A couple of links today… A short while back the Biblical (Old Testament) scholar Walter Brueggemann passed away. He could not be classified into a narrow box – not surprising as he never allowed the Bible to be classified into our personal small box. A while back (2017 I think) Pete Enns interviewed him. Here is the link to the podcast:
Second link is to the current recently published Kenarchy Journal (Volume 7: Perfecting Love):
This was a real treat! I had not heard the conversation before. It is obvious that Walter and Pete and Jared would have much common ground but I hadn’t expected such a neat summation of why he ‘arrived’ for me at such a critical time in my life. Notably it is the elegance with which he simply sidesteps questions that are the arena of so much argument online and printed in dogmas about the Bible. He does not avoid the question, he simply asserts something far richer, more dynamic, and probably more honest. Writing is an art and it needs to be read with all that this implies. Unsurprisingly, for Walter, there are many more genres in the Bible than most acknowledge. He treats rhetoric properly, he refuses artificial separation of politics and religion… both being subsumed in matters of identity and shared teleology. He is not afraid of propaganda as a genre, and recognizes it especially in the unifying agenda of Josiah calling everything back to Jerusalem and a single temple authority. Hence his stance on much of the Deutero / Kings debate. Most of all it is the way he brings all of his work into the service of the church rather than the academy.
Hardly surprising, therefore, that there is so much understanding between the first link and the connection with Roger’s Kenarchy Journal (the significance of which I admit to having missed until now)
Thanks for the post.