The most critical theme that is continuously featured in the Bible's Old Testament is the promise by God, and the patient wait for the people for a Redeemer or a Messiah expected to save humankind from Adam's fall. The Old Testament (OT) is a section of Biblical theology with interest in theological insights in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. 1 The Old Testament literature explores both current and past theological concepts in regard to God's ad relationship between God and his creation. The Old Testament begins as a Christian endeavor written mainly by the men and targeted at providing an objective knowledge of early revelation. In the 20th Century, it was primarily informed by new views and voices, including the Jewish and feminist scholars, which focused on new schools of thought and revealed ways that the author's perspectives bound the early work. The objective of this paper is to present a summary of the Old Testament from a theological perspective, borrowing from Alister McGarth's works and other related theological Old Testament works.
Notably, the OT covers three-quarters of the entire Christian bible with the first five books exploring the religious laws, which include Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Genesis, Numbers, and Exodus. In it, twelve historical books are also covered, which include Ezekiel, Jonah, Obadiah, Habakkuk, among others. OT describes the story of creation, besides revealing how God instructed Noah to build the ark and gather all the living animals in readiness for the great flooding. It also explores the refusal of Pharaoh to set the Israelites who were enslaved free. 2 In the story, ten plagues had to be sent by God to devastate the land and even kill Pharaoh's son, creating a way for Moses to flee with the enslaved Israelites.
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On the other hand, Alister's works " Christianity an Introduction " is basically about introduction to Christianity, as the topic suggests. The book features a wealth of information about world perspectives on Christianity, the Orthodox Church, the United States Christianity, debates on theology, and theology with respect to different world religions. While assuming that the readers do not have any prior knowledge regarding the Christian practices and beliefs, the book befits beginners who require to be introduced to biblical sources and centrally position of Christ in the life of Christians. Other features that have been comprehensively discussed include Christian theology, women, and also contemporary issues such as globalization.
The best side of this book is that the author writes in an engaging and accessible style, which makes the assumption that the reader does not have any prior knowledge of religion. It is not biased, and it includes a wide array of the most common religious perspectives around the world including Protestantism, Catholicism, Evangelicalism, Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism. Theology is discussed without preference to any specific religion, but as a source of knowledge to the reader. Further, it has student friendly features, further reading recommendations all from sources that are Christian related and illustrative.
The Old Testament, here OT, is a collection of 39 books talking of the religion and history of the Israelites. 3 All the authors of the 39 books document and are all well known. Every OT book has its tone, message, and style of writing. 4 The books contain laws, stories, and sayings that are meant to work as religious models and ethical conduct. Together, through highly detailed events and featuring thousands of characters, the books are representative of a unified story of narrative about the Most High God, and God’s effort to relate humankind to a specific group of people.
The OT features four primary sections, including the Pentateuch, the Former Prophets, the Later Prophets, and the Writings. Some of these sections are discussed in detail as a theological analysis of the OT.
The Pentateuch
The Pentateuch constitutes the first five books in the OT. The Pentateuch depicts several beginnings, including the humankind beginnings, the beginning of the world, and the beginning of God’s promise to his people – the Israelites.
The first book of the Bible, Genesis, begins with telling the story of the creation of the Earth and life by the Lord. A newly created world that is perfect, but the man gets himself into sinning, deceived by a woman, which is disobedience to God. The men and women living at that time get divided into different nations, speaking different tongues. After several generations, God appears and introduces himself to Abraham. God asks Abraham to make him a covenant and promises to transform his descendants to a great nation and to award them with great land. Abraham obeys God, showing high levels of faith and respect in God. God seals Abraham’s promises by showing him several tests and signs. The covenant between Abraham and God passes on to his son Isaac and grandson Jacob. Isaac ad Jacob together represent the fathers of the Israel people. Jacob bears twelve sons, and they move to Egypt after Joseph, their youngest brother, is made Egypt’s high official.
The Former Prophets
The Historical Books, or Former Prophets book, cover the Israelites history from the death of Moses to when the nation falls in 587BC. In the book of Judges and Joshua, successfully conquer and take over the land promised to them by God. However, they become disobedient to God by paying allegiance to and worshipping other gods against God’s will. The neighboring communities invade an oppress God’s peoples. God saves the Israelites by appointing rulers who lead them to ward off their enemies.
The two Bible books are written by Samuel, the 1st and 2nd Samuel details on the growth of the mighty Israel kingdom. Samuel was the rightfully appointed religious leader. Samuel, under God’s guidance, selects Saul as the new king of Israel who later disobeys God. God chooses a new man to be the Israelites king, David. King Saul hatches plans to kill Israel king David in vain. The first book ends with Saul’s death. King David creates the great kingdom of Israel. The king conquers God’s people’s enemies and develops Jerusalem as the political and religious center of Israel.
The Writings
The Writings are positioned following historical books in the Bible. Some of the narratives are about the period of Israel exile while in nearby countries/ land and its final return to their mainland. For example, the Book of Esther is a storyline about an unamusing Jewish young woman who is appointed as Persia’s new queen and works her way intelligently to save the Jewish from mass killing.
Doctrine of holy
“Religious experience” is one of the primary terminologies that lay believers and theologians have over the last several decades used to mean issues about faith. Rudolph Otto (1923) and William James (1902) studies created the foundation for better understandings. Religious experience has now become a pervasive component of religious language, no different practices, and in its various genres. 5 This essay puts into context and contrasts discussion on religious experiences, specifically Rudolph Otto and William James’s theological understanding of religious experiences.
Different influences had contributed to Otto’s reflections over the years, helping him in the creation of the religious category that was to bring him beyond Schleiermacher. Otto’s early teacher at Albrecht Ritschl, Göttingen, had identified religion in the realm of judgment value. Additionally, Otto’s theological colleague at Ernst Troeltsch, Göttingen, sought a religious a priori a basis for judgment and interpretation. Otto got impressed by William James’ shrewd insights in his works on religious experiences. He, however, found William’s scientific methodology to be insufficient for interpretation of such a phenomenon. Otto was originally attracted to JF Fries’ school of thought whose Ahndung notion was a desire that generates the feeling of truth, opened up to him an approach of dealing with religious situations in an appropriate and sensitive manner. It is these feelings of truth that Otto looked to integrate in The Idea of the Holy.
In this book, Otto focused more on the non-rational aspects of religious factors, and this is where he came up with the word numinous, generated from the Latin word numen, which means divine, God or spirit, and on the ‘ominous’ analogy, from ‘omen.’ Numinous is the awe-inspiring factor of the religious experience. Like the beauty of composing music, it is not rational and evades complete conceptual analysis; therefore, it must be analyzed and discusses through symbols 6
In his research study, Otto defines in detail a particular dimension of what religious life is. He has an interest in analyzing the specific affective dimension of religious experience that also needs to be non-rational, non-discursive, and non-conceptual. Otto refers to the affective dimension as ‘creature-feeling’ or ‘numinous’ feeling. The numinous feeling can be characterized preliminarily as “the emotion of a creature, abased and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures.”
Sacraments
Alister speaks of the doctrine of sacraments. 7 The sacrament is the efficacious outward sign created by Jesus Christ with the intention of giving his followers grace. Jesus himself is the sacrament because he gave his life so that everyone could be saved. Jesus’ humanity is the instrument of his Divinity. It is through Jesus Christ’s humanity that the trinity life comes to humans as grace through the sacrament.
Sacraments of initiation build the foundation for all Christian’s lives. By taking sacraments of initiation, the Christian life is renewed. 8 Sacraments of initiation include baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist. Through baptism, Christians receive a new life in Christ. When a Christian is baptized, the original sins are taken away, and they find new birth through the Holy Spirit. Confirmation seals a Christian life of faith in Christ. Confirmation signs are through laying f hands on a person’s forehead by a bishop using anointing oil. Eucharist, on the other hand, nourishes the Christians life of faith. The signs of Eucharist are wine and bread that the Christians are given, which symbolizes the Blood and body of Jesus.
Sacraments of healing are given to symbolize and celebrate Jesus’s healing power. Sacraments of healing include penance, and anointing the sick people. Penance allows Christians to receive forgiveness from God. Sacraments at the Service of Communion help the Christian members of the church to serve the immediate community. These include the Holy Orders and Matrimony.
Bibliography
Hart, Curtis W. "William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience" Revisited." Journal of
Religion and Health 47, no. 4 (2008): 516-24. www.jstor.org/stable/40344464 .
Martin C. (1992). The Four Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven. Tan Books Publishers
Rudolf Otto. “The idea of the holy: an inquiry into the non-rational factor in the idea of the
divine and its relation to the rational.” Published 1923 by H. Milford, Oxford university press in London
