Sailhamer- The Meaning of the Pentateuch Introduction (pp. 11-14) Revelation and Religion · “Revelation, classically understood, is the divine act of self-disclosure put into written form as Scripture by the prophets.” (11) · “…the classical evangelical view was replaced by one that builds on the notion of the Bible and religion. That replacement came to mean that for evangelicals, a theology of the Pentateuch was little more than a historical reconstruction of what the Israelites once believed rather than what its readers should believe- not a prescription of what its early readers were to understand as their faith, but a description of what ancient Israel once believed .” (12) · “What has the church to do with Israel, how could its message of be applied to the church? What has the church to do with Israel with the OT? The evangelical answer to those questions consisted of a return to the application of NT typology to the OT. Israel in the OT was identified with church in the NT. That