Gerhard von Rad (1901-1971) has surely been one of the world's most influential theologians says the scholar Hans Walter Wolff in the Foreword to this volume. Von Rad wrote one of the two most important treaties in the field of Old Testament theology to appear in the twentieth century and changed the way we read the Old Testament. He shook the foundations of traditional theology in a beneficial way by showing us that the Old Testament is not a book of systematic theology but confessional statements about God's action in Israel's history. He believed that as the Israelites saw God's great saving deeds in their lives they recorded them preserved them recited them.