Category Archives: Gordon Wenham’s Story as Torah: Reading the Old Testament Narrative Ethically

Clean and unclean To the modern reader, one of the more puzzling elements of the Torah is the teaching on clean vs. unclean foods and people. There is no obvious reason why salmon should be clean and crabmeat unclean. In … Continue reading →

God as hero Wenham concludes, The motivation to act in certain ways because that is how God acts is thus found in a wide variety of legal collections within the Pentateuch, and it therefore seems likely that it is assumed … Continue reading →

Reading the narratives like Torah Wenham then asks whether we should read the narratives the same way: as pointing to an ideal beyond what the narrative itself describes. Sometimes it just might be the point that the hero of the … Continue reading →

On interpreting Torah I’m going to skip Wenham’s insightful analyses of Gen and Judges. If you ever find yourself studying or teaching these texts, you’ll want to read what Wenham has to say about their interpretation. Rather, I want to get … Continue reading →

Genesis 1:1 – 2:3 One challenge presented by Genesis is that chapters 1 – 12 are difficult to connect with the balance of the book. The Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph narratives clearly connect to each other and serve to make … Continue reading →

I’ve found that most OT commentaries spend every other word speculating on the source documents behind the canonical text. It’s a waste of perfectly good shelf space, if you ask me. And Wenham argues with considerable force that — Source … Continue reading →

I bought this 2004 book at Logos.com on sale for $8.99 — because it was on my Logos wish list — although I can’t recall why. I must have seen a reference to it somewhere. Amazon sells the same book … Continue reading →