An Introduction to the Old Testament, Second Edition: The Canon and Christian Imagination

I just stumbled upon this as I was searching for something else. I bought this book a while ago and use it often. I don't have time to give detailed thoughts on it... However, this book is amazing. Brueggemann speaks with so much clarity and sense and authority. He is not dogmatic about conclusions where dogmatism is not warranted, but gives tons of powerful evidence to make strong conclusions that stand on solid ground. This title would make extremely conservative Christians a bit uncomfortable. That is a sad thing as they will miss out on treasures of spiritual and intellectual wealth. Conservative Christians will certainly not wrestle with the data anywhere close to close as sufficient as this author does. And at the end there is nothing to fear about critical scholarship. God is God, and the data is what the data is. We simply fit the data into a Christian worldview and attribute all that has happened into the perview of God's providence and accept that this is what He has done. Breuggemann is by far one of the best at this (along with Childs or Goldingay and others). Allowing warranted critical positions into our confession is a deeply freeing experience, as we no longer need to run from seemingly clear data that points in a different direction than our presupposed traditions. Another benefit of this book is its deep theological and spiritual content in the midst of its intellectually stimulating critical content. This book as an absolutely must read for anyone seriously interested in the splendid book of what Christians call the Old Testament!!!

One of my struggles as a Christian has been how to reconcile the Bible being "inspired" with conflicts between passages, requirement for a young Earth, etc. I'm finding "Introduction to the Old Testament" by Walter Brueggemann to be an amazing book. I love his central thesis that people assembled the Old Testament out of existing stories to make points about God and expected Israelite behavior. It neatly allows the Old Testament to be both God-inspired and not literally true, almost parables as it were. In fact, it nicely makes the case that trying to establish the historicity of the stories misses God's point entirely.

It's probably a Master's Degree level book. I love it. I've been studying the Old Testament for more than 25 years, and have learned quite a lot from this. Pretty awesome, in my opinion.

My Pastor recommended this study guide to me , and I have been very pleased with it. It is witten with authority and insight yet is clear and easily understandable for the lay student who wishes to expand their Biblical knowledge base and enhance their reading of scripture.

Though I have to read this book with a dictionary to decipher the theological terms, I am finding it compelling reading— which is opening my mind to new ideas and concepts about the OT.

Great book but I was jipped of the first 6 pages!! I would like a replacement

Required text for a university course. Very good book.

Brueggeman takes some positions I wasn't expecting, but he is always interesting to read and is a very good writer.Good resource book and easy to follow.