Kimball College

In his preface to this classic work on the Old Testament, Alfred Edersheim describes his purposes and intended audience. Edersheim wrote this volume for '"Those who teach and those who learn... to furnish what may be useful for reading in the family... not only to show them what the Bible really teaches, but to defend them against the insidious attacks arising from misrepresentation and minunderstanding of the sacred text.'" Further, Edersheim wrote this work '"in a form so popular and easily intelligible as to be of use to the Sunday-school teacher, the advanced scholar, and the Bible-class, progressing gradually from the more simple to the more detailed.'" The Scripture narrative is discussed according to the order of the books of the Bible, chapter by chapter, with biblical references clearly marked to enable the reader to easily find the passages being explained. Edersheim wrote not just that readers might achieve a higher understanding of the narratives of Scripture, but that they should '"realize their spiritual application; to feel their eternal import; to experience them in ourselves, so to speak -- this is the only profitable study of Scripture, to which all else can only serve as outward preparation.'" To understand the finer points of Christian theology, one should first grasp '"the big pricture'" of God's story in the Old Testament. It is this '"grasp of the big picture'" that Edersheim offers here in an unparalleled way. Since its original appearance in 1890, Bible History: Old Testament has encountered many rivals but no successors, and its relevance for the Christian faith has only been reinforced during the intervening decades.