Lawrence Boadt > Quotes

“Wisdom does not stand opposed, therefore, to the teachings of the Pentateuch or the lessons of the prophets. It serves to unite teaching and reality, and to integrate the ideals of faith into the practical experience of everyday doubt and uncertainty. And above all, Wisdom helped Israel to understand that their faith in Yahweh spoke to the concerns of everyone in the world and had a universal message that was not to be kept hidden only in Judah.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“Above all, this God ruled human history and actively guided, protected, cared for, and was involved in human affairs: the whole Bible tells this story.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“Deuteronomy, deliberately reversing the conventions of the Neo-Assyrian loyalty oath, made Yahweh (speaking through Moses) the one who demanded complete loyalty and love from the people of Israel.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“In order to appreciate the whole Bible, it is very important for us to be able to discover some unifying themes that make this a single Testament of faith and that enable us at the same time to treasure its many different voices expressing the breadth and beauty of the human experience of God over the ages.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“The first and most important theological theme found in the Old Testament is that God is one.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“But covenant love for the one God demanded both proper reverence for divine transcendence and bountiful hope for divine nearness. That is the biblical meaning of “fear of the Lord,” a common phrase that means revering Yahweh through worship and obedience.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“The book forcefully reminds Israel that prophecy is not simply aimed at condemning all their enemies while making them feel important. Instead of claiming that their special place in God’s covenant made them separate and better, they must recognize that God chose them to be witnesses to all peoples that God also loves.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“If Christ is proclaimed as the fullness of Israel’s faith, then God help us if there is no Israel to show us what that means.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“Zephaniah urges later readers to identify with the humble remnant and to wait for God’s purpose to unfold with faith, hope, and anticipation of future joy.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“The only real candidate for a single dominant theme in the Old Testament would be the person of God. The implied questions—“Who is God?” “What does God do?” “Why does God do it?”—fill every page and every level of tradition in the Bible.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“If God indeed faithfully treats the world in an ethical and right fashion, acting solely out of love and goodness, then the proper human response must be in kind.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“Christians, too, recall these events with thankful praise to God as they celebrate the “paschal mystery,” that is, the saving significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Without the exodus, no one would have recognized the merciful and powerful God who saves and delivers anew, the God that Jesus proclaimed in his ministry.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“So when we read the Scriptures, we should not consider just the psalms as our prayer. All of the biblical text tells the glory of God.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“These rules teach us that the basic outlook of Israel toward food was not just to gain nourishment but to reflect God’s goodness in ordering creation. What one ate was highly symbolic of what one believed.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“examination of the artistic and rhetorical elements used in the major Old Testament passages, the rhetorical critic accents the wholeness and unity of many chapters and books. The rhetorical critic shows that many repetitions or seemingly unusual features in fact add to the dramatic force or stylistic beauty of the work. Such an artistic analysis stresses the harmony and value of the final written passage as we find it today and thus serves the useful function of enriching our daily scriptural reading with a deeper appreciation”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“The book contains the first explicit teaching about a divine promise that wise and just persons will rise after death to a life of happiness with God (Dan 12:2). This teaching is echoed in the later book of 2 Maccabees and becomes a regular part of the faith of the Pharisee party in Judea at the time of Jesus.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“All of biblical history may be called a theology of the covenant,”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“The disciples of Jesus recognized him as the Messiah and the Son of Man combined because they understood his kingship to be of a different kind altogether from political rule over Israel. Jesus’ authority came from God, and thus from beyond the present world order (Son of Man), but it demanded the total covenant loyalty and obedience to God that the Davidic king embodied on earth (Messiah).”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“but perhaps because they focused so strongly on the covenant with the now-community that they had little room for wondering how that bond could be continued after death. But eventually the radical belief that God was good without fail—from beginning to ultimate end—led to an equal assertion that God could raise the dead who had suffered unjustly and could preserve the faithful into the life to come.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“The Old Testament is a great treasure chest in which a wealth of truth about God lies waiting for us to discover it. No Christian can fully understand the New Testament revelation of God if he or she has not seen a glimpse of that wealth.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“Only in modern times have people forgotten the ability of the Bible to tell stories imaginatively to make its points, and tried instead to explain everything “scientifically.” Jonah is a rousing tale of a prophet gone off the deep end, so to speak.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“They are looking hard at the various times when the biblical texts were edited, and the different circles from which the editors came. The positive role of editing, or redaction, as it is often called, is now appreciated more. No longer do scholars see the redactors as unimaginative bureaucrats pasting together older texts, but as men (and women possibly) passionately involved in the problems and needs of their time, who were updating and reexpressing the traditions so that they could speak to a new generation.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“Yahweh loves Jacob, is a father to Israel, is faithful to his word, and wants honesty in Israel’s words, as well as in its true worship, fidelity, and trust in God’s justice.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“To simply read the Bible all on one level as though no changes had taken place in biblical thought over the centuries is to miss the living spirit of Israel’s growing faith. Form criticism seeks to capture that actual growth.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction

“Apocalypticism refers to the belief that God has revealed the imminent end of the ongoing struggle between good and evil in history. Apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation about the future or the heavenly realm is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality. The Greek word apokalypsis means “uncovering” or “revelation.”
― Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction