The Story of Israel: A Biblical Theology

The authors of The Story of Israel: A Biblical Theology endeavor in their work to address one single question in their introduction: "Is there a big picture or an overarching theme that unfolds the message of the Bible?" If there is one single idea that pervades the entire Bible, then the Bible is unified as a whole and brings together all the diverse motifs found throughout its pages. The authors want to produce "an overarching biblical theology that stresses large connecting motifs, a theology that attempts to step back from the trees for a moment and look at the forest as a whole (Pate 9). The authors assert that "the story of Israel--the story of God's creation, humanity's sin and resulting exile, and God's mission to restore his people--represents a prominent theological theme of Scripture" (Pate 278). Thus, the story of Israel and its paradigmatic framework of sin-exile-restoration is the metanarrative of the Bible and gives Scripture coherence, while acknowledging the diversity of the many parts of the canon. Each author of the Bible does not say the exact thing about the overarching theme, but rather each contributes their diverse experiences and theological understanding to the big picture.These authors base their work on O.H. Steck who argued that the literature of Second Temple Judaism was dominated by the Deuteronomistic perspective of the history of Israel, which had five aspects (Pate 20-21). A point that is stressed is that not all five aspects need to be present for a text to be considered Deuteronomistic, therefore allowing the NT to fit into this theological perspective. These five aspects are then reduced to an overarching pattern of sin, exile, and restoration and this pattern appears in the major divisions of the Bible.One reservation that I have with the thesis of the sin-exile-restoration paradigm is that it takes away from the story of creation and moves the story towards Israel, i.e. away from act one and towards act two. This makes creation itself subservient to the paradigm, to the call of Abraham in Genesis 12 and to the ensuing story of Israel. Did creation take place to realize the purpose of Israel? The authors have asserted that the story of Israel is transformed into the story of the gospel for the whole world. This notion is truncated--because of Jesus it is the story of Adam, not Israel, that's transformed into the story of the gospel for the whole world. The story of creation is a more comprehensive paradigm for biblical theology. Why would we want to start from sin, from the point of everything going wrong, to offer a coherent paradigm for the whole?Yet, the authors have successfully demonstrated that their thesis of the story of Israel applies to enough of the Biblical material to be justified as a theme by which the Bible can be viewed comprehensively. Even as biblical studies diverge into narrow specializations, and some raise the question whether there is any continuity between the OT and NT, Christians can find connection between the Old and New Covenants by this overarching theme. The authors have, therefore, made a significant contribution by demonstrating that there is an organic unity to the Bible. Instead of focusing on the trees of the forest and not knowing how they fit in, we can view the entire forest because of The Story of Israel.

Very concise, but covers the main issues.

This book by Pate, et al, left me wanting more. This crew comes at the issue of Biblical Theology from a progressive dispensationalist perspective, however they do not give their own views full explanation particularly in the chapter on Revelation. As a non-dispensationalist, I was quite interested in seeing their view on the issue. They do make some good insights, but overall I found reading it a bit slow at times. As a student of Scott Hafemann, I should add that they also misrepresent his view of the Old Covenant on p. 219. His actual view is that the Old Covenant is very much over and done with. But that's another issue.

Debate reading

GREAT BOOK!!!!!!!!

The premise of this book is to mount a case for a common theme or thread that runs throughout the entire Bible: The story of Israel. The Story of Israel is the story of Sin - Exile - Restoration. My interest was peaked from the beginning of the book and the authors do an excellent job of maintaining my interest and making an intriguing case. Watching the story of the Bible unfold as viewed through the lens of the overarching story of God's people - Israel - was fascinating and helped better my understanding of Scripture. Highly recommended!

The authors are my college professors, and they have done an amazing job of looking at the entire canon, OT and NT, and putting it into a cohesive framework. From Genesis to Revelation, they have shown the progression of God's redemptive purpose. A must-read for any serious student of the Bible.