The Elder Testament

Christopher Seitz is one of the freshest voices in biblical scholarship: learned, witty, and incisively theological. He provides more reasons for recovering the ‘Elder’ Testament as a source for Christian thinking.

~Gary A. Anderson, Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Theology, Notre Dame University

The book is a kind of window onto the theological distillation of an especially gifted critical reader of the Bible, deeply immersed in the church’s lived experiences and challenges—a kind of intellectual ‘testament,’ that carries the charge of a special witness.

~Ephraim Radner, Professor of Historical Theology, Wycliffe College

Impossible. Sealed tight. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity cannot be successfully grounded in the Old Testament, read on its own terms. Or so scholars have claimed for hundreds of years. But the Old Testament’s witness to God’s complex reality contains volcanic pressure. Large cracks have already appeared. But stand back! Christopher Seitz has blown off the lid.

~Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity

Christ is already at work in the Old Testament, which resists therefore our attempts at historicizing it. This claim forms the solid basis on which Seitz grounds his reading of the Old Testament. Drawing on many years of teaching and writing, The Elder Testament presents Seitz’s mature understanding of a canonical reading of the Scriptures. His rich treatment reminds us why God’s purposes with the Scriptures reach beyond authorial intent to the theological ontology that comes to expression in the ‘first witness.’

~Hans Boersma, J. I. Packer Professor of Theology, Regent College

…A remarkable tour de force, a re-envisioning of theological study of the Old Testament, whose implications merit serious thought on the part of Christian theologians.

~Walter R.W.L. Moberly, Modern Theology

Seitz has written a stimulating and substantial work that advances the project of interpreting scripture canonically.

~Collin Cornell, Scottish Journal of Theology

Seitz has produced a valuable work that raises the most important questions every Christian reader of the Elder Testament should ask about the nature of canon, theology, and Trinity, and how these concerns weave together in the process of reading the Bible as Christian Scripture. Every reader has implicit assumptions about these matters, and Seitz has performed a great service by helping readers become aware of how these assumptions govern our reading.

~Paavo Tucker, Stone-Campbell Journal

As T.S. Eliot put it in Little Gidding, the end of our exploration is to return to our starting point and to know that place for the first time. This is clearly the case with this new offering from Christopher Seitz, The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity. By drawing on his own history in the evolution of Scriptural scholarship, Seitz makes an important contribution to the burgeoning but often imprecisely thought-through field of ‘theological interpretation' of Scripture.

~John Behr, Pro Ecclesia

Chris Seitz has done a great service, both to the scholarly community and to the church, with his latest book, The Elder Testament: Canon, Theology, Trinity. It is the product of many years of reading and teaching the Old Testament

~Hans Boersma, Pro Ecclesia

[The Elder Testament] will make an excellent textbook for those who are looking for a theologically interested approach to Israel’s scriptures that engages critical issues.

~Don Collett, International Journal of Systematic Theology

The work’s primary strength lies in its coherent and robust theological vision of the Elder Testament as an authoritative theological witness with its own venerable integrity—a vision both traditional and innovative. Seitz’s mastery of canonical hermeneutics shines throughout the text, providing a solid backbone for his theological claims. Seitz’s erudition shines through in his careful textual readings and his command of theological hermeneutics and early patristic interpretation.

~Stephen L. Cook, Review of Biblical Literature