loss and recovery of creation in Old Testament theology, The

Theology Today, Jul 1996 by Brueggemann, Walter

Westermann offers an alternative scenario of Old Testament theology that has undermined, in my judgment irreversibly, the radical and simple either/or that has dominated scholarship. One notes in the perspective of Westermann: (1) an absence of polemic against Israel's religious environment, allowing that Yahweh participates in functions otherwise attributed to Baal; (2) an absence of the ominous construct of "Canaanite fertility religion," which has been demonized; (3) a readiness to take seriously all of the texts of the Old Testament, including those that do not fit the regnant construct; and (4) a willingness to be genuinely dialectical about deliverance and blessing. The gain in this changed model is that the contextual, dailiness of life is to be taken as a positive theological datum. It is not unimportant that this crucial shift also represents a break with the extreme masculinization of biblical faith. While the continuing advocates of the either/or model claim to put God beyond sexuality, in fact, the action celebrated in Yahweh is that of a macho, intrusive God.

Frank Moore Cross's influential book Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic articulates the primary challenge to Wright (and to the larger either/or of the German Church struggle) in the United States.2 The title of Cross's book is voiced in the familiar either/or contrast of Canaanite myth and Hebrew epic. The force of the book, however, is exactly the opposite. Cross aims to show that the modes of thought and speech and the ways of imagining the world expressed in the religious documents of Canaan thoroughly saturate Israel's text. The appeal to the evidence of Canaanite myth as a way of understanding the Old Testament frontally assaults the neat distinction between myth and history upon which the older model relied.

In his study of the Song of the Sea (Exod. 15: l-18), Cross shows that the imagery of exodus is informed by and closely parallels the Baal and `Anat texts of Canaanite mythology.l3 Moreover, the fight against "the waters," Cross suggests, was not, in the first instance, a fight against the historical waters of the Sea of Reeds but against the primordial waters of the god of chaos, Yam. Thus, Israel's telling of its primal "mighty act" of exodus depends completely upon mythic categories that are clearly and unmistakably Canaanite. And in the end, one cannot distinguish between the battle for creation against chaotic waters and the battle for exodus against historical waters. While Cross concedes that Israel did have a distinctive historical consciousness, he insists, "It is equally unsatisfactory to posit a radical break between Israel's mythological and cultic past and the historical cultus of the league. The power of the mythic pattern was enormous. The Song of the Sea reveals this power as mythological themes shape its mode of presenting epic memories." 14

It is instructive that Westermann's work was published at the end of the 1960s and Cross's book in 1973. We may suggest that it was in the period of the 1960s and 1970s that a shift in models was occurring in Old Testament study. It is worth remembering that there was enormous political and cultural upheaval in this period in Europe (for example, the Paris revolt of 1968) and, especially, in the United States (for example, Civil Rights, Vietnam, the Democratic Convention in Chicago). I do not suggest that these large societal matters are directly related to the shifted scholarly accent. Noticing the context, however, does suggest that a simple reiteration of a model suited for the German Church struggle was increasingly seen to be inadequate. The emergence of new scholarly paradigms is an inscrutable process. But there is no doubt that as Westermann moved beyond von Rad, and Cross decisively challenged Wright's categories, a shift was underway.