Walter Kaiser is one of the premier Old Testament scholars in the evangelical church today. A widely-published author and popular preacher and lecturer, Kaiser has recently become President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Preaching: Several years ago you wrote an article for Preaching dealing with the issue of preaching in the Old Testament. One of the things you observed then was that to a great extent the evangelical church seems to ignore the Old Testament. Why do you think that is true?

Kaiser: I think the reason the church has tended to ignore and walk away from the Old Testament is, first, lack of familiarity. I think that they just don't read those sections as frequently. I think more than the lack of knowledge is the perceived lack of relevancy of the Old Testament. Most are not sure that it really is relevant to us. On the one hand some try to do a kind of replacement theology which says everything given to Israel now equals the church. But they don't play that game consistently because they don't take anything bad about Israel, they don't bring that across. Only the good things they say about Israel are brought across. From my own perspective, I don't feel that a replacement theology is the way to go.

I'm working on a book right now. Some years ago there was a volume, Are the New Testament Documents Reliable? Thirty some years have gone by and we've never had the companion one to the Old Testament. So, I'm doing one right now. Are the Old Testament documents reliable and relevant? How can I get relevancy out of Torah? How can I get relevancy out of wisdom literature? How can I get it out of the prophets, out of the Psalms? I find it to be a wonderful challenge to talk about that relevancy thing. Once that hurdle is overcome, then we are going to see a return to preaching from the Old Testament. So, those two things, the issue of familiarity and the issue of relevancy.

Preaching: So that we don't have to wait until the book is out, can you give us a sneak preview or an example of some particular topic?

Kaiser: Yes, I think the hardest one most people would say is Torah. How can you have the first five books -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy -- preaching to the modern day because it's so legal? My response is that there are 189 chapters in the five books if I recall correctly. 58 of that number I am sure of, would be legal material: from Exodus 20-40, 21 chapters there; 27 chapters in Leviticus; and the first ten chapters in Numbers. So you have a total of 58 chapters out of almost 200. That leaves 129 or so that are not part of the legal materials.

I think we have given the whole of the Torah a bum rap. Torah comes from the word, to point, to direct, and that's why the Psalmist talks about the law as a path, a light. It's direction, it's guidance. That's the main thing that is to be found there. Anyway, the structure for the first five books is really a structure of belief, not of law. Genesis 15, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. That belief passage is there in Exodus 4 and again in Exodus 14 -- it's that Israel failed to believe God at the Exodus.