Note: A free copy of this book was sent to me by Baker Book Bloggers for purposes of review.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes with the Old Testament to discover that it comes from a cultural perspective vastly different from our own. This recent book from Tremper Longman addresses major controversies that have come to the fore in the past couple of centuries.

The four controversies Longman deals with are Evolution, Sexuality, History, and Violence. If one reads the first chapters of Genesis as equivalent to a scientific description of the origins of the cosmos and humans, the theory of evolution – and much of the rest of modern science – conflict is the natural result. When it comes to sexuality, the plain reading of the Old Testament looks not only like marriage is only a man/woman institution and that all non-heterosexual expressions of sexuality are out of bounds, but also like patriarchy is the divine intention for humanity. When we read the stories of conquest – and later some of the warfare scenes of the kingdom era – we see what looks like a genocidal, bloodthirsty god, commanding his people to wipe out all non-Israelites. These three controversies are plain to lay people. The controversy regarding history may be more limited to scholars. This controversy is over the historicity of the stories in the Old Testament – did any of the events depicted there even happen?

Longman writes from the perspective of evangelical biblical scholarship. He has a high view of scripture as inspired and inerrant. If you want a book that deals with these issues and gives you all the “right answers,” this is not the book for you. Longman’s approach, instead, is to examine scholars who have written on the central controversies as they stand today. He considers their arguments in light of what the text says, the cultural background, and how they measure up against others writing in the field. You won’t come away from this book with the tensions between the biblical text and our current cultural and academic values dissolved. You will come away, however, more informed of the options for dealing with these issues.