Celebrating Christian Centenaries
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 68, No. 1 - Fall 2025
Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By H. H. Hardy II and M. Daniel Carroll R. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024, 512 pp., $44.99.
The State of Old Testament Studies has taken its inspiration from the well-known antecedent volume, twenty-five years its senior, The Face of Old Testament Studies: A Survey of Contemporary Approaches. However, as the editors state, this volume is more than an update to the former (xxi). In many ways, it is an expansion and modernization of the former work. The current volume is broader and more diversified in its treatment of the field, as is evident from its thirty-two chapters, compared to the sixteen of its predecessor. This is at least in part a mirror of the greater segmentation of Old Testament studies itself. Likewise, many of the areas of study treated by Hardy and Carroll have developed only since the publication of The Face of Old Testament Studies. Thus, the book truly stands on its own as a snapshot of the field today.
The chapters are evenly written, but not uniformly structured. Some chapters may focus more on overcoming objections or clarifying the intent of a given method. Others may explicitly trace the development of and recent advances within a subject. Still others may be dominated by an introduction to the subject. Even with this diverse texture, the chapters in their own ways outline the heritage and development of the subdiscipline; synthesize the most current foci, trends, and research questions of the practitioners; forecast how the area may develop in the future; and provide an embedded bibliography by way of the footnotes for the interested reader.
The editors have arranged the concise chapters into three main divisions, which roughly correspond to contextual and background studies, the study of the scriptural books/collections themselves, and distinct methodological approaches and aims. The chapters represent great breadth across the Christian tradition, diverse methodological values and interests, and fair handed evaluations and writing. The volume is ideally suited for an academically minded and intellectually stimulated reader. However, the breadth of perspective and method may result in the content of some chapters evoking questions or critique from one end or the other of the confessional or methodological spectrums. Thus, this volume is not for the doctrinaire scholar. It is also worth noting that while the academic nature of the volume places it out of reach for the casual Bible reader, several of the chapters seek to demonstrate the value of their discipline for fostering devotion to and love for God. Thus, the balance of the work is admirable.
The invited authors possess specialized expertise in their respective subdisciplines, and this is evident in the quality of each chapter. However, as with any edited volume, the strengths of the respective chapters vary. Some chapters such as “Old Testament Canons,” “Theological Interpretation,” or “Old Testament Theology” provide especially careful and concise synthetic work. Other chapters such as “Chronicles” or “Archaeology and History: Iron Age II,” allow the reader to come up to speed within the subdiscipline, skillfully interrelating the various strands and debates of the subdiscipline. Still other chapters, such as “Qumran and the Scrolls from the Judean Desert” or “Inner-Biblical Exegesis,” require serious specialization, involve technical work, or have proven to be rather dynamic, and yet the authors were able to present an accessible and jargon-free assessment for non-specialists.
Some areas that I might have expected to receive a more prominent focus in one or more of the chapters include the process of textual instantiation (143–44), reception history of Old Testament traditions in later Old Testament texts and early Jewish literature (198–201, 211–13, 433–37), the role of scribes and scribalism (42–43, 369–70), the impact of scribal and cultural memory (196–97, 211–13), scholarship on (or assuming) the unity of the Pentateuch, and the place of textual materiality in the text–critical enterprise. However, it should be noted that the editors themselves acknowledged the impossibility of giving proper treatment to every warranted aspect of Old Testament studies (xxiii). Also, some of these research trends were addressed within chapters in the volume, as I have tried to indicate for the reader in the parentheticals above.
Overall, the book is a valuable read for the uninitiated seminary student eager to find their way through the field or the seasoned scholar who has maintained mastery over their own areas of research but is looking for a guide to help him or her come up to speed in adjacent specialties. The ongoing segmentation of every field, the resultant hyper-specialization of researchers, and the proliferation of literature all add to the high value of a resource like this one. Just as we were grateful to Baker and Arnold for providing a lay of the land in 1999, we are now indebted to Hardy and Carroll for offering a trustworthy guide for the next twenty-five years.
