LAUSR

the world’ and has equivalents in other Semitic languages (p. 105) from the testimony of the Old Testament itself, and if so, where? Also, is Elohim always ‘generic’ in the Old Testament? Albert de Pury has recently argued that it functions at times as a proper name. The third section of the book, ‘Theological Readings in the Elder Testament’, takes up several literary phenomena in the Old Testament that have exerted a historic influence on the church’s deliberations about the Trinity: ‘colloquies [or conversations among divine persons] in the Psalms, divine agency in creation (Genesis, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes)’, speech about the Son in Hebrews and Old Testament theophanies (p. 261). Seitz seeks to demonstrate that these historically ‘elder’ testimonies still carry an ‘extensional sense’: because of God’s self-consistency, they speak in their own integrity to God’s triune self. Here the book comes closest to thinking biblical discourse and theology ontology together, including and especially in view of christology, yet the overall effect remains impressionistic. Seitz has written a stimulating and substantial work that advances the project of interpreting scripture canonically. In spite of this service, Elder Testament also shows some critical unclarities: theologically, in relating considerations of literary association with theological reference; and editorially, in its shape and its pitch. Besides answering to multiple, noncontiguous purposes, the prose of Elder Testament is cumbersome, and typographical errors litter its pages.