis,” by Craig A. Evans, pp. 380-384
• “Typology,” by Daniel Treier, pp. 823-827

Religion Past and Present = RGG4 (1)

Probably the preeminent theological dictionary published in the twentieth century is the German-language Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. From 1908-2007 it went through four editions: RGG1 (1908-1913), RGG2 (1927-1932), RGG3 (1957-1962), and now the newly completed 4th edition, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1998-2005).
This 4th edition is now being published in English translation by Brill as Religion Past and Present: Encyclopedia of Theology and Religion, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (2007-). At Hekman Library we've received the first five volumes (A-Haz) so far, with seven more to come. These four editions, taken together, contain a chronicle of changes in theological thought over the course of the past century.

RGG1 was initially conceived in 1900 as a cross-disciplinary work which would incorporate the research of the new "history of religions school" and other liberal theological movements, as well as speak to the current situation of the church (hence the "gegenwart" (present) in its title. This "present" orientation was to be a corrective to the more academically oriented Realenzyclopaedie fuer protestantische Theologie und Kirche (3rd ed., 1896-1913), which formed the basis for the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1908-1912) [full-text online].

RGG2 (1927-1932) was a completely new work, covering a cross-section of German theological thought and reflecting the rise of neo-orthodoxy. Selected articles from it have been translated and published in Jaroslav Pelikan, Twentieth-Century Theology in the Making (3 vols., 1969-71).

RGG3 (1957-1962) had a more international character, with some contributors from throughout the world, but retained its fundamentally German Protestant orientation and its many articles of interest to German readers. The "present" focus continued (with articles on the ecumenical movement, the New Deal), and the Fraktur script of the first two editions was replaced by roman type.

RGG4 is a fundamentally new work. One notes that its title is now Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, dropping the definite article "Die", perhaps indicating a desire to conceive "religion" more generically, with more emphasis on world religions. In my next post I'll look at RGG4 and its English translation more closely.

For a good review of the history of RGG in its various editions, see John Fitzgerald, et al., "Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: The Past and Present of a German Theological Dictionary," Religious Studies Review 27.4 (Oct 2001):319-329 [ DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-0922.2001.tb00374.x ]

Flannery O'Connor - New Biography

I've not read Brad Gooch's new book Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (Little, Brown & Co., 2009), but the review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes today has a great quote from some correspondence between F.O. and her friend Betty Hester: " I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both."
Gooch's biography supplements the last O'Connor biography, published in 2002 by Jean W. Cash, Flannery O'Connor: A Life (University of Tennessee, 2002), and makes use of a significant amount of hitherto unpublished correspondence. For excerpts from the O'Connor-Hester letters (in the Emory University Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library), see the 2008 article by Christine McCulloch, "Glimpsing Andalusia in the O'Connor-Hester Letters" in the online journal Southern Spaces . Here's a sample: