"And Now for Something Completely Different "
That phrase, the opening line for each episode of the groundbreaking British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus, might well describe this book, for it is not a standard introduction to the Old Testament. This book should be treated instead as a thought experiment that investigates the question, "What does the Old Testament teach us about moral development?" The answer that I will develop over the course of the book is that it calls us to develop wisdom to live in a complex world full of competing voices. This is, in short, what I am calling the moral story of the Hebrew Bible. In fact, I will go further to suggest that reading the Old Testament as Hebrew Bible actually initiates its readers into a process of moral development, the end point of which is wisdom.