William J. Dumbrell (1926–2016)

This book formed the Moore Theological College Lectures in 1983. It examines 5 themes in Revelation 21-22 which Dumbrell takes to each serve as a window on the Old Testament and indeed the whole bible (see below). This forms the basis for a biblical theology exploration of each of these themes that is trying to answer the overall question: "why is this such an appropriate way not only to finish the Book of Revelation but to conclude the story of the entire Bible?" This makes the book a must read as a general primer on both biblical theology method and on the biblical theology of the themes themselves. Further, Dumbrell argues that each of the concepts is linked to the biblical concept of government: the kingdom of God.… (más)

In “Covenant and Creation”, W.J. Dumbrell undertook an ambitious feat to weave the Noachian, Abrahamic, Sinai, Davidic covenants, and the New Covenant pointed to by the pre-exilic prophets into one cohesive covenant theology of the Old Testament. Although there is no separate chapter on the covenantal relationship between God and Adam (a relationship which Reformed theologians typically called ‘Covenant of Works’), Dumbrell offered an excursus on the topic. In that he ascribed the covenantal relationship to God’s very act of creation itself, thereby critiquing the traditional Reformed treatment as unsatisfactory.

There might be no lack of insightful vignettes in this short work; the achievement was severely hampered by Dumbrell’s penchant for convoluted sentence structure and profusion of relative pronouns. The readability of the book fell victim to opaque meanings in imprecise language.

As a case in point, on page 117, this sentence appears:

“In such a favoured relationship Israel might have been expected to have enjoyed the blessings which would have surely been associated with the notion of the divine presence in what has been defined in Exodus terms as a sanctuary.”

Or, on page 145:

“The immediate military antecedent which had posed a final threat to David’s complete occupancy of Palestine had been the Philistines who had been defeated in a campaign which had been divinely controlled …”

For an accomplished educator, such proclivity for complex sentences is astonishing.

The length of the book does not do justice to the weighty subject Dumbrell tried to expound. However, his treatments on pre-exilic prophets, particularly his corporate understanding of the Isaianic servant songs, are less than cogent.… (más)