Part One reflects on the Old Testament as literature inquiring about its implied reader. Seitz introduces the phrase "Elder Testament" to establish a wider conceptual lens for what is commonly called the "Old Testament" or the "Hebrew Bible," so that the canon might be read to its fullest capacity.
Part Two provides an overview of the canon proper, from Torah to Prophets to Writings. Seitz here employs modern criticism to highlight the theological character of the Bible in its peculiar canonical shape. But he argues that the canon cannot be reduced to simply vicissitudes of history, politics, or economics. Instead, the integrated form of this Elder Testament speaks of metahistorical disclosures of the divine, correlating the theological identity of God across time and beyond.
Part Three examines Proverbs 8, Genesis 1, and Psalms 2 and 110―texts that are notable for their prominence in early Christian exegesis. The Elder Testament measures the ontological pressure exerted by these texts, which led directly to the earliest expressions of Trinitarian reading in the Christian church, long before the appearance of a formally analogous Scripture, bearing the now-familiar name "New Testament."