John Kaltner, Reading the Old Testament Anew: Biblical Perspectives on Today’s Issues, Winona, Anselm Academic, 2017; 284 pp., $ 29.95.

In Reading the Old Testament Anew, John Kaltner provides a thematic introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Rather than writing a comprehensive introductory work, Kaltner concentrates on six themes in the Old Testament: Creation; Covenant; Liberation; the Human Condition; the Other; and Social Justice. The first chapter offers a succinct but up-to-date introduction to the Old Testament. Kaltner explains that his selection of themes reflects ‘the book’s intended purpose as a classroom resource for courses in religion or theology that have a biblical component in them’ (8). Each theme is discussed under three headings: First Impressions (which identifies and briefly introduces the most important Old Testament passages pertaining to the theme); Second Opinions (where Kaltner sketches debates in Biblical Studies on the selected themes); and Implications and Applications (which offers questions for further thinking and reflection). Moreover, each chapter contains a section that treats the reception of these themes in art and literature. The chapter on covenant can serve as an example of Kaltner’s approach: after briefly introducing Gen 6–9; Gen 15, 17; Exod; Deut; and ‘covenant elsewhere in the Old Testament’ in the first section of the chapter, Kaltner moves on to discuss issues of Pentateuchal source criticism, the role of covenant thinking in prophetic works, and the link between covenants in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern treatises in the second part. The Implications and Applications section offers questions such as: How has your understanding of the Bible changed after reading this chapter? or: Do you think the relationship between God and humanity as it is presented in the Old Testament is primarily healthy and positive? This shows that for Kaltner both exegetical and biblical-theological issues are of importance when reflecting on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Throughout the book Kaltner’s writing is careful and nuanced. Yet the book explicitly addresses an audience with no prior knowledge of Biblical literature and, as a result, engagement with the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is absent from Kaltner’s work. This would make the book somewhat harder to use in a context where general Introduction to Bible courses of the American type are not common, but I think Reading the Old Testament Anew can still fulfil a useful purpose as a resource in, for instance, an undergraduate Biblical Theology course. There, its thematic approach (which is still predominant in Biblical Studies, but has also been challenged on various grounds) would prove helpful, not only for how it collects the material, but also for stimulating debates on the losses and gains that come with thematic approaches. To sum up: Kaltner has written an engaging book, which is refreshing in how it opens up the Old Testament to students with no prior knowledge of it.