Old Testament in the New Testament, the

The New Testament proclaims its indebtedness to the Old Testament on the very first page. Matthew begins with an Old Testament genealogy that makes sense only to those who are familiar with the people and events to which it refers ( 1:1-17 ). Thus the New Testament signals at the start an engagement with the Old Testament that touches every page and makes great demands on its readers.

Statistics and Styles of Quotations. The New Testament does not simply express its dependence on the Old Testament by quoting it. The fourth edition of the United Bible Societies' Greek Testament (1993) lists 343 Old Testament quotations in the New Testament, as well as no fewer than 2, 309 allusions and verbal parallels. The books most used are Psalms (79 quotations, 333 allusions), and Isaiah (66 quotations, 348 allusions). In the Book of Revelation, there are no formal quotations at all, but no fewer than 620 allusions.

As far as the styles of quotation, sometimes the New Testament authors employed techniques current among first-century Jewish teachers. These include midrash, a style of expanded narrative with interpretive comments inserted (e.g., Stephen's speech in Acts 7:2-53 ); pesher, a style found particularly in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which Old Testament texts are connected with specific contemporary events (e.g., Acts 2:16 ; Rom 10:8 ); and gezerah shawa, a style in which two or more verses that use the same word in different parts of the Bible are interpreted in the light of each other (e.g., Heb 4:3-7 ). But generally the New Testament authors show considerable independence in forging wholly new ways of reading the Scriptures, based on their revolutionary experience of Jesus the Christ. For instance, Paul's conversion experience revolutionized his attitude toward the Law. After all, obedience to the Law had led him to persecute the Messiah! Following this, he could not continue to read and interpret the Scriptures as before. "Through the law I died to the law, " he exclaims ( Ga 2:19 ). New styles of exegesis resulted, as we shall see below.

New Testament Interpretation of the Old Testament: Legitimate?New Testament "Awareness" of the Old Testament. Many New Testament scholars maintain that the New Testament use of the Old Testament works within a closed logical circle: it depends on Christian presuppositions and reads the Old Testament in a distinctly Christian way (even if employing Jewish methods of exegesis), often doing violence to the true meaning of the Old Testament texts employed. Thus, New Testament arguments based on the Old Testament, it is held, would generally be convincing to Christians but hardly to Jews. If this is true, it will be hard to vindicate the New Testament authors from the charge of misusing the Scriptures.

This approach, however, ignores several crucial features of the use of the Old Testament by the New Testament authors. As numerous studies have now shown, these authors generally assumed knowledge of the Old Testament context from which quotations were drawn. They were concerned to communicate with and convince their fellow Jews, not just to nurture a private faith. They did not want simply to jettison their Jewish heritage, but sought genuinely to understand how the "word" spoken through the prophets related to the new "word" now revealed in Christ (this applies even to Paul, whose "not under law, but under grace" [ Rom 6:15 ] looks at first sight like wholesale rejection of the Old Testament ). Finally, they sensitively explored the Old Testament for points at which its very inconsistencies or incompleteness pointed ahead to Jesus as the answer. It is worth giving some examples of this latter point.

Matthew has a special fondness for the messianic prophecies in Isaiah ( 1:23 ; 2:23 ; 4:15-16 ; 8:17 ; 12:17-21 ) and other prophets ( Matthew 2:6 Matthew 2:17 ; 21:5 ; 26:31 ). He clearly regarded these as incomplete without Jesus.

John focuses his presentation of Jesus around the figure of Moses. One of the arguments he deploys is that even the mighty Moses was unable to deliver Israel from her most powerful enemies: death ( 6:49 ; 8:51-53 ) and sin ( John 8:12 John 8:31-34 ). But Jesus does!