Making Wise the Simple: The Torah in Christian Faith and Practice

by Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos

Too long restricted to children's storybooks and cinematic extravaganzas, the Torah -- comprising the first five books of the Bible -- is an underappreciated mother lode of divine instruction, vitally important for Christians and the church. Convinced that both those who take the Torah too literally and those who neglect it are guilty of a naïve simplicity, Johanna van Wijk-Bos presents guidelines to help ordinary Christians recover this treasure in their faith and practice.

Having lived in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, van Wijk-Bos recognizes that after the attempted annihilation of the Jews from Christian Europe, it cannot be business as usual for Christianity. In light of the Holocaust, Christians must commit themselves to the restoration of just relations between Christians and Jews. This commitment to address all that fractures human relations undergirds van Wijk-Bos's call for Christians to reengage the Torah.

Making Wise the Simple  points out how God's care for and engagement with the whole world in the Torah set the tone for the entire biblical story. The book pays special attention to how our treatment of strangers lies at the heart of the Torah's teaching. Without attempting a purely Jewish reading of the Torah, van Wijk-Bos reclaims the Torah as a vibrant word for the Christian community in covenant with God.

Written in a personal style conversant with current scholarship but sprinkled with anecdotes, this book is for everyone who has a hunger and enthusiasm for what the biblical text may convey, the courage to ask disturbing questions of the text, and an openness to old words that may bring forth new things, perhaps even making one wise.
 

Genres: Religion

353 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2005

Reviews

[Nicholas Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos was my professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. She is now retired, although still writes, but she was very important to my studies. She even got me a copy of the Hebrew version of the Tanakh.

This book commented on the history of the Torah, the history of its scholarship, and how its been interpreted in Christian contexts. It also features van Wijk-Bos' experiences of her childhood in the Netherlands during which she first started to study the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible seriously and when many of her Jewish neighbors went missing and the crisis of faith she experienced when she realized what happened to them. The book is primarily important for Christians who still need to recognize the Jewish origins of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and how many times Judaism has been excluded or marginalized by certain interpretations.

I am leaving a star off only because I learned that one of the hypotheses for the Torah that van Wijk-Bos talks about, the documentary hypothesis, has seen gone under some revisions in Biblical scholarship. Not her fault, it happened after she wrote this.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate this books willingness to delicately balance historical concerns with modern problems of the text. Specifically I appreciate van Wijk-Bos's feminist treatment of texts that have the potential to do violence to the place of women in society. I also have to commend her for her willingness to straddle the artificial barrier of conservative and liberal biblical studies. To be honest, she will probably offend both parties with this book.



Perhaps the best word I can give for this book is that I devoured it in two days. While I enjoy reading textbooks as much as the next guy, to find a background text whose prose is this delightful is a rare treat. Never has an introduction to a collection of Biblical texts been such a treat to read. It's accessible and informative. Challenging yet not overwhelming.

[Neil Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although it provided some useful ways of thinking about Torah, I felt its overall exegesis was weak, and the author's conclusions were not well supported by her exegesis.

[Lenise "Harmony" · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book for Christians to understand the correlation between the Torah and the Christian faith.