Testimony to Otherwise: The Witness of Elijah and Elisha

I am delighted that Conrad Kanagy has agreed to reprint this little book. I find myself returning, again and again, to the Elijah-El-isha narratives as the most interesting and most compelling materials in the Old Testament. While the title of the book was, at the outset, rather incidental and not particularly intentional, in retrospect it is exactly on point, featuring two quite freighted terms. First, consider that these several narratives are indeed testimonies; that is, they intend to bear witness to a wholly new experience and memory. Second, consider that the other term in myeral narratives is indeed a testimony; that is, they intend to bear witness to a wholly new experience and a new memory. Second, consider the other term in my title..."Otherwise." The Elijah-Elisha narratives are otherwise on two counts. They are different in their genre. Whereas the prophetic accounts are cast as narratives, the royal data are constructed as a chronicle, the disciplined, learned work of scribes who sought precision and predictable detail. It is fair to say that in these royal recitals, not much interesting or surprising happens beyond wars and building projects, the stuff of royal governance and grandeur. But "testimony" is quite different from "chronicle." It is marked by surprise that runs beyond scribal predictability and royal control. It attests to otherwise...otherwise to a predatory economy, otherwise to top-down political power, otherwise to exploitation of the poor, and otherwise to parsimony toward the vulnerable needy." And now the church, alongside the synagogue, is entrusted with this same vitality. Much too often, we in the church in the United States have been allied with dominant powers. And we continue to be so now, as the church is much too enthralled by the royal chronicle and those whom it empowers. This may indeed be a moment when the church, as the synagogue, may invest in the spellbinding memory of Elijah-Elisha as the proper material for our witness and testimony. After all, the good news of the gospel must not be contained within the horizon of the royal chronicle in a way that hides the offer of an alternative way in the world." -Walter Brueggemann