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From Eden to the New Jerusalem

Sandra Richter doesn't look like Harrison Ford, though she does admit to having an Indiana Jones hat. With a PhD from Harvard, she has dedicated her academic life at Asbury Theological Seminary to making the Old Testament relevant, transformative, and connected to the spiritual life of Christians. Her frequent archaeological forays into Israeli dirt aside, Dr. Richter has recently published a book, The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry Into the Old Testament, designed to help make sense of the whole of the biblical narrative. She recently sat down with Good News editorial assistant Elizabeth Glass-Turner to discuss her book, archaeology, and the Old Testament.

What spurred your interest in the Old Testament?
My own passion for Christ. I had gone to college as a result of a calling that I couldn't define, was studying Bible and loving what I was learning, went into ministry, and found out that all of my training had been focused on the New Testament. So when I actually got into the church, I had very little prep to be able to deal with the Old Testament.

When I went back to school, I just fell in love with what I was learning. I felt that God was redirecting my calling, so I focused on the Old Testament and made it my specialty. It was a result of my own joy in learning this material that made me realize that I desperately wanted to do the same thing for other people.

Old Testament studies isn't something that a lot of people are going into. Did it strike you that there was a stigma, that now you were going to be one of those people who knows how to read from right to left?

There was a confluence of issues. One was my own passion, and my own weakness. Because here I had a four year degree in Bible, and I knew very little about the Old Testament. So that was my motivating drive. But when I got into seminary, and realized that this was where my gifting was, and started experiencing this redirecting of calling, then I sat down with a few school administrators and said, "Okay, if you were interviewing someone for a job at this school, what would you want to see on my C.V.?" At that point, I could've gone Old or New Testament. And they all said, "Old Testament is more weakly represented. We need Old Testament people."

How do you describe being an Old Testament scholar to someone on a plane who's a banker, or a Mary Kay consultant?

A lot of it depends on how I'm dressed! Which is so intriguing. If I am traveling in my blue jeans, and I pull out my laptop, people usually peek at your laptop. They'll ask me, and I tell them I teach Old Testament at a seminary. And often those words have no content to them. They don't know what the word seminary means, and they're not quite sure what kind of person would teach Old Testament.

If I'm dressed real casually, they're all over it. I go on to describe that I train ministers and I teach Bible and then of course they assume I'm some sort of raging fundamentalist. They start querying me with questions about Jonah and the whale or about seven days' creation. And then they usually find out that I'm fairly articulate and not dumb. And they're more intrigued. We usually wind up having some great conversation. Especially if it's truly an agnostic hedonist! We have a great time. By the time we're done, they usually ask me the question that they've always been afraid to ask. So I enjoy that.

If I'm dressed in my grown-up garb, the conversation goes a different direction. They usually wind up finding someone in their extended family who's been a Methodist, and talk to me about some church experience they've had. But the conversation goes a little quicker; it often doesn't wind up where I'd want it to, in a way, because they make religious associations. And then we wind up talking about archaeology, often. They're always very interested in archaeology.

What motivated you to write this book at this time?

This book has been a long, long time coming. As I struggled to be an effective teacher in the church, from junior high to older people, I was constantly reformulating a curriculum that worked. And figuring out real early that peoples' knowledge of the Old Testament was one big messy pile, and that they were uncomfortable with it, didn't know what to do with it; and the metaphor that I came up with is the dysfunctional closet syndrome. And I just saw that over and over again in every possible setting-from youth to adults to people training in Bible colleges, to people training in seminaries, to missionaries, pastors-there was just too much data. People were left with just one big muddle of people, places, dates; so I started trying to format a way that the Old Testament could get past the minutiae. I got into the major themes, and connected it to the New Testament.

I worked with it, I tweaked it, recognizing the major themes of redemption, the presence of God, and life transformation and God's rescue plan for his people.

When I got back to seminary, and started to redo my own training, I bumped into a very important teacher. In fact, I dedicated the book to him. His name was Meredith Kline. He was this little absent-minded professor, about four-and-a-half feet tall. He wore the same beige-colored leisure suit jacket every day of his life, with matching orthopedic desert boots. He was a completely obtuse lecturer. But early on I just decided that I had to hear what this guy had to say. It dawned on me that he was teaching the answers to the questions I had to ask. He was organizing the story of redemption for me. And he was organizing it from Eden to the New Jerusalem. As I sat through his class, he was putting the Bible together for me, in a way no one else ever had. All the pieces came together.

I kept working on the curriculum, tweaking it in different settings, and then I came to Asbury. I still had this structure running in the back of my mind. And I almost didn't do it at the seminary, because I thought, "oh, it's too juvenile." But my colleagues talked me into doing it, I did it, and it totally worked. And I thought okay, even seminary students need their Bibles put together for them. I think this book is probably the greatest contribution I will make to the church in my life.

You take a lot of trips to dig around in the dirt in Israel. What have been some of your most profound experiences there, archaeologically and personally?

I think that being able to put the Bible into its context is critically important for the hermeneutical project. I think that putting the Bible into real space and time is the best safeguard against all of the crazy liberal or postmodern or reductionist hermeneutics that fade in and out of fads. So first of all, I'm very committed to historical and sociological contextualization. It makes the Bible come alive. It makes these people real. It makes the story real, and it sets boundaries on it. So I want to make sure that my students get some opportunity to use archaeology.

I think it is also an essential part of an archaeology program to have the opportunity to go, and actually do it, and touch history. So I think that the greatest moments, for me, are watching that happen for students. Watching them pull an Iron I jug out of the dirt and say, "Look what I found!" And they know that someone from Israel touched it!

Have I ever found something that changed the course of history? No. Although this summer our students pulled up a phenomenal amount of stuff. Really important stuff. They excavated a whole clay altar-which does not happen every day. One of them excavated an inscribed potsherd. Definitely doesn't happen every day! Another found a scarab in sifting.

And we always tour. So they get to actually see Jericho, wade in the Jordan River-these are irreplaceable experiences.

What is the political situation currently, in terms of access to sites in Israel?

Things in Israel are pretty stable. They're very used to tourists and archaeologists. So as long as I'm careful, I feel very safe. I don't allow any independent touring, period. The dig sites are typically very secure, and then as long as I run the touring, we're good.

Two years ago we worked with Israelis from Dan, and that was the year they attacked Lebanon, and we were in the middle of it. And our Israeli dig director, when I expressed concern as missiles were flying overhead, his response was, "But it's friendly fire! What are you worried about?" So it was at that point I decided against working with Israelis-they're a little too familiar with that! So we don't do that anymore.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about the Old Testament?

There are two. One is, "It doesn't matter. I don't need to know the Old Testament to know my faith." And the reason that's such effective propaganda is that it's slightly true. The gospel can be preached with just the Gospel of Mark. You don't need the entire New Testament, you don't need the Old Testament. But what I tell my students is that if you want to, you can listen to your favorite CD on a cheap old Volkswagen car radio, you can do it. Or, you can sit in a room with Bose surround sound. Which do you want? Knowing the gospel only through the Gospel of Mark is the cheap car radio. Bose surround sound is knowing the whole story.

The other is that the God of the Old Testament is "mean, and I don't like him." With the series that I do in this book, you can't get through the first chapter or the first study without realizing, "Oh my goodness. The God of redemption in the New Testament is the same as the God of redemption in the Old Testament. And for Christians to realize that the amazing grace of the New Testament is the amazing grace of the Old Testament, and realize the story and how outrageously ungrateful we were as a race of men and that God kept trying and that Jesus is the last, final, complete effect-to know that background transforms their understanding of their own salvation. But then to also realize that the God of judgment in the Old Testament, who is also this God of amazing grace, is also the God of judgment in the New Testament, and to pull that story together? It changes people.

So I think those are the two biggest. The book speaks of the story of redemption that runs from Eden to the New Jerusalem, that is all about the first and the last Adam, one huge rescue plan, the goal being to get Adam back in the garden. And that we're all part of this big narrative, my testimony and your testimony is all part of the same story!

What surprises you most about the people you encounter when you present lectures or sermons on the Old Testament?

I am surprised and grieved that someone can sit in a church for twenty-five years and still know almost nothing about the Old Testament. That one still surprises me, even though I know it. One image from Mary Fisher is "Christian Alzheimer's disease"-an Alzheimer's patient can get to the place where her children can walk in the room and she doesn't recognize them. That the church could get to the place where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob walk in the door and they don't recognize them! I am always pleasantly surprised at how hungry the church is for the Old Testament. How willing they are to study hard, and seriously, and how church leadership just doesn't see that. They're busy giving them seven steps for being a better Christian, and not teaching them the Bible, and people are dying to know their Bible.

What is your greatest achievement as an instructor, writer, archaeologist?

Well, I am proud of the response I get from my students. I am proud of the regular statement that, "I didn't know how to put my Bible together and I took your class, and now not only can I put my Bible together, I'm ready to go preach it and I'm eager to do it."

What is your goal for The Epic of Eden?

I hope that it will quietly multiply, and again find itself in the hands of Campus Crusade leaders, InterVarsity student leaders, Wesley Foundations, missionaries, and they can say, "Okay, I've got ten chapters. I can read this, I can learn it, and I can teach it. And I can get people to the place where they know what to do with the Old Testament, how the story ties together, and this book makes me capable to do that." That's what I hope. This has been an exciting journey for me. And I don't actually know if I've arrived.

After a nine-year tenure at Asbury Theological Seminary, Dr. Richter will join the faculty of Wesley Biblical Seminary in the summer of 2009. To schedule Dr. Richter for a weekend seminar, she may be reached at sandra.richter@asburyseminary.edu.



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