What is a theologian to do? Contemporary biblical scholarship focuses so intently on reconstructing the world behind the Bible and theorising ever-more intricate models of the biblical text's literary formation that it has become increasingly difficult to find exegesis engaging the theological questions posed by close attention to the biblical text itself. Thankfully, Goldingay's book exemplifies just that kind of exegesis. He has produced a scintillating exposition of Old Testament narrative, describing its rich ‘particularities’ (p. 37) and offering a wealth of critical suggestions for its theological appropriation. His treatment takes account of recent scholarship, exhibits a keen awareness of methodological debates and is written in a highly readable, even genial style. For theologians, pastors, students – anyone wanting to think through the Old Testament theologically (again) with an expert guide – his book is a must-read.

Goldingay envisions an eventual three-volume work, of which this book is volume 1, ‘Israel's Gospel’. The second volume will explore Israel's ‘Faith’ and the third its ‘Ethos’. Volume 1 therefore presents a theological commentary on Israel's basic story which, after an introductory chapter, proceeds in canonical order and uses verbal rubrics to organise the material: chapter 2, ‘God Began: Creation’; chapter 3, ‘God Started Over: From Eden to Babel’; chapter 4, ‘God Promised: Israel's Ancestors’; chapter 5, ‘God Delivered: The Exodus’; chapter 6, ‘God Sealed: Sinai’; chapter 7, ‘God Gave: The Land’; chapter 8, ‘God Accommodated: From Joshua to Solomon’; chapter 9, ‘God Wrestled: From Solomon to Exile’; chapter 10, ‘God Preserved: Exile and Restoration’; chapter 11, ‘God Sent: The Coming of Jesus’. There is a concluding postscript entitled ‘Old Testament Theology and History’. The effect of the format is to suggest broad theological ideas in sentence-like form, as well as to emphasise throughout the centrality of God as primary subject.

It will be obvious from chapter 11 that this book intends to be a work of Christian theology. Yet Goldingay is deeply respectful of Judaism (p. 35): ‘the question of anti-Semitism has to have a place in Christian thinking’ (p. 787). His Old Testament exposition significantly concludes with Esther rather than Daniel. He also pushes whenever possible the discontinuity between the Old Testament and later Christian theological tradition, not wanting to move too quickly to Christian categories. He resists the idea, for example, that the first person plural language of Genesis 1 is trinitarian (p. 98). He questions the interpretation of Genesis 3 as a ‘once for all Fall’ (p. 144). He prefers not to use a hermeneutical model in which the Old Testament is read as a ‘witness to Christ’ (p. 26). He regularly employs the term ‘First Testament’ instead of ‘Old Testament’. The very term ‘gospel’, rather than representing an uncritical imposition, seems to have been chosen to counter the neo-Marcionite dismissal of the Old Testament as only law. This repeated emphasis on discontinuity apparently stems from the purpose of ‘defamiliarisation’ (p. 77), in other words, of compelling a comfortably evangelical readership to confront the Old Testament on its own terms. In this way, Goldingay's book is more ‘evangelical’ in the anxieties it registers than in the proposals it advances. Yet he is respectful and constructive in pursuing such a strategy, and not merely a debunker.

Goldingay strongly defends his adoption of a narrative approach. Historically, he judges, there exist at present simply too many unknowns to base a theology upon a critical reconstruction of Israelite religion (‘house of cards’, p. 866). Theologically, the literary form of narrative cannot be separated from its meaning. The narrative quality of biblical tradition demonstrates that God takes the specificity of human life with the utmost seriousness by emphasising ‘depth, complexity and ambiguity’ (p. 41). Goldingay ultimately appeals to providence: ‘I assume that if we needed information on the origin of the material in order to interpret the narrative theologically, God would have made sure that we have it’ (p. 867). Even if the exact history were known in all its details, ‘the proper subject of Old Testament theology would still be the story, not the history’ (p. 871). Although this category of ‘story’ admittedly introduces difficulties, the Old Testament as story is still the one ‘that God meant us to have and from which God meant us to learn’ (p. 883).

Goldingay's approach is narrative in nature but not purely synchronic. He assumes some broad-scale critical dating, such as the likelihood that the priestly material of the Pentateuch is exilic (p. 88). He compares biblical traditions to ancient Near Eastern myths and Greek authors. He also reads ‘intratextually’, for example, looking at various creation traditions (Job 28; Ps. 33; Prov. 8; John 1, etc.) all at once and reading Samuel-Kings together with Chronicles (p. 556). He acknowledges but does not fully justify these choices. Here a key weakness emerges: by gesturing to history but then thematically grouping historically disparate traditions, Goldingay wants to have his methodological cake and eat it too. Despite the occasional historical gesture, he mostly tends to interpret the biblical traditions as if they were timeless windows onto an identical landscape of faith, yet the resulting panorama is an ideal and unhistorical construct. In the postscript, he tries again to ground his narrative approach in history but is not fully successful. He asserts that the Old Testament contains ‘true stories’ (p. 880), but despite his use of ‘parable’ language (p. 878) he is forced to concede that, for the ‘viability’ of his theology, the historicity of the biblical traditions has to be ‘more probable than not’ (p. 870). The biblical stories are not to be viewed as ‘scientific’ but also not as entirely devoid of historical reference (p. 880). If that is so, however, Goldingay is obligated to provide more of a historical foundation for his theology than he offers. (Readers with an interest in historical questions or methodological issues may want to read the postscript after the introduction but before beginning the main body of the book.)

Ultimately, the story of the Old Testament, in fact of the entire Christian Bible, is properly triangular for Goldingay. The biblical story concerns God, Israel and the nations. Attention to the nations is given already in his commentary on Genesis 1 (p. 59) and persists all the way to the culminating portrait of Jesus as ‘light of the world’ (p. 850). Israel's ‘gospel’ is therefore good news in its own right within the context of the entire Christian canon. Like Brevard Childs, Goldingay believes the relation between the testaments is a two-way street (p. 21); the Old Testament adds something material to the canon that the New Testament alone would not adequately convey: ‘The Old Testament is not basically hard or demanding news to swallow, but good news that has not been heard’ (p. 23). At issue is the church's ‘incomplete conversion toward the God of Israel’ (p. 22, citing Soulen). One thoroughly applauds Goldingay's goal, even if problems remain in its execution: