Messiah in the Old Testament, The
This is an unapologetically apologetic book, part of a series, Studies in Old Testament Biblical Theology, explicitly identified by the editors as evangelical and implicitly identified as conservative. There is some virtue to that clear identification, in that it minimizes the likelihood that readers will be misled; thereisan ax to grind here, and both editors and author are honest about grinding it. There is also some danger, in that "apologetic" writing can leave the author merely preaching to the choir. To some extent, that is what happens in Kaiser's book. It is a thorough review and synthesis of an evangelical tradition that reads Hebrew Scripture as Old Testament and finds the Messiah there incontrovertibly identified with Jesus. Though Kaiser is not likely to convince anyone who does not begin with him by appropriating Hebrew Scripture into a Christian context in the act of labeling it "old," he does help make explicit a clash of interpretations inextricably bound with interpretive communities; it's a war of words, a useful (though hardly surprising) insight where the combatants are collectively known as people of the book.Steve Schroeder