be doubted. To be sure, a certain continuity was observed, but it lay in the evolutionary pattern itself, not the Bible. The biblical religion was set apart into its various stages of development, the later of which had little or nothing in common with the earlier. It was impossible even to speak of a biblical theology. Now it would be dishonest to sneer at this critical scholarship, for it produced much for which we must be grateful. In particular it reminded us that revelation is not a picture gallery but a process in history. Of course there was progress! But the scheme of straight-line evolution was a framework imposed on the Bible from without, and it has proved far too rigid to accommodate the data. It can bring no solution to the problem of Scripture.
But one nurtured in the mainstream of Reformation theology may find the answer very simple: the unity of Scripture is in Christ. That this is in a real sense true I trust will be made clear as we proceed. To the mind of the New Testament faith not only all Scripture, but all history, centers in Christ. Yet this fact, true as it is, must be asserted with considerable care lest, in our zeal to make Christ all in all, we be guilty of imposing him arbitrarily on the Old Testament. It was once quite customary to do this, and there are those today who, it is to be feared, go too far in this direction.2 If this is done consistently, the Old Testament becomes simply a Christian book, and biblical theology assumes a static quality which violates its very nature. In careless hands Old Testament studies tend to degenerate into a game of which the object is to find types of Christ and the prefigurement of Christian truth in unlikely places. This is, of course, to discard sound exegetical method. As Christians we read our Old Testament in the light of Christ, and from it we preach Christ. But we are not permitted to attribute to the Bible writers ideas which they did not have in mind, only to discover as best we can what they actually intended to say. To save the Old Testament by reading into it ideas which are not there is to save it at too high a price.
This book arises out of a concern for the problems just raised. It is submitted in the belief that while the complexity of the Bible is by no means to be minimized, there nevertheless runs through it a unifying theme which is not artificially imposed. It is a theme of redemption, of salvation; and it is caught up particularly in those concepts which revolve about the idea of a people of God, called to live under his rule, and the concomitant hope of the coming Kingdom of God.3 This is a note which is present in Israel’s faith from earliest times onward, and which is to be found, in one way or another, in virtually every part of the Old Testament. It also unbreakably links Old Testament to New. For both have to do with the Kingdom of God, and the same God speaks in both.
It is, of course, impossible to subsume all that the Bible has to say under a single catchword, and no attempt to do so has been made here. The title does not imply that the New Testament concept of the Kingdom of God may be imposed on the Old, nor does it seek to disguise the fact that the idea of the rule of God underwent considerable development within the Old Testament itself. But ideas are ever larger than the words that carry them. The roots of this idea lie in the very earliest period of Israel’s history. Development is undeniable, but it must be viewed less as an evolution upward from lower forms to higher, than as a development outward from a concept which was normative in Israel’s faith from the beginning onward. It was a concept which by its very nature pointed beyond itself and demanded its fulfillment.
As was said in the beginning, this book is addressed primarily to the general reader of the Bible. For this reason, although it is hoped that no indefensible position has been taken, every effort has been made to keep the text of the book free of technical discussion lest the reader, called upon to follow the thread of the argument through piles of scholarly baggage, should lose it altogether. The aim throughout has been clarity. It has not, of course, been possible to avoid footnotes. The reader who does not wish to go into them may well pass them by. It is because of the hope that the book may also be of use to teachers and more advanced students, and because candor demands that indebtedness be acknowledged and important areas of disagreement be indicated, that they have been included. Wherever it has been possible to do so, the effort has been made to refer to such works as may be expected to assist the student in further reading. Because of the limitations of space no attempt has been made to give full bibliography.
The historical approach has been chosen because, in the last analysis, biblical theology can be treated in no other way. Abstract it, discuss it as a system of ideas divorced from history, and it is no longer biblical theology. It is hoped, however, that the historical approach, far from dismaying the reader, will assist him to fit the various parts of the Bible—particularly the Old Testament prophets—into their proper historical perspective.
If this book should make the Bible in any way clearer, or should stimulate in any the desire to study it, I shall be deeply gratified. But if it should be the means of causing some to hear again from the Bible page the summons to citizenship in the Kingdom of God, it will have more than succeeded.
JOHN BRIGHT
1 So most critical scholars of the past generation. An excellent example of this approach in popular language is Harry Emerson Fosdick, A Guide to Understanding the Bible, the Development of Ideas Within the Old and New Testaments (New York: Harper & Bros., 1938).
2 Wilhelm Vischer is perhaps an example: cf. Das Christuszeugnis des Alten Testaments (7th ed., Vol. I; 2nd ed., Vol II; Zürich: Evangelische Verlag, 1946); Eng. trans. Vol. I, from 3rd Ger. ed., A. B. Crabtree, The Witness of the Old Testament to Christ (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949).
3 This insight is of course not original. I must acknowledge indebtedness to W. Eichrodt, whose Theologie des Alten Testaments (1st ed., Vol. I, Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1933; 3rd ed., Vol. I, Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1948; cf. p. 1) first brought the importance of it home to me.
Acknowledgments
THE PREPARATION OF A BOOK IS AN ARDUOUS TASK, AND IT IS PROBABLE THAT FEW HAVE EVER CARRIED IT THROUGH TO COMPLETION WITHOUT the assistance and encouragement of others. This book has been no exception. I must, therefore, express my thanks to those friends who have helped me along the way. I am grateful, first of all, to the Rev. Dr. Barclay Walthall and the Rev. Dr. Holmes Rolston, both of the Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church, U.S., Richmond, Va. It was the invitation of the former to deliver a series of Bible lectures at a leadership conference for laymen at Montreat, N. C., in the summer of 1950 that first gave occasion for thinking through the subject matter of this book and presenting it orally; and but for the friendly interest and insistence of the latter the labor of writing might never have been undertaken at all. I must also thank Dr. Henry M. Brimm, librarian, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Va., who called the Abingdon-Cokesbury Award Contest to my attention and whose encouragement it was that emboldened me to enter it. Especial thanks are due to Professor G. Ernest Wright of McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, Ill., who read the completed manuscript and made numerous suggestions for its improvement. The present book is far the better for his help, as well as for that of Professor W. F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University, who made yet further suggestions; but it must be emphasized that the shortcomings which remain are entirely my own. Not least, I owe thanks to my wife—without whose assistance in the typing and correcting, the manuscript would never have been ready in time.
Quotations from Scripture, except where otherwise indicated or where I have ventured my own translation of the original, follow the R.S.V.
CHAPTER ONE
The People of God and the Kingdom of Israel
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK BEGINS THE STORY OF JESUS’ MINISTRY WITH THESE SIGNIFICANT WORDS: “JESUS CAME INTO GALILEE, PREACHING the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of
