The Centre and the Periphery

In this valuable volume, 13 scholars from Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany pay tribute to Walter Brueggemann's outstanding contribution to Old Testament studies, notably his Theology of the Old Testament (1997). His own setting is the USA, and it is not generally recognized how far-reaching his influence has been. This volume aims to demonstrate that many scholars in diverse locations have been stimulated by the sweep of his energetic criticism.

Brueggemann himself often speaks of Old Testament scholarship in terms of centre and margin, meaning thereby the dominant historical-critical mode of research as against the new types of analysis that have come into being in the last decades. He constantly has recourse also to the Hebrew Bible's own tension between a mainstream centre with its testimony to Yahweh's power, providence and justice and a margin according to which the deity is called to account for failures in divine governance.

The essays in Part I are devoted to 'centrist' questions in the main, including contributions from Rainer Albertz, Katharine Dell, Frederik Lindstrm, Christoph Bultmann, and Hugh Williamson. The essays in Part II are from scholars who apply a range of alternative or 'peripheral' interpretative methods, Walter Moberly, Terje Stordalen, Jill Middlemas, Ulrich Berges, Mark Gray, Else Holt, Gordon McConville and David Clines.