In his book Dominion and Dynasty, Stephen Dempster builds upon von Rad’s insight of “the twin themes of land and posterity” (77) to develop a biblical theology of the Old Testament Canon [or “Tanak”], centered on the recurrent biblical themes of dominion and dynasty.  Essentially, Dempster attempts to advance von Rad’s proposition by arguing that the Tanak is best understood as the inter-relationship between the earth and the peoples of the earth, using the Adam/Adamah interplay found in Genesis.  As the Tanak unfolds, this interplay develops into the inseparable biblical themes of dominion over the Promised Land and the Israelite dynasty descended from Adam, Noah, and the Patriarchs to occupy it.  Dempster attempts to argue his position from a literary – historical approach applied to the text level and purposely excludes the New Testament.  This approach has several advantages: it reduces complexity, increases accuracy, and mitigates Christian bias.  Most importantly, however, it confines the scope of the work to something more manageable.

Dempster analyzes all 39 books of the Hebrew bible, within the framework of the Tanak canon: Torah, Prophets, and Writings.  Most of his analysis centers on the Torah, particularly Genesis, and the writings of the Former and Latter prophets.  Dempster glosses over the Writings, save Daniel and Chronicles which he uses to advance his own arguments.  Unfortunately, due to the share scope of the Tanak and Dempster’s approach, most of Dominion and Dynasty comes across as an Old Testament survey, with digressions that are not adding to the author’s primary argument.  Additionally, some of the biblical data Dempster tries to fit into his model does not fit well, such as his analysis of the Cain and Abel narrative (70) and his general discussions of altar theology (78).

Dempster states that he analyzes the Tanak using a literary-historical approach.  Unlike most applications of this approach which center on a pericope or at most an entire book of the Bible, Dempster attempts to apply it to the entirety of the OT Canon.  In general, I agree with such an approach applied to the OT Canon, but don’t think that he articulates why such an approach has merit, verses other approaches (37).  I accept the subtle assumption that some sort of editor or editors must have assembled the OT books into the OT Canon, much like higher critics argue that an editor such as J, D, P, or E edited together Genesis.  Although higher critical arguments of any particular book are beyond Dempster’s book, the use of higher criticism has some value here.  The principle of dissimilarity certainly applies, as well as what NT Wright calls the principle of “double dissimilarity.”  

Unfortunately, Dempster does not include either analytical approach in his literary-historical analysis.  For example, why would some editor include a book like Judges in the Old Testament Canon?  Dempster acknowledges that some failures occurred here (130) which detract from the Israelite dominion over the Promised Land and Abrahamic dynasty.  Unfortunately, he does not attempt to demonstrate that such dissimilarity actually adds to the integrity of the Canon itself, as an historical collection.  If the contemporaneous book of Ruth then is introduced into the analysis, then one observes double dissimilarity, which improves the overall credibility of the Tanak as Canon, using the literary historical approach.  If Dempster had then applied this analysis correctly, he would have observed the priority of dynasty over dominion.

Beyond such analytical details of the literary historical approach, Dempster should have addressed the issue of the so-called Deuteronomic history, which uses a literary – historical approach as well and had gained some degree of acceptance among critical scholars.  For a work of this type, I am surprised that he did not address it.  Had he done so, his own arguments towards a biblical theology of the entirety of the OT would have been sharper and more focused.

Likewise, the composition and integrity of the Torah, as a single unit of biblical literature deserved significant attention.  He should have explained why he approached Genesis as a single unit and then Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as a secondary unit.  The five books are highly inter-related in authorship, tradition, and historical foundation.  Fortunately for Dempster’s thesis, these books center on the issue of genealogy and hence dynasty; unfortunately, I severely question whether they support the biblical theme of dominion, since the Patriarchs did not realize the promise of the Promised Land.  Rather, I would accept Walter Kaiser’s view that the books project Promise, particularly over dominion.  I understand that Dempster is attempting to fit the Torah into his model, but I don’t think it is necessarily the best fit, using Dempster’s cursory approach.

Does Dempster make his point?  Yes, despite his analysis.  Dominion and dynasty are recurrent biblical themes throughout the Tanak, but there is a gigantic priority of dynasty over dominion which is well established in Genesis and the rest of the OT Canon.  Humanity (and Israel) seems to continuously fail in its dominion but succeeds in bringing forth a dynasty.  To this end, I think that Dempster’s analysis of Genesis 1-9 is simply sloppy (62-75).  After the Fall Adam commands Adam and Noah to multiply, but the command to subdue the earth is ominously absent.  As a result, Dempster over emphasizes dominion which is a constant failure for Israel, rather than dynasty which proves a success through Adam, Noah, and the Patriarchs.

In general, I recommend Dominion and Dynasty as a good book for those interested in a short survey of the Old Testament.  However, I would not recommend it as a scholarly work, since the tools which the author uses to measure and analyze the Tanak are generally ill-defined.  Although I do think that a literary-historical approach to the OT Canon has merit, Dominion and Dynasty neither demonstrates the right tools, nor the right approach.  The tools to analyze the Tanak with such an approach do exist and could be applied, but in fairness to Dempster, such an examination would be difficult, without making numerous simplifying assumptions.  Additionally, I think that more limited OT Canonical studies such as the Deuteronomic History deserve to be updated, given the advances in archaeology and in the methodology of the historical-literary approach, but Dempster’s failure to address such limited approaches adds to the general confusion around the topic.