I am working my way through Brevard Childs’ Introduction to the OT as Scripture (Fortress Press, 1979). The more I read it, the more I like his approach. Now I want to see how his methodology is going to play out in practice.

His canonical approach does raise some issues, and I was pleasantly surprised that every time I had a question, he either answered it or at least gave me enough to think about. One of the questions I had was about textual criticism since I wanted to know when we would start to talk about a “canon” of the OT when things seemed to be so fluid in the first century. Not only that, why should I even limit myself to the first century? What is the role of the canonical shape of scriptures throughout its entire history?

Childs proposes that we start with the Masoretic text not because it is the best, but because it is a vehicle for both “recovering and for understanding the canonical text of the Old Testament” (97). He is not just interested in the text but also in the community which shaped it. I am still not sure how this is going to work out because I am still wondering how you go about understanding the community of faith (which community?) in order to understand the canonical text. What makes sense to me at this point is that, somehow, we need to take into consideration how the community used Scriptures. Trying to understand the history of the text is fine as far as it goes, but how did the people of God appropriate it? This seems to be a much better vehicle for how we may read the text today.
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