J. Gordon McConville - Being Human in Gods World: An Old Testament Theology of Humanity

To attempt to write a book with Being Human in the title may seem uncomfortably close to propounding a theory of everything. If there is a good reason for doing so, it lies in the fact that, both within and outside communities of faith, we are surrounded implicitly and explicitly by concepts of what being human means. What is offered here, therefore, is not some definitive verdict on the subject, but rather an indication of ways in which a biblical theology might bear upon it. The chief weight of the argument falls on the Old Testament, as the title declares. In my attempt to develop an Old Testament Theology of Humanity I take this to have a context in a theology of the Old and New Testaments, and in Christian theology more generally. I hope this will be clear from the pages that follow, though it may turn out to be clearer that I am more at home in the Old Testament than in other branches of theology! Yet I think that my interest in the topic has been born of my study of the Old Testament. Because of its rootedness in the history, geography, culture, languages, literature, and wisdom of a people, it is not only an immeasurable resource for the subject but even forces it upon the readers attention. By its nature, therefore, I believe it has an indispensable place in Christian theological thinking about being human.

The book has an origin not only in my thinking about the Old Testament in general but also in my particular preoccupation in recent years with biblical spirituality. What I mean by this will appear below. In the confines of a preface, I will say about it only that I take the scholarly quest for meaning in the biblical text to be inseparable from the personal engagement of the inquirer in the task and its subject matter. This being so, what follows should be regarded as an essay in reading the Bible in pursuit of a greater understanding of oneself, individually and in ones various communities, as a human being. As such it seeks to indicate a certain practice of understanding rather than to say all that might be said. Plainly the volume does not do the latter, and another author might well have selected different specific topics from the ones that make up the argument here. Parts of the argument build on essays and conference papers published elsewhere, and these are acknowledged at appropriate places.

Many people have contributed, in various ways, to the making of this book. If it has strengths, I owe those strengths to them. Its weaknesses will mean that I did not learn from them carefully enough. Its immediate provenance is from a project on Biblical Spirituality sponsored by Bible Society (UK) and based in the School of Humanities at the University of Gloucestershire. I am grateful to Bible Society for their sponsorship, and especially to David Spriggs, an Old Testament scholar himself, who participated actively with us in the development of the project. My colleagues Andrew Lincoln and Lloyd Pietersen were my chief comrades over the four years or so of the project. Their stimulus and encouragement have been immeasurably important to me, and I owe them an enormous debt. Sheona Beaumont, as a doctoral student on the project, brought important insights from the interface of theology and art.

Among the numerous colleagues from other universities and nations who participated in the project, I record my gratitude to Pieter de Villiers, who took a leading part in two international symposiums on the subject at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham. These resulted in two publications: The Bible and Spirituality: Exploratory Essays in Reading Scripture Spiritually and The Spirit That Inspires: Perspectives on Biblical Spirituality .

I am also grateful to members of the Bible and Spirituality research group within the School of Humanities, which was an important venue for sharing ideas not only from within theology but also from other subject areas, especially English and history. As well as those already named, the group included our colleagues Melissa Raphael, Shelley Saguaro, Anna French, and Hilary Weeks. And the Theology Reading Group, with colleagues Dee Carter and Philip Esler, and coordinator Paul Caddle, has left its mark here in ways that they will recognize.

Finally, my thanks to Jim Kinney and Baker Academic for accepting this volume for publication (and to Tim West for preparing the manuscript so carefully). Jim has been both enormously patient and encouraging, as well as a stimulating conversation partner in matters theological, over a number of years. And I am delighted to be able to join him in offering the pages that follow.

Cheltenham, July 3, 2015

. Andrew T. Lincoln, J. Gordon McConville, and Lloyd K. Pietersen, eds., The Bible and Spirituality: Exploratory Essays in Reading Scripture Spiritually (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013); Pieter de Villiers and Lloyd Pietersen, eds., The Spirit That Inspires: Perspectives on Biblical Spirituality , Acta Theologica Supplementum 15 (Bloemfontein, South Africa: University of the Free State Press, 2011).