When Man Becomes God: Humanism and ‘Hybris’ in the Old Testament

For a long time, we have been complaining about the kind of exegesis which stops short once a detailed and careful historical critical analysis of a text has been made, as if that were all that an interpreter of Scripture was supposed to provide for those who are concerned about what the Bible has to say to them. At the same time, Biblical scholars and others as well have protested the kind of theology and homiletics which does not take exegesis seriously. The study which follows is an effort to respond to these complaints and to offer something more complete. It attempts to put together in one book a study of a Biblical theme which moves from the technical work of exegesis to theological affirmations, and in places to the border­line of homiletics. To many it may thus appear to be a mixed genre; parts of it seem properly to belong in technical journals and monographs while other parts seem to belong to a more popular realm of religious literature, directed toward pastors and laymen. That may be what it is, but my effort has been to produce a new genre in which the work of the interpreter of Scripture appears as a totality. Since I have not consciously been following a previous model this attempt may not prove to be satisfactory, but I believe the effort, at least, needs to be made. An inspiration for the works if not a model, has been found in the expository writings of George Adam Smith, which were remarkably successful in their day in combining technical exegetical work with the affirmation of what these texts mean to a person of faith.