The Old Testament: A Concise Introduction

The present volume is intended to serve as an introduction—a concise one, as the title indicates—to the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible. I have tried to write the book that I have desired for my own students ever since I began teaching: a succinct treatment that covers the entire sweep of the Old Testament in relatively brief compass, a book that is more about the forest than the trees, that would orient students to the lay of the land, and that they could read in a sitting or two before they came face to face in subsequent lectures with larger vistas or the specific foliage in intimate and sometimes exhausting detail. I’ve been searching for that book for over 20 years now and have yet to find it exactly, though there are certainly a number of honorable mentions. While I am conscious that the present volume has limitations and is not quite as concise as I originally intended, I nevertheless hope it performs the purposes that I have envisioned. Most of all I hope that readers, especially those new to the Old Testament, will agree, since this book is writ- ten for them.