This rigorous, and perhaps slightly daunting, work of biblical scholarship is a labour of love and faith. It is not easy for those actively engaged in Christian ministry, as James Atwell was for 50 years, to stay abreast of and contribute to biblical scholarship. But he managed because it mattered to him, and this is his crowning achievement. In his own words, ‘This is the offering of a working priest intent on understanding the intellectual challenge that faith has to work through. “Faith seeking understanding” has been its guide’ (p. xi). In terms of envisaged readership, ‘The book is aimed at those on training courses for ministry, who might like to “fast track” a complete view of Israel’s religious traditions from its origins to Jesus of Nazareth’, though Atwell hopes that ‘it will also be of interest to the more general reader with intellectual curiosity’ (p. xi). In general terms, it succeeds admirably – though within a particular understanding of what the contemporary challenges to a biblically-rooted faith are.

The book fits within modernity’s prime paradigm for biblical scholarship: a historical study of the development of religious thought and practice together with the necessarily concomitant analysis and dating of the literature – in ancient Israel, early Judaism and early Christianity. This is conducted in ‘historical-critical’ mode, where the ‘critical’ denotes the fact that the picture of thought and practice that stands in the canonical texts has to be disassembled and re-arranged and not infrequently re-interpreted, so that we can see its actual, or at least apparently most likely, sequence of development and its relation to its wider world of origin – a process which offers a very different picture to that in the received form of the biblical text. For many beginning students, especially those who come to the Bible for reasons of faith, there can be an uneasy and unsettling process of recognizing and learning to handle the challenges here, which may lead sometimes either to loss of faith or to defensive resistance to scholarly insights. Arguably, the achievement of this book is to show that you can entertain the portrayal of ancient scenarios that are indeed markedly different from those of the canonical text – an outcome of hard-headed, even if constantly hypothetical, scholarly work – and that these need not be a threat to faith. Rather, the result can be an apparently truer understanding of the history underlying the Bible which may help constructive and responsible re-imagining of the Church’s theological thought and practice today. Atwell is a good guide to the nature of the historical problems and to the scholarly debates that surround them. There are various distinctive strengths in his presentation. It is indeed unusual in contemporary literature to combine the historical challenges posed by both OT and NT in a way that invites simultaneous reflection on both; but there is real value in doing so. It is likewise unusual to add to this an extended account of Second Temple Judaism (‘intertestamental literature’ in older terminology), both because of its intrinsic interest (e.g. ‘Qumran is worth studying for its own sake’, p. 247), and because without an understanding of its thought, especially the phenomenon of apocalyptic that is so important within it, the gospels and their account of the kingdom of God may not be rightly understood.

Occasionally, Atwell pauses in his historical quest to reflect on contemporary ideological resistance to certain biblical categories, especially the image of kingship, which to some is now inseparable from undesirable things such as male dominance, hierarchy, dualism and stifling of diversity. He responds twice (pp. 43–49, 126–31) with helpful reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of metaphorical language. (Interestingly, as the critique of images of lord and king is raised while he is still in an OT context, he perhaps felt unable to respond to the critique that such images are necessarily ‘injurious’ by turning to what Paul means by affirming kyrios Iesous as at the heart of faith – though such synthetic reflection on both testaments together is surely necessary for responsible Christian use of the material). But there is no systematic engagement with contemporary ideological challenges.

Perhaps, the most distinctive emphasis in the book is on the importance and value of creation. This is where the book starts, where the concept of creation is interestingly refracted via the notion of the divine warrior and a New Year festival which celebrated the defeat of forces of cosmic disorder. ‘Israel shared a vision with the common culture of the Ancient Near East that the fundamental fact of existence was grounded in creation theology… The fact that the divine governance of the universe was imagined in the likeness of earthly kingship had the effect of transferring the model of the way society operates to the cosmos. The emphasis of interest in the work of the Divine Warrior was not on the violence of conflict, which faded, like the pangs of childbirth, but on the outcome of fruitful, mutual activity that enabled a world of integrated social life to thrive across the cosmos… When God is referred to as king in the context of the New Year festival, his reign is not primarily over people, but over the whole material cosmos. It is a synonym for creator’ (pp. 11,12). So also, when we come to the NT, ‘It is likely, then, that Jesus draws upon the rich seam of Ancient Near Eastern creation theology for his proclamation of the kingdom of God’ and ‘The priority which Jesus gives to creation theology is intimately related to his concern to press the finality of God’s coming intervention. The tradition furnished him with the tools of creation theology to give tongue to the eschatological consummation’ (pp. 288,282).

Closely related to the importance of creation is the importance of a certain universalism, especially, as represented by Genesis 1-11, to which Atwood gives great emphasis. Here, there is passion in his voice, where it is hard not to hear his own understanding of faith in God in today’s world as also in the ancient:

This is a rare instance where the canonical shaping of biblical traditions, which Atwell usually sets aside, is given not just some, but huge, significance. It also seems to me that here historical analysis and contemporary theological vision look to be merging, such that it is not clear how far the voice is that of the text or that of the interpreter. Possible difficulties for Atwell’s account, such as Yhwh’s differential response to the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, or the abject role of Canaan and the preferential role of Shem in Noah’s cursing and blessing his sons, are dismayingly ignored. To be sure, such merging of contemporary vision with ancient text happens not infrequently in historical analyses of the subject matter of the Bible when that subject matter is held to be of enduring importance. Nonetheless, we should at least be aware that at times this is what looks to be going on in Atwell’s discussion.

The unusual appeal to the canonical significance of Genesis 1-11 makes me wonder what account Atwell would give of the canonical shaping of Israel’s traditions overall. With the exception of Genesis 1-11, the notion that the canonical shape of Israel’s scriptures might not just be an historical puzzle to unravel and reassemble but also have intrinsic significance in its own right for the possible enduring lessons to be learnt from the material by those who come to accept it as Scripture – a notion most famously advanced by Brevard Childs, and subsequently taken up by others – receives no consideration here. Likewise, despite Atwell’s stated purpose ‘to keep abreast of contemporary scholarship and the challenges it is presenting’ (p. xi), it is only the historical-critical challenge of modernity that comes within his purview. The literary turn, in which biblical narratives can, whatever their origins, be read as meaningful in themselves – promoted initially especially by Jewish scholars such as Alter, Berlin and Sternberg, whose familiarity with midrash arguably made them seek sophisticated modern literary alternatives to historical reconstructions of the text – is absent here. Likewise, the hermeneutical turn – represented by scholars such as Gadamer and Ricoeur, and mediated by Thiselton among others, who reflect on the differing kinds of interpretive approaches that can meaningfully be brought to bear – is also absent. One would hardly know from Atwell that there are other intellectually and existentially challenging agendas in contemporary biblical interpretation.

There is of course a possible impropriety in the professional scholar, who has had time to read something of this wider literature, criticizing the Christian minister who may have found it necessary to keep his focus limited so as to address the questions which he himself found most interesting and challenging. The historical-critical approach that Atwell practices represents a dimension of biblical interpretation of which contemporary readers need, at least to some extent, to be aware. His account will be of value to many – especially when an affordable paperback edition becomes available.