Tradition Analysis

C. Tradition Analysis

The text of the Hebrew Bible contains the record of Israel's faith journey and its application of tradition to life. As Israel faced new historical challenges it took the faith expressions of its ancestors and reapplied them anew. Its literature is the product of a God-fearing community. The people who wrote the books of the Bible composed them as the expression of their faith and because they believed these writings might inspire faith, courage, and understanding.
    Most of the books arose at important turning points in Israel's national life. The community grounded its experience of God in their history, and believed that his commitment to them provided a certain measure of security in a threatening world. But their world never stayed the same. Empires rose and empires fell, and Israel had to adapt to the changing political and social environment. Part of the adaptation was applying the traditional promises of God to an uncertain future. From Torah to Writings, the text reveals the community's record of how they heard God speaking to them.
    The Hebrew Bible is the record of a creative tension between religious tradition and the need for change. Earlier forms of tradition were embodied in early documents and we can reconstruct and examine them. These earlier documents defined truth for the community that produced them. They provided the people with religious and ideological stability, a way to understand God and his ways. But as history moved on, new interpretations and applications were needed.
    These texts encapsulate a long and lively dance of interpretation and reinterpretation, the written expression of a conversation which took place over a period of a thousand years. Political and social changes within the community inspired the need for new interpretations and applications of the older authoritative texts. The older texts provided the foundation for the life of the community, and allowed for stability in the midst of changed circumstances.
    Part of what we mean by tradition analysis is reading the text as the record of the faith of a community that was defined by its theological traditions and took its traditions seriously. Those traditions were authoritative, and the community depended on them as they faced the future. Old and new, stability and change, tradition and innovation, text and reinterpretation--these are the parameters that will order our reading of the theology of the Hebrew Bible. We will be "tradition archaeologists" as we peel away the strata of this dialectic between tradition and change, and in the process perhaps learn how tradition can help us face the future.