Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament [Hardcover]

Richard Neitzel Holzapfel (Author), Dana M. Pike (Author), David Rolph Seely (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2009

A must for every home library! This companion volume to the bestselling Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament is the perfect guide to Old Testament culture, language, history, and teachings. Richly illustrated with hundreds of images, including original artwork, artifacts, maps, and timelines, the book presents an indepth look at life in the ancient world and provides much- needed context to the biblical text. Discover the origins of the books of the Old Testament and learn how these teachings have been shared and preserved. Explore the role of prophets, prophecy, and politics, and examine scriptural issues that have been debated by scholars throughout the ages. More than 400 topics provide valuable insights into Old Testament times, from portraits of key personalities to controversial legends that have persisted to our day. This unique resource will enrich your study of the Old Testament as never before!

Editorial Reviews

Review

Insightful, September 22, 2009
By Bryan

I have been waiting for some time for the arrival of this book. Finally we have an LDS book on the Old Testament that puts the Biblical text into a historical milieu. I love it. The pictures are fantastic. Highly recommended.

Fantastic Achievement, December 16, 2009
By Joshua

I own a lot of LDS and non-LDS commentaries on the Old Testament, but this one is a unique achievement, combining the best of the two. It puts together in an accessible format the latest scholarship on the Old Testament world, allowing the reader to see our ancient heroes in context of their unique location and time. It does this from a faith-based perspective and with Restoration insight, something we can't always find in most scholarly works. The authors aren't afraid of bringing up some of the Old Testament's trickier issues, even if it's just to point out that something is not as simple as we've grown up thinking it was. This book is also a wonderful visual feast, with full-color pictures, maps, and charts splashed across almost every page. Even if one were to simply go through the book looking at the pictures alone it would be an enriching experience. For anyone who really wants to sit down and pay the price to figure out what the Old Testament's all about, this book is an invaluable aid.

Love the information and resource would have liked other printing choices, January 19, 2010
By Joyce

I really love this book. The information and the visuals and powerful and illuminating. The thing that challenges my enjoyment of this wonderful resource are the sections printed on the parchment background. The mottled background blends with the printing in areas making it very difficult to read. I wish they had made a different choice on those sections.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

About the Author

Richard Neitzel Holzapfel is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. A popular speaker and awardwinning educator, he is the author of numerous books on gospel topics.

Dana M. Pike received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. He is a professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University.

David Rolph Seely received a Ph.D. in Ancient and Biblical Studies from the University of Michigan and is a professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Deseret Book (September 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1606411365
• ISBN-13: 978-1606411360
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #513,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Deseret Book on-line price is 41.36, November 16, 2009

By 

S. Marsh (Dreamlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (Hardcover)

I'm expecting the Amazon price to fall in line before long, currently it isn't carried by Amazon so you've got resellers. For a better review than I could have written: [...] quoted below, go there for the various comments by responders.


Kevin Barney

When the book Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament came out, Julie at T&S posted a very positive review, and I followed that up with my own (see "Finally!" FARMS Review 19/2 [2007]). A couple of months ago Julie and I had the chance to meet one of the coauthors of that book, Eric Huntsman, and found him to be as delightful a person as he is fine a scholar.

When I saw the title to the book under review, Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament, it was obvious to me that this was meant to be a companion volume to the NT one. Richard Nietzel Holzapfel contributed to both volumes; here he is joined by Dana Pike and David Rolph Seely (an old friend). These are all fine scholars at BYU. And this book shares the same virtues as its NT companion, particularly its graphic richness and its presentation of solid scholarship for an LDS audience. In many ways I could just copy my earlier review of the NT volume and apply it to this one as well.

The book is a large format coffee table book. The main text walks the reader through the OT itself, offering lots of historical context from the contemporary ancient Near East along the way. Every page features either pictures or sidebars, or both, explaining particular issues, texts and concerns. I really like this format, as the text is sufficiently broken up that it is not overwhelming to the casual reader.

Let me just mention more or less at random some of the sidebars and pictures one finds along the way in this volume:

1. Near the beginning there is a lot of good, basic information given to get things started, such as a glossary of OT terms, a genealogical chart of Semitic languages, a comparative chronology of the OT, a chart showing the various canons of the OT, a comparison chart showing the development of the alphabet, a four-page treatment of the names of God, and much more.

2. At p. 58 is a nice full-page explanation of the formation of Israelite proper names.

3. P. 63 features a nice prosopographical chart showing the covenant family line of Abraham.

4. P. 66 features a useful explanation of slavery in the OT, something we KJV readers are simply not prepared for with such renderings as servant and various forms of maid rather than the more direct slave.

5. The Amarna Letters are described in a page-long sidebar at p. 85.

6. The isue of dating Moses and the Exodus is broached at p. 95.

7. P. 102 features an explanation of why Moses is often depicted with horns in art. I remember covering this same point when I taught GD, mainly because the scultures of Moses with horns are just so cool!

8. P. 104 has a cool picture of incense spoons such as would have been used at the tabernacle/temple with an image of a human hand on the curved side of the spoon, thus depicting a hand in cupping shape.

9. P. 108 explores the question of where the Ark of the Covenant is (if it's not in a big government warehouse, that is...)

10. P. 115 has an awesome picture of Samaritans observing the Passover by roasting lambs on spits. At the very beginning of the book the authors make the point that the temple was something different than we imagine; in many ways it was a slaughterhouse. (This reminds me of a lecture I went to once at the UoU on "sentimental phil-hellenism," which pointed out that the beautiful white marble temples of ancient Greece that we so admire in ancient times were not white at all but painted garish colors).

11. P. 120 gives a biblical calendar for the various feast days.

12. The problem of large numbers in the Bible is addressed at p. 126.

13. P. 145 describes the Documentary Hypothesis-two words I never heard uttered together in all my relgion classes at BYU.

14. Questions about the historical accuracy of the Book of Joshua are addressed at 160.

15. Levirate marriage is described at p. 189.

16. P. 199 describes how we recovered a verse in Samuel from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

17. P. 215 features a discussion of scribes and the Bible.

18. Pp. 226-27 describes poetry in the OT.

19. A graphic comparison between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel is featured at p. 249.

20. P. 262 describes the Divine Council.

21. A page is devoted to the Tel Dan inscription at 273, and another page is devoted to inscriptions that mention "YHWH and his Asherah" two pages later.

22. Each of the Twelve Minor Prophets gets his own sidebarred treatment.

23. The expression "a virgin shall conceive" is examined at p. 296.

24. P. 303 describes the Sennacherib Prism.

25. The Lachish Letters are described at p. 331, and the Cyrus Cylinder at p. 361.

These random descriptions of what you'll find in the book cannot really do justice to the richness of the material presented here. Indeed, I will renew my complaint from my published review that these sidebars are not reflected in the Table of Contents; I think they should be.

Anyway, while the FPR crew probably won't learn much from this book, if the OT hasn't really been your cup o' tea in the past, I suggest you give it another chance, and use this volume as a companion to your study in the 2010 curriculum year. I think you'll find the world of the OT coming to life and breathing actual interest into the pages of the text itself.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly guide to the Old Testament from the LDS perspective, July 18, 2010

By 

Jeffrey Van Wagoner (Gilbert, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jehovah and the World of the Old Testament (Hardcover)

I decided to reread the Old Testament from cover to cover this year and saw that this book was released to support the LDS study of this volume of scripture. I decided to give it a chance, since the Old Testament is difficult to understand at times for cultural and other reasons. This book promised to help for this and it fulfilled my expectations.

This book is sort of an LDS version of a handbook to the Bible, similar in some ways to Eerdmans Handbook of the Bible, except with an LDS point of view and updated scholarship. It is not meant to be a doctrinal commentary, but a look at the cultural, linguistic and historical background of the Bible.

It is divided into chapters explaining how scholarship sees the world in the times of various epochs in the Old Testament. For example it has a chapter on Genesis 1-11 (Adam to Abraham), Genesis 12-50 (The Patriarchs), Moses (Exodus 1-40), and continuing on through many chapters to the final section on the time of the Jewish return (Ezra and Nehemiah). Note that the Old Testament is not completely in chronological order, and this book follows the chronology, not the order of the books.

The focus is on the historical books, and the prophetic books are only touched upon lightly putting them in their historical perspective. Interspersed throughout the book are explanatory sections that go into subjects that are common to the entire Old Testament. Some examples are a section on the Names of God, another on Canaanite Religion, and another on the Babylonians. These give us a much better idea of the entire context of the times.

One of the more interesting things to me in this book was the recent archeological data that is coming out that supports several of the kings and other leaders mentioned in the Bible. They have come a long way in the last few decades.

I found this book to be a great resource in my study of the Old Testament. The rich photos and illustrations helped me visualize what I was reading about. I especially liked the depiction of the Ark of the Covenant and Solomon's Temple. It crystallized what they were like in my mind. Many other obscure words and terms were brought to light.

I highly recommend this book to any LDS reader wanting to learn more about the Old Testament.