Publisher's Description: Exploring the difficulty in determining the true nature, method, scope, and motivation for biblical theology, this book proposes the promise of God as the center of Old and New Testament theology and applies the solution to each of its eras.

What is the central theme of the Bible?

Given the diversity of authorship, genre, and context of the Bible's various books, is it even possible to answer such a question? Or in trying to do so, is an external grid being unnaturally superimposed on the biblical text? These are difficult questions that the discipline of biblical theology has struggled to answer. In this thoroughly revised and expanded edition of his classic Toward an Old Testament Theology, Walter Kaiser offers a solution to these unresolved issues. He proposes that there is indeed a unifying center to the theology and message of the Bible that is indicated and affirmed by Scripture itself. That center is the promise of God. It is one all-encompassing promise of life through the Messiah that winds itself throughout salvation history in both the Old and New Testaments, giving cohesiveness and unity to the various parts of Scripture. After laying out his proposal, Kaiser works chronologically through the books of both testaments, demonstrating how the promise is seen throughout, how the various sub-themes of each book relate to the promise, and how God's plan to fulfill the promise progressively unfolds. Here is a rich and illuminating biblical theology that will stir the emotion and the intellect.

Author Information: Walter C. Kaiser Jr. (PhD, Brandeis University) is the Colman M. Mockler distinguished professor of Old Testament and president emeritus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. He has taught at Wheaton College and at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Dr. Kaiser has written numerous books, including Toward an Exegetical Theology: Biblical Exegesis for Preaching and Teaching; Hard Sayings of the Old Testament; Exodus in the Expositor's Bible Commentary; The Messiah in the Old Testament; A History of Israel; and coauthored An Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics: The Search for Meaning. Dr. Kaiser and his wife, Marge, currently reside in Cedar Grove, Wisconsin.

432 pages
Published April 2008