Book(let) Review: Old Testament Personalities

Title: Old Testament Personalities

Author: Lin Cook et al.

Date: 1983

Publisher: David C. Cook

ISBN: none

Length: 98 pages

Quote: "Each Old Testament personality you meet this quarter was related to somebody else. No one acted entirely alone."

I really do display and sell vintage Sunday School "quarterlies." The Bible has not changed so the well written ones are as valuable as ever.

Here's another Sunday School "quarterly" study guide, published for use about the same time as These Were Victors, for a different church on a different time schedule. Seventh-Day Adventist "quarterlies" are organized around the quarters of the calendar; David C. Cook's are organized around the seasons, so this one was written for use in June, July, and August. Of such trivia separate denominations have been made.

Since these two books are similar in vintage, subject, and format, I find it interesting to compare them. This may be unfair to Old Testament Personalities since I reviewed These Were Victors independently, but since both books have now become historical artifacts I don't expect my reviews to affect any authors.

David C. Cook was an interdenominational Christian publisher. Old Testament Personalities mentions Baptist, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Methodist, and Lutheran churches, specifically, in addition to the Christian-influenced Deist Ben Franklin. My copy was handed down by a relative who was a Baptist Sunday School teacher, and is marked.

This little book considers Aaron, Jethro, Caleb,Deborah, Jephthah, Samson, Hannah, Naaman, Joash, Naomi-and-Ruth, Hophni-and-Phinehas, Jonathan-and-David, and Mordecai-and-Esther. These Bible characters are further classified as "persons in supportive roles," "persons choosing priorities," and "persons with family and friendship ties." The discussion of each story is about as long as the discussions in These Were Victors--approximately a page a day, with a short portion of text to be studied and a few discussion questions for the Sunday School class--but it's not printed in strict page-a-day format, nor are spaces left for notes.

Proofreading is imperfect. How easy it is for a short word or piece of a word to be left out during the typing or typesetting process, and reverse the whole meaning of a sentence! On page 28, Stephen Griffith, discussing the story of Deborah, describes the Israelites "with primitive weapons fighting against an equally large but equally well-equipped army." The next sentence shows that that's not what he meant to say: "Apparently lacking even spears, the Israelites could not reach the men in the chariots." Spears, swords, knives, and slingshots were what the Israelites did have, but even so, they were at a physical disadvantage below those much more than equally equipped men in the iron chariots. They knew their victory could be credited only to the way "the Lord discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak."

(The advice Deborah, as judge or peace chief, gave to Barak, as war chief, is often interpreted as chiding. It's easy to picture Deborah as an old lady who would have preferred to bake her bones in peace under her palm tree, telling that strong man he ought to have been able to marshal his troops without her physical presence, and possibly rapping his wrist with her fan. Then we get that picture of foot soldiers charging at cavalry, dodging the war horses' hooves and the blows from above, pulling the enemy down into a fair fight...no, Barak was not a man you'd meet every day. That he and his men made the charge must have been discomfiting indeed No ordinary man, after such a rout, would give the glory to God and the women.)

Historical illumination comes less from ancient history and more from relatively recent events, from Benjamin Franklin's letters to Ronald Reagan's speeches. Though both "quarterlies" are written for a general adult audience, I think it's fair to say that the Seventh-Day Adventist quarterly addresses an audience with a higher median level of education. Old Testament Personalities teaches the reader only one Hebrew word and, since its focus is on the Old Testament, no Greek at all.

Reading the two "quarterlies" in the order in which they were originally published is particularly interesting, since some of the same characters are considered first as "victors" and then as "relatives." Why not? They were both.

One of my elders once said that the Bible has so much to teach us that people could spend their whole lifetimes studying the Bible and not come to an end of learning. At seventeen I didn't know whether she was right. At fifty I believe she was. At least, although I've learned a lot about the Bible since I was seventeen, I find no end. You read the story of, e.g., Caleb, and then you read what Leslie Hardinge had to say about it and you learn something more than you did on your first reading, and then you read what Priscilla Stewart (in this book) had to say and you learn even more. There is no end in sight.

The authors' primary purpose in choosing these stories of Bible characters' "relational" qualities was to encourage Sunday School members to think about ways to help their groups grow through personal relationships. The question may be raised how much a Sunday School group needs to grow. Generally a group of more than ten or twelve people is too big for real discussions to take place; there's a reason why, although Jesus commissioned seventy disciples as publicity agents, had a group of active female followers who accompanied him and the Twelve on their shorter walking tours, and definitely had many older, less active disciples in each place He visited, He travelled with a select group of only twelve young men. If most of the Sunday School classes I've seen had doubled in size, they would have needed to split up--probably for the overall benefit of the church. It's possible that Old Testament Personalities was written specifically for small and new churches that don't yet have full-sized Sunday School classes.

If so, it was more deftly written than the little homilies on Bible stories may seem at first glance, because these short, light studies of interpersonal relationships work for individuals (or families) as well as classes or congregations. "What does it take to move you to accept a challenge?" "How can one keep socially active yet not become spiritually and morally tainted?" "What should we be doing to prepare ourselves for handling difficult situations?" This is not a book for the kind of group, like the Tupperware, Mary Kay, and Amway groups of the 1980s, whose theme song is "We're here because we're here because we're here...and how can we get more and more people here?" Old Testament Personalities can be recommended for groups--or individuals--with purpose and vitality.