Teaching Resources on Wisdom and Prophetic Literature

As I work through the lecture notes for a course next year on Christian Scripture, I would like to share some resources that helped me a lot.

Wisdom Literature

1. James Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom – a lot of wisdom from this scholar in a digestible format.

2. Roland Murphy, The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature – a classic in terms of introductions.

3. Tremper Longman, How to Read Proverbs- a very simple and easy guide to Proverbs – excellent for use as a textbook for college students.

For the Prophetical books, there are also numerous excellent books.

1. My favorite has to be Willem VanGemeren’s Interpreting the Prophetic Word – a very readable and exhaustive introduction to prophets and their literature.

2. For an inspirational text, read Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination.

3. If you want to explore the issue of how OT prophecy is dealt with by NT writers, check out the relatively recent Three Views on the NT Use of the OT (Zondervan Counterpoints).

4. Specifically on Isaiah, I would recommend the book Interpreting Isaiah: Issues and Approaches (eds. D. Firth and H.G.M. Williamson). Essays include “Recent issues in the study of Isaiah” (Williamson), “Monotheism and Isaiah” (Nathan MacDonald), “Faith in Isaiah” (Philip Johnston), “The theology of Isaiah” (John Goldingay), “The text of Isaiah at Qumran” (D. Swanson), “Isaiah in the NT” (Rikk Watts), and others.

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