Bridging the Testaments: The history and theology of God’s people in the Second Temple Period
George Athas
Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic. 2023
Reviewed By Dale Appleby

George Athas is senior lecturer in Hebrew, Old Testament, and early church history at Moore College. A difficulty in being a teacher is not knowing things. Worse is not knowing that we don’t know. Bridging the Testaments is a great help for those of us whose knowledge of the period between Malachi and Matthew is best represented by the two blank pages between those books in our Bibles. However, Athas begins with a different question: did prophecy cease during that period? Was there any prophetic activity between Malachi and Herod? In answering this he provides a thorough (re)construction of both the history and the prophetic activity of the people of Judah and Samaria in the period between the return from exile and the birth of Christ.

The book is in four parts: The Persian Era; The Hellenistic Era; the Hasmonean Era; The Roman Era. As well there are eleven Tables of Rulers, High Priests, and others, lots of maps and many family tree diagrams. The writing is leisurely and easy to read. Athas seems happy to take time to explain things rather than skimming over the details. The book is interesting not tedious.

His argument is that there was a lot of prophetic activity in this period and that it had a lot to do with the status of Jerusalem over against Mount Gerizim, and the status of the Davidic line over against the priesthood. Mount Gerizim and Samaria had various advantages of population and wealth. Jerusalem was the seat of the Davidic monarchy which had less and less power as time went on. Thus the prophetic activity was focused on Jerusalem and David’s line in order to help the people of both north and south focus on Jerusalem as the centre of national life and hope. The prophetic line was that “Yahweh had himself entered the Davidic dynasty as its father figure and that he ruled the nation through his son, the Davidic heir, as stipulated in the canon of the Prophets.” (p18). So the redefinition of the “kingdom of God” as a “kingdom of priests” and the development of the priesthood as the central power of the nation (especially if centred on Mount Gerizim) raised serious questions about the promises of God and his purposes. The way this developed kept changing as different world powers had influence in Judah and Samaria. One of the great strengths of this book is the clear and detailed description of the great powers and their influence on the life of the people of God.

This relates to one of the main theological arguments, that of late theological development. The progressive revelation of God and his purposes continued because God pursued a relationship with his covenant people. He did not go silent for 450 years. Athas says, “We should, therefore, expect theological developments to have occurred, but it is important to understand the contexts in which it occurred so that it might be understood correctly.” (p13).

The book takes a bold approach to dating and to contextualising such matters as the Book of the Twelve Prophets, some of the well-known difficult passages such as the final chapters of Zechariah and the visions of Daniel that relate to Greece and so on. (They were up to date prophetic applications of earlier prophecies applicable to the current context). Athas gives excellent foot-note references (there is no Bibliography as such) to support his decisions and to reference other voices in the discussions.

Overall this is a terrific book. It is a great combination of well written history and a theological path to understanding both the books of the canon and the extra-biblical writings such as Maccabees and Josephus in their historical context. It is a book that as a local church minister I would have liked to have had from the beginning.

Dale has retired at least three times after ministries in Perth, Darwin and Jakarta. He is a member of St Mark’s Bassendean WA.