Includes bibliographical references (pages 610-640) and indexes.

Definitions : the many faces of biblical theology -- The origins of modern Old Testament theology -- A typology of Old Testament theologies -- A wider spectrum -- Difference from doctrinal theology -- Difference from non-theological study -- Evolution and anti-evolutionism -- Difference from history of religion -- Difference in the size of complexes -- Difference in the way of thinking : philosophy and natural theology -- Connections with the New Testament -- Evaluation, commitment, objectivity -- Historical theology--a possible analogy? -- Opposition to biblical theology -- 'Real' theology and biblical theology -- 'Christianizing' of the Old Testament? -- Judaism after biblical times -- Jewish biblical theology? -- Some theologies of the 1970s -- An overview of the older tradition -- Story and biblical theology -- Gese and the unity of biblical theology -- The canonical approach : first stage -- Childs' theologies -- Other canonical possibilities -- Some recent theologies -- Natural theology within biblical theology -- Oeming -- Mildenberger -- Raisanen -- Brueggemann -- Apocryphal and other non-canonical books -- The distribution of resources and pan-biblical theology -- David Brown.

This book is descended from the Cadbury Lectures, delivered in the University of Birmingham as long ago as 1968. My early volume Old and New in Interpretation (1966) remains the basis of the vision now presented. The work in its present form is written as a sort of textbook, though the book has been expanded to contain much more material than one could cover in a single course of the normal kind. The work is a discussion of the whole idea of biblical theology, its possibilities and its prospects. It is neither a survey nor a history, though it includes some elements of both of these. If there is any one theme that runs through this work, it is the contested character of biblical theology, as it has been in this century. - Preface.