Pentateuch as Narrative, The

This is a great literary review of the Pentateuch. John Sailhamer states that the five parts of the Pentateuch are all part of one work centralized around God's covenant relationship with Israel. God's purpose in creation was to bless humanity. Sailhamer picks out major themes of the Pentateuch: God's blessing His chosen people; His chosen people turning away from His blessing to make their own good (tower of Babel, Hagar, Abraham going to Egypt); faith and obedience; creation, fall, redemption, idolatry. This book helps guide readers on the structure of the Pentateuch, showing the many parallels within the Pentateuch itself and how past events predict future events while future events allude to past events.

I first started going through this book in a small group and continued on my own. This book changed how I look at the Pentateuch and Old Testament. This book and the Old Testament as a whole are about Christ. God makes a covenant with Israel. Israel fails to obey and keep God's law. We end the Pentateuch with the failure of Moses to keep the law and a hope in the coming Messiah in which there will be a new covenant with God's law written on our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

The introduction warrants reading as much as his commentary. ( )

NO OF PAGES: 522 SUB CAT I: Torah SUB CAT II: SUB CAT III: DESCRIPTION: This work focuses on the narrative and literary continuity of the Pentateuch as a whole. It seeks to disclose how the original Jewish readers may have viewed this multivolume work of Moses.NOTES: SUBTITLE: A Biblical-Theological Commentary

this is a really good good unified treatment of the Pentateuch as a single unit. ( )

This book is not a detailed textual commentary but is a wonderful literary, and theological interpretation of the Pentateuch. Sailhamer does a wonderful job in his Introduction appealing for understanding the Pentateuch as a literary unit that should be understood as such. His observations about the pattern of -narrative - poetry - epilogue, are very astute and amazingly helpful. This book is worth it for the introduction alone

The rest of the book carries through what Sailhamer proposes in his introduction. While the whole book is useful and helpful, Sailhamers work on Genesis is especially good. It seems that Sailhamer pays more attention to the begining of the Pentatuech (giving Gen. 1:1 several pages) than the end (sumarizing the death of Moses in half a page).

All in all, this is a wonderful work and a relatively easy read, other than the introduction. I recomend it highly; especially his exegesis of the early sections of Genesis. ( )