Canter Bridge

Alongside Gerhard von Rad, Walther Zimmerli is one of the giants of 20th-century biblical theology. In his customarily lively prose, Brueggemann introduces this collection of four essays by showing how Zimmerli is a model of theologically-acute biblical criticism who `stays close to the text’ and therefore does not pay too high a price for the rebuttal of larger concepts like those put forth by von Rad, G.E. Wright and others of the time. Brueggemann paid his dues in the scholarly salt mines by editing and interpreting Zimmerli and H.W. Wolff relatively early in his career, labor that certainly enriched his own tradition criticism later on. The essay that introduces this volume contains some delicious irony, such as the observation that recent (in 1982) continental scholarship is `inclined to return to a critical, pretheological perspective’. This slightly acid turnabout on the terms `theological’ and `precritical’ anticipates criticism of the mature Brueggemann and sometime soul-mates like B. Childs for being `too theological’ and even `precritical’. (more…)

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