The Authority of the Old Testament

"As its title page indicates, the substance of [this book] was delivered as the James A. Gray Lectures at the Divinity School of Duke University.  That was in November of 1959.  But the book actually had its genesis much earlier, for the problem which it treats is one that had plagued me for many years prior to that time.  I suppose that it is inevitable that is should have: it is a problem that no teacher of Old Testament studies can forever evade.  Certainly I was unable to do so.  I had long found myself troubled by the fact that so few preachers–myself included, I fear–really seemed to know how to proceed with the Old Testament, or were guided in their preaching from it, if they preached from it at all, by any conscious hermeneutical principles…It early became clear to me that the place of Old Testament studies in the theological curriculum was not something that could be taken for granted.  I was driven to the realization that if I could  not present my students with some positive position with regard to the place of the Old Testament in the Bible, and provide them with some guidance in their use of it in the pulpit, they might justifiably regard all that I was trying to teach them, however interesting it might be historically, as of questionable theological and practical importance." (from the Preface, by John Bright)