John Sailhamer on the OT: The Bible Was Written To Be Read

When John Sailhamer began teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1983, the school newspaper interviewed him about his family and his discipline of OT studies. They begin by asking him what “whet his appetite” for a lifetime study of the OT. 

He gives a personal reason and also an exegetical reason: 

I have always been drawn to the Old Testament because I think it is not only the Word of God, but also, in and of itself, great literature. It seeks to answer the questions that everyone asks and does so in such an enjoyable way. I love a good story and that is just what the Old Testament is—a good story with tremendous plot, tremendous characterization, and that something extra that just draws you back to it again and again.

Originally, my interest in the Old Testament grew out of my observation that Jesus and the New Testament writers were thoroughly saturated with the Old Testament, and the only way I was going to really understand the New Testament was to come to it from the perspective of the Old Testament.

Noting that the OT is difficult and a challenge for most Christians (which is true 40 years later as well!), they ask Sailhamer about any “principles” or “methods” that might help both casual and scholarly readers of the OT. 

His starting point for answering this question is particularly instructive. He responds: 

Everything I try to teach about the Old Testament can be reduced to one simple instruction: read it. It is very easy in the midst of an academic setting like seminary to miss that simple point. The Bible was written to be read. We can study all about the Bible, its history, its theology, its application to our lives, but we have not yet hit on the central purpose of the Bible until we read it. It is God's Word to us. In the Bible, as we read it, God speaks to us.

The Old Testament is designed not only to be read, but to be read from the beginning to the end, and if you read it from the beginning to the end you catch the story, the plot, and the big idea which the writers are trying to communicate.

They also ask him about a commentary on the Psalms he was currently working on.

What excites him about these texts? 

The most exciting thing I have seen in the Psalms is the fact that the Book of Psalms, which we usually take to be a miscellaneous collection of psalms (like our hymnbook in the church), is actually something much more structured. The Book of Psalms is really a composition of 150 psalms. 

The psalms are intentionally placed together in a certain order to develop various themes. The psalms are not put together like the book of Romans, in which we have the development of an argument. They are more like a great symphony. There are dominant themes which, at any given point in the Book of Psalms, may be either accented or set in the background to be highlighted at a later time.

There is a value in reading through the Book of Psalms and asking why a certain psalm is put where it is. Correctly answering that question often shows us that psalms actually help interpret one another.


These are helpful reminders: The OT is a collection of complex and quality texts, they are worth studying, they are designed to be read and re-read, and they have been carefully collected for future generations of readers.


Source: The Evangelical Beacon (January 15, 1984), 19–20.

Hermeneutics
February 4, 2025
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