Reading Old Testament as sociology, not history

Press, 28 July 1986, Page 7

Reading Old Testament as sociology, not history

Careful reading of the Old Testament could change approaches to contemporary issues of land and social inequality, according to a leading American Bible scholar, Professor Walter Brueggemann.

Professor Brueggemann said that land questions continually cropped up in the Old Testament, particularly in the books of Exodus and Joshua. These books were not about ethnic communities but about peasant revolutions, or the conflict between the “haves” and “have nots.”

Such an interpretation is comparatively new and the leading work is being done in the United States. It involved reading the Old Testament as sociology rather than history, Professor Brueggemann

said. Professor Brueggemann is a professor of Old Testament at the Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, and is also an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

The importance of land issues in the Old Testament had been largely ignored by Bible scholars, but it could explain why many minority groups who had lost their land believed the Bible was on their side.

Professor Brueggemann has a ready answer to those who say the Church should keep to the Bible and not become involved in secular issues.

“They say we should stick to the Bible, but questions of justice keep coming up there. You can’t get away from them,” he said.

If God was sovereign in people’s lives that included all aspects of their lives, he said.

“It is theologically impossible to split it up into the spiritual and the material,” he said. This interpretation of the Old Testament could help change people’s perceptions of social issues such as land disputes. People who were serious about their faith would have to think differently about land problems, he said.

Professor Brueggemann is in New Zealand to give a series of seminars at St John’s College, Auckland. Three of these seminars, on grief and hope, land, and the little people in history, will be given in Christchurch today at College House in Waimairi Road.