Rating: 
Summary: Former student, now teacher of scripture
Review: Boadt does an excellent job describing the Israelite culture's impact on its testament. I used it in both undergraduate (St. Joseph's, Philadelphia) and graduate work (Villanova). Now I teach theology and can't live without it. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Former student, now teacher of scripture
Review: Boadt does an excellent job describing the Israelite culture's impact on its testament. I used it in both undergraduate (St. Joseph's, Philadelphia) and graduate work (Villanova). Now I teach theology and can't live without it. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Should be the standard seminary OT intro textbook
Review: Boadt's book is a masterpiece of introducing critical, theological methods to the professional or casual theologian. It is simply the best OT book I've read and several friends that I have recommended it to have agreed. Although it was intended to be graduate level, it is being used increasingly at the undergraduate level, even at some more traditionally fundamentalist schools.Boadt is Catholic? I only know that from the reviews, and it is a testimony to his scholarship and objective approach to theology that you will not notice his Catholicism from reading this work. He is not a liberal either, I would best describe him as neo-evangelical in that he is not an inerrantist but neither is he a secular scholar. His love and respect for the Bible shows in his treatment of it. Although he is not afraid to utilize critical techniques to deal with issues of date, authorship and meaning of the Bible, he is not a text-critic by profession and so avoids that fields' tendency to dismember the Bible from over strenuous application of their pecular model. I believe the best part of the books are his explanation of Jonah as in the genre of "Hebrew comedy" and his introduction to and application of source crit (JEPD) to the Torah. I never understood how overwhelming is the case for JEPD nor did I understand why the theory is so compelling until I read Boadt. He has converted me to an understanding of source criticism and has greatly matured and formed my theology.
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Summary: A wonderful supplement
Review: I read this book in my Theology course at Notre Dame as a freshman and re-purchased it as a senior because I truly found it so informative and useful in a thorough understanding of the Hebrew Text. I strongly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: great basic primer
Review: I'm writing this in response to some of the other reviews you have received. I know both Fr. Boadt and the book well. I had Fr. Boadt in graduate school and we used his text, and I now use it to teach adults in parishes about the OT. While the book could use updating (it is 15 years old and much has happened in that time), it is a fine, informative work. Anyone who thinks Boadt does not see divine inspiration at work in the Bible is reading the book with blinders on. I recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: great basic primer
Review: I'm writing this in response to some of the other reviews you have received. I know both Fr. Boadt and the book well. I had Fr. Boadt in graduate school and we used his text, and I now use it to teach adults in parishes about the OT. While the book could use updating (it is 15 years old and much has happened in that time), it is a fine, informative work. Anyone who thinks Boadt does not see divine inspiration at work in the Bible is reading the book with blinders on. I recommend it highly.
Rating: 
Summary: A wealth of information with poor theology.
Review: In what has become typical of modern study of the Bible, Lawrence Boadt has written a book that is filled with a wealth of information that will help a reader understand the Old Testament while constantly undermining the very reason that a person would seek to read it. Boadt assumes that God has had little or nothing to do with the writting of the Scripture, and apparently the cultures that surounded Israel were the true source of inspiration. While there is much in this book that is useful (and thus it is a two star book and not worthy of a mere single star) there is a great deal of theological garbage through which one must wade to find it.
Rating:
Summary: Definately a textbook
Review: No one can dispute that Boadt knows his stuff -- and, though at times readers may find themselves praying for distractions, "Reading" is an excellent learning tool. Easy reference use, as well.
Rating:
Summary: Definately a textbook
Review: No one can dispute that Boadt knows his stuff -- and, though at times readers may find themselves praying for distractions, "Reading" is an excellent learning tool. Easy reference use, as well.
Rating:
Summary: Not Divinely Inspired?
Review: This book is probably the best Inrto to the OT I've seen. It is highly readable, the suggested scripture readings are excellent, and one really does marvel at how neatly themes are woven to the entire Old Testament, almost to the point of being tied up with a bow! Readers who take from this book that its author sees biblical texts as "not inspired by God" would do well to read it again! The whole point of the book is to show how the Israelites used their historical experiences as a lens through which to view their relationship with God, and ultimately God's relationship with all of mankind. As such, it traces the evolution of the development of the biblical texts through Israel's history. Of course Israelites were influenced by other cultures: they were continually surrounded by, at war with, and often oppressed by them! It would be a very strange thing for these influences NOT to be evidenced in the text! Granted, as witnessed in my recent "Intro to the OT Class" that used this book as a primary text, the need to separate "faith" and "history" temporarily to see how these books developed is a daunting undertaking; however, one's individual faith can only be enhanced by realization that it was Israel's faith in God that provided the impetus for the eventual writing down of oral tradition in the first place.
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