Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Prophets

Exploring the Old Testament #4

by James Gordon McConville

Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Prophets considers the often misunderstood prophetic books of the Old Testament, including an exploration of their historical context, their artful use of language and their place within the chorus of Old Testament voices. This critically informed and theologically sensitive introduction to the Prophets introduces students to
issues in critical interpretation
the place of the prophetic books in the Old Testament canon
the social location of biblical prophets
contemporary applications of the prophetic books
dates and destinations of the prophecies of each of the books
theological contributions of the prophetic books
an overview of literary criticism on the Prophets
In this textbook you will find double-column formatting for ease of use, annotated bibliographies for further reading, sidebar explorations of select historical and textual topics in greater detail, a glossary of terms, and relevant charts and maps.

Genres: Old Testament, Christian, Theology, Biblical Studies, Academic, Reference

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2002

About the author

J. Gordon McConville is Professor of Old Testament Theology at the University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, England.

Reviews

[Brandon Vaughan · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be clear, there is a lot of good info in this book, and it is a good reference tool to have in the library. However, as a pastor I get really tired of having to wade through all of the opinions of the haters as to why certain things shouldn’t be in the Bible. It’s totally irrelevant to the reliability or the meaning of the text. There was just way too much of that for my liking.

[Renee Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved reading this book to learn more about the prophetic books for my class, The Major Prophets.

[Sean-david · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well organized, clear, and enjoyable approach to the Old Testament, especially helpful on the prophets.

[Zachary Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d give it a 3.5 (hence four stars to be generous). This is a decent introduction to the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible geared towards a scholarly interest. It’s written from an evangelical perspective.

The book’s greatest strength comes from McConville’s willingness to engage with critical interpretations and difficult questions. Often he doesn’t provide answers, but leaves the questions open for the reader’s reflection. He also gives suggested reading from different views in order to pursue those questions. It also is well organized with room to reflect on both the overlap and distinctions between the prophets.

The book’s greatest weakness is simply that it is frequently uninteresting and boring. I also would have appreciated a chapter at the end reflecting backwards on the prophets as a whole after working through the whole corpus. Instead it just kind of leaves off with its introduction on Malachi.

Also, it’s got a really lame cover. I feel like IVP has some great cover art for other books, so I don’t know why they let this series slip

In the end, it carries value and probably makes a good reference work, but I hope there are better, more engaging introductions to the prophets—that increasingly neglected yet important section of the Hebrew Bible.

[Ethan Preston · Rating 4 out of 5]

McConville writes an extremely informative survey and introduction to the Prophets. McConville takes a slightly more progressive stance on some issues in the Prophets than I would, but, ultimately, this did not detract from the great insights in this book. He walks through each Prophets and gives a summary of their contents, theology, and rhetorical intent. This last category was one I found extremely helpful as it rightly recognizes the distinction between what a text is saying and what it is doing. This also helpfully opens the door to possible future applications (along with the theology of the books). This is definitely a helpful reference work on the Prophets and McConville includes wonderful bibliographies for each chapter.

[Tagel Haile · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting and important book on prophets

[Norman Falk · Rating 3 out of 5]

maybe a little outdated now?

[Falon Barton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful reference point when I need to teach and preach on the prophets. A little heavy on historical criticism for my purposes.

[Peter Coleman]

Typical of the critical view, McConville writes his introduction to the prophetic books in the Masoretic tradition. Though his learning is to be appreciated on these subjects, he tends to too readily accept critical conclusions over conservative assertions.



An example of this is in a discussion over the possibilities as to how two prophets could have written material so similar. The conservative answer, which accepts supernaturalism, claims that the same God who inspired the one also similarly inspired the other. McConville simply dismisses this as most unlikely and spends time discussing other possibilities such as the earlier prophet's influence on the later or that both drew on a common non-extant source. While these are certainly also possibilities, McConville's failure to even regard the conservative explanation as worthy of even cursory investigation shows a lack of academic integrity. In all fairness, it should also be expected of conservative scholars to also responsibly discuss the questions and alternate solutions that critical scholars raise.



Each prophet has several sections in its chapter, including a section on date and authorship, on rhetorical intention, on theological message and other sections. While those sections are helpful to the authors purpose as stated in the introductory chapter, the section titled, "structure and outline," distracts from that purpose. These sections, which are like a very brief commentary, take away from the flow of the other sections which deal more with the books as wholes rather than a piecemeal as does the structure and outline sections. With that section, each chapter tends to lose its concision.

[Ian Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Helpful. Evangelicals who really understand other viewpoints.