Author: Andrew Perriman

Reading the Old Testament as a Christian means reading it on the basis of two broad hermeneutical commitments: a commitment to the interpretive perspective of the New Testament, and a commitment to the particular theological (and for that matter cultural and philosophical) convictions that shape us as church today. On the one hand, we believe that the New Testament gives us the definitive account of God’s engagement with humanity. On the other, we appreciate the fact that we are also the product of our history and culture and that this affects how we understand and evaluate an ancient text such as the Old Testament.
The first commitment raises a number of questions about the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. How is the Old Testament used by the writers of the New Testament? Which version did they use? Why do quotations sometimes differ from the text of our English Old Testaments? What difference would it make if we spoke of the “Jewish scriptures”—or perhaps better, of the scriptures of Jesus, Matthew, John, Paul—rather than of the Old Testament? If the New Testament provides the hermeneutical key for unlocking the intrinsically or implicitly “Christian” meaning of the Old Testament, what form does that key take? Do the New Testament writers merely quote more or less relevant proof texts for their own purposes, or do they intend to invoke the larger arguments, narratives, and even meta-narratives from which the quotations have been taken? What are the underlying assumptions that we make regarding continuity or discontinuity? Is it simply that a religion of “law” is superseded by a religion of “grace”? Or that prophecy is followed by fulfilment? Is the Old Testament merely a long collection of oracles foretelling the coming of the world’s Lord and Saviour?
The second commitment raises questions about the relationship between the Old Testament and the worldview of the modern Christian reader. What factors other than our understanding of the New Testament shape our reading of and reaction to the Old Testament? To what extent are we now able to endorse the way in which the New Testament writers used the scriptures? Should we read the Old Testament in the way that Jesus or Luke or Paul read these texts, using their culture-bound interpretive tools and criteria, or are we bound to apply a different set of tools and criteria? How do we deal with the sometimes quite sharp clash between the Old Testament worldview and our enlightened, liberal-democratic, scientifically informed view of things? What are we to do with the large expanses of text that appear to have no relevance to our own circumstances as modern believers, regardless of what the early churches might have made of them?
In both cases we are ostensibly asking about how we read the Old Testament, but in practice the exercise is reflexive. We cannot ask what it means to read the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament without re-examining the New Testament in the light of the Old Testament. Equally, we cannot ask what it means to read the Old Testament from the position of the modern believer without permitting the Old Testament to critique our theological, cultural and philosophical assumptions. To keep things manageable we will restrict ourselves to the first set of commitments and within that frame consider specifically the question of the relationship between Christ and the Old Testament. But the basic question I want to keep in view is this: Which comes first, which has priority—the old or the new? Should we assume that the “Christian” New Testament determines how we read the Jewish Old Testament? Or is it at least as important—perhaps more important—to let the Old Testament determine how we read the New Testament?

New Testament first
On the road to Emmaus, for the benefit of the two disciples, the risen Jesus interpreted “in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk. 24:27). A Christian reading of the Old Testament would naturally want to discover what these things were. In what ways do the scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, speak about the Jesus who was crucified under Pontius Pilate? The New Testament catalogues a large number of instances where the fulfilment of God’s purposes for salvation is foreseen or anticipated in the scriptures. The sacrificial system prefigures Jesus’ atoning death. Isaiah predicts the coming of a messiah, born of a virgin, who will be “God with us”. Exodus and exile foreshadow the greater salvation that will be achieved through Jesus’ death. Prophet, priest and king are types of the coming messiah. The Law by which the old covenant is structured provides the dark judgmental background to the revelation of a covenant of grace. Abraham is justified by faith. In view of these extensive correspondences, it would appear to be a natural and fruitful methodology to investigate the relationship between the two parts of the canon along these lines—so inevitable and so fruitful, in fact, that it easily becomes the dominant hermeneutical model for reading the Old Testament. We are led to the conclusion that the value of the history of Israel is to be discovered principally in the fact that it points ahead—in various ways: prophetically, typologically, antithetically—to the eventual coming of Jesus.
Theologically this sounds unobjectionable. The problem is that the retrospective approach, working backwards from the New Testament, greatly restricts the scope of our interest in the Old Testament material. Like a focused searchlight it illuminates isolated portions at the expense of the whole. It does not force us to ask questions about the shape of the whole. The methodological weakness is widespread: we typically start out from a particular understanding of the New Testament and we impose that grid on the Old Testament. Some of the Old Testament material may fit the grid quite comfortably, but much of it either gets bent out of shape in a heavy-handed attempt to make it fit, or left out altogether. Sayings, arguments and stories may be taken out of context to illustrate or expand upon some point of Christian belief or practice. Other passages are effectively allegorized to yield meaning compatible with our theologies. Peter Enns gives the rather ludicrous example of the preacher who reads Genesis 31:22, “On the third day Laban was told that Jacob had fled”, and explains that it refers to Christ, who was raised on the third day and fled from the grave. But the effect is to reduce the Old Testament to the status of an unnecessarily long—and perhaps just unnecessary—preface to the New Testament. I would not be so great an overstatement to say that most pastors and teachers could happily manage without the Old Testament.
Here is the nub of the matter. It is all very well reinterpreting and recontextualizing Old Testament texts to serve the interests of New Testament interpretation or contemporary piety—the authors of the New Testament appear to do it themselves occasionally. But what are we missing? What is left in the shadows? And might not that material, once it has been brought into the light, change how we read the New Testament? What I will argue is that the Jewish scriptures are straining to tell a story—on their own terms, in their own fashion—that extends quite fittingly, quite consistently, into the events surrounding the life and death of Jesus and the emergence of the churches, and the interpretation of these events that we find in the New Testament. But the story that is told forwards is not quite the story that is told backwards. In other words, I would challenge Enns’ statement that “the New Testament authors were explaining what the Old Testament means in the light of Christ’s coming”. Jesus does the opposite: he interprets his death and resurrection in the light of the scriptures.

Beginning with Moses and the Prophets
I suggest that what we have in the Old Testament is the story of Israel’s troubled relationship with the nations and the spread of hopes that this experience generates. Abram is summoned by God from the place of empire to be the father of a great nation following the differentiation of humanity into linguistically distinct people groups, into nations. We know that these nations will be blessed through him, but we should also note that from the start Israel’s relationship with other peoples is expected to be problematic: God will bless those who bless Abram and dishonour those who curse him (Gen. 12:1-3). The Exodus is a journey from oppression in Egypt to the displacement of the Canaanite nations in order that the family of Abraham might have its own land. Israel is to be YHWH’s “treasured possession among all the peoples” (Ex. 19:5). Punishment for disobedience will come ultimately in the form of invasion, military defeat, destruction, subjugation, and exile (cf. Deut. 28:36-68). The people demand a king “that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Sam. 8:20). David is assured that YHWH will defeat his enemies and establish his house and his throne for ever (2 Sam. 7:9-16). Exile and the prospect of domination by imperial powers provide the climactic developments for the Old Testament narrative, and these themes carry over into the literature of second temple Judaism. Much of Old Testament “theology” is forged in the furnace of these political conflicts.
The restoration of Israel following the catastrophe of divine judgment is clearly a central theme in the Prophets, but the clash with pagan empire left its mark on the theme of restoration in some important ways.

1. Diaspora Judaism has become a significant factor. The experience of the people in exile becomes paradigmatic and formative for Jewish communities throughout the pagan world. The point is therefore made in concrete terms that the clash with pagan empire does not happen only in Judea, that it has become possible to witness to the eschatological sovereignty of Israel’s God from positions embedded deep within the oikoumenē.

2. Israel was always tempted to worship the gods of the nations, but following the exile the problem was experienced as one more of enforcement than of choice. The connection between the two is apparent in Deuteronomy 28: if the people “go after other gods to serve”, they will be scattered among the nations and will “serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known” (Deut. 28:14, 64). The outstanding example is the violent attempt made by Antiochus Epiphanes to “compel the Judeans to forsake their ancestral laws and no longer to live by the laws of God” (2 Macc. 6:1; cf. Dan. 11:29-35).

3. The enforcement of idolatry has raised the prospect of persecution and martyrdom. Daniel was delivered, but when Antiochus Epiphanes made war against the saints of the Most High, he prevailed over them. Many of the wise among the people stumbled “by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder” (Dan. 7:21, 25; 11:33)—among them the old man Eleazar, the seven brothers, and their mother, whose excruciating torments are described in 4 Maccabees 6-15. Increasingly, righteousness is defined as a matter of resisting those pagan powers which threaten the integrity of God’s people.

4. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great and with the sometimes aggressive spread of Hellenism, apocalypticism becomes the dominant literary-religious means by which Israel articulated its resistance to foreign domination.

5. The question of who rules Israel has become much more acute. If Israel is in exile or under occupation, it cannot be complacently assumed that YHWH is still in control. The forceful affirmation of monotheism that emerges in Deutero-Isaiah serves a political need: Is the God of Israel powerful enough to defeat the Babylonian empire and lead his people back to Judah? The good news to Zion is that “Your God reigns” (Is. 52:7).

6. The outcome of the clash between Israel and empire is not merely that God’s people will be rescued from the disastrous consequences of their sin. It is that the whole arrangement between Israel and the nations will be turned upside down. Israel will no longer be the tail but the head (cf. Deut. 28:13, 44). Through the salvation of Israel the supremacy of YHWH in the geo-political arena will finally be established, when every knee bows and every tongue swears allegiance. The nations will bring tribute to Zion, they will serve the purposes of Israel’s God, they will seek wisdom and justice from him, they will bless themselves in him (Jer. 4:3). Israel’s king will be given authority to judge and rule over the nations (Ps. 2:7-9; 110:1-7). When the imperial oppressor is judged, persecuted Israel will be given “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Dan. 7:14, 27).

So where does the story leave us? Perhaps we can put it something like this. Through the trauma of exile Israel has learned that its God really is the only true God, sovereign over the nations. It has come to believe that YHWH will be honoured by the nations, and that YHWH’s king will rule over the nations from Zion. But it has also learned that this vision will be achieved through a righteous servant community that is prepared to suffer for the sake of the foreseen victory over the nations. Peter Leithart makes the point: “Yahweh scattered citizens of His empire among the nations for a reason, not just to teach Israel a lesson but to begin forming a martyr-people whose faithful resistance would remake Gentile empire.”

How to read the Old Testament in the New Testament
There is, of course, more that could be said, but it is not too difficult to see how the New Testament might pick the story up from here. We will look at some examples of how it does so in a moment—first, Matthew’s use of the Immanuel prophecy to explain the significance of Jesus’ conception; secondly, the claims that Jesus makes about his own place in the story through prophetic language and action; and thirdly, the story that Paul tells about Jesus in Philippians 2:6-11. Before we get to this, however, there is a general point to be made about how the New Testament brings Old Testament narratives into play.
Richard Hays is usually credited with having introduced the notion of intertextuality or intertextual echo or metalepsis into modern New Testament studies. The argument is that when one text is quoted in another, the rhetorical effect is likely to be greater than the meaning that the quoted material has in its new context. The quotation potentially brings with it much of the context from which it is taken. It’s rather like pulling a button off a coat and finding that are piece of the surrounding fabric has been torn off with it. Or it’s like a woman who turns up at a job interview with a crowd of family, friends and neighbours—you get more than you bargained for, but they are part of who she is. Hays puts it this way: “When a literary echo links the text in which it occurs to an earlier text, the figurative effect of the echo can lie in the unstated or suppressed… points of resonance between the two texts.”
Of course, because so much goes unstated or suppressed, it is always going to be difficult to know to what extent the original context is relevant for understanding the meaning of the quotation or allusion in the new context. Steve Moyise differentiates between a diachronic approach to the interpretation of quoted material and a synchronic approach. The diachronic approach gives priority to the context of origin. “On this view, a quotation is not just someone else’s words but a vehicle for transferring meaning from one context to another.” The synchronic view is that the meaning of a quotation “derives from the role or function the words have in the new work, not what they once meant to someone else”. He compares it with the process by which the meanings of words change. The word “gay”, for example, used to mean “cheerful” but now means “homosexual”. The analogy works up to a point, but when “gay” is used today, it is not as a quotation from a different context.
A quotation is rather like an adopted child. Does she derive her identity from her family of origin or from her adoptive family? The reality is that over time the child becomes increasingly integrated into the new context—her “meaning” changes. But if we want to understand the circumstances of the adoption, its impact on the child and the families involved, both contexts need to be taken into account. The following readings will assume that when the New Testament quotes or alludes to passages from the Old Testament, it is likely that the reader is meant to hear far more than is explicitly stated.

Matthew tells the story: the “Immanuel” prophecy
As Matthew narrates the birth of Jesus, Mary is “found to be with child from the Holy Spirit”, Joseph resolves to divorce her, and he is told by the angel to give the boy the name Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sins”. All this took place, Matthew tells his reader, to fulfil what God had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us)” (Matt. 1:21-23). Commonly this would be taken to mean, first, that Jesus was God by virtue of a miraculous conception and, secondly, that he would save all people from their sins. But if that’s what Matthew is saying, then his use of Isaiah 7:14 is problematic. Stephen Fowl notes that making “the communicative intention of Scripture’s human authors the primary goal of theological interpretation will unnecessarily and unfortunately truncate Christian’s abilities to read Scripture theologically in several important respects”. He thinks that Christians naturally want to read a passage such as Isaiah 7:14 as having reference to Christ, or John 1 and Philippians 2:6-11 in the light of Nicene dogma, even though it “seems extremely unlikely that our best approximation of the communicative intention of Isaiah… will address these matters”. This seems to me an unnecessary admission of defeat. I suggest that reading forwards from Isaiah, rather than backwards from theological assumptions about the significance of Jesus’ conception, will open up a much better understanding of the relationship between the two texts.
The birth of the boy who will be called “Immanuel” to a young woman, perhaps a virgin (though Isaiah makes nothing of this), will be a sign to king Ahaz that the threat currently posed by the kings of Israel and Syria will come to nothing. Before the boy reaches the age of moral responsibility, “the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted” (Is. 7:16). He is one of three boys mentioned in this passage who have significant names, who are “signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts” (Is. 8:18). The other two are Isaiah’s own sons, and the likelihood is that Immanuel was also born within the community of Isaiah’s disciples (cf. 8:16). Because the people were faithless at this dangerous time, God would send against them the army of the Assyrians, which would flood Judah like a swollen river; but in the end Jerusalem would be saved and the enemy thwarted because “God is with us” (8:8, 10).
If we start here, with Isaiah’s historical narrative, rather than with the doctrines of incarnation or personal salvation, we might read Matthew’s account of the events surrounding Jesus’ conception differently. The point would be that the manner of Jesus’ conception was likewise a sign—an even more remarkable sign—that at a time of crisis God was present with his people to deliver. This is not an argument against the virgin conception. It is an argument about the meaning of the virgin conception. In Isaiah the naming of the “sign” child is central to the prophecy, and it is important to note that Matthew’s “all this took place” (touto de holon gegonen) includes not only the unexpected pregnancy but also the instruction to Joseph to “call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins”. It is both the conception and the meaningful naming that constitute a “fulfilment” of Isaiah’s prophecy about the boy Immanuel.
The reason we struggle to reconcile this with our normal dogmatic starting point is that our theology has no real place in it for a historical crisis. The hermeneutical change of direction illustrated here would push us to read the New Testament as an extension of the Old Testament narrative rather than to read the Old Testament as a preface to New Testament theology. We would have to understand the birth of Jesus, therefore, as least as Matthew has retold it, as a decisive intervention in the story of Israel. After all, he is to be given the name “Jesus” not because he will save the world but because he will save his people from their sins.

Jesus tells the story: Son of God and Son of Man
To speak of Jesus as a prophet may appear to devalue him, but much of what he says and does puts him firmly in the category of biblical prophet (cf. Matt. 13:57; 14:5; 21:11). Like Isaiah he speaks in parables as a sign of judgment against a stubborn and rebellious people—“Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste…” (Mk. 4:10-12; cf. Is. 6:8-12). Like the prophets he pronounces “woes” against the corrupt or complacent leadership of Israel (Matt. 23:1-36; cf. Is. 5:8-23). He evokes the ferocity of Jeremiah’s denunciation of the temple system when he acts out impending divine judgment in the temple by overthrowing the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons (Mk. 11:15-17; cf. Jer. 7:11).
Arguably, the most important prophetic drama that he staged was a statement not of what God was about to do but of his own role in the unfolding story of God’s people. The entry into Jerusalem was an enacted prophecy of his own kingship. In Matthew the event is interpreted with reference to two Old Testament texts. Presumably Jesus meant the people of Jerusalem to understand his arrival in the light of Zechariah 9:9:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

There is a debate to be had about whether either Jesus or Matthew understood this returning king to be, in some manner, YHWH himself, but the basic point can be made with some confidence that the “publicity stunt” presupposes an Old Testament narrative structure of judgment, restoration, and the defeat of the enemies of God’s people—not least the sons of “Greece” (Zech. 9:13). If Borg and Crossan are right that on the same day, on the other side of the city, Pontius Pilate would have been riding into Jerusalem at the head of a military procession that demonstrated “both Roman imperial power and Roman imperial ideology”, the subversive force of Jesus’ highly “political” act becomes all the more apparent.
The crowds respond with the acclamation “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt. 21:9). Psalm 118, from which these words are taken (118:25-26), tells not Israel’s story but the story of Israel’s king, who is surrounded by hostile nations but is delivered by God: “The right hand of the LORD does valiantly, the right hand of the LORD exalts, the right hand of the LORD does valiantly!” (15–16). The king shall not die but shall live (17). He is one of the righteous who enters through the gate of the Lord (19-20). He is the stone rejected by the builders, who has become the cornerstone (22).
Arguably the most remarkable prophetic statement in the Gospels is Jesus’ response when asked by Caiaphas whether he is “the Christ, the Son of God”: “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:64).
Jesus appears here to have twisted together two Old Testament strands. The imagery of the “Son of Man… coming on the clouds of heaven” comes from Daniel 7:13-14. Following the destruction of the fourth beast-empire before the throne of God, Daniel sees a figure in human form, “one like a son of man”, coming “with the clouds of heaven” to receive from the Ancient of Days “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him”. Although opinions differ as to how this vision is to be understood, it seems to me that the angel identifies the human figure as the group of the saints of the Most High—faithful Jews, against whom the overweening and blasphemous pagan ruler makes war (Dan. 7:23-27).
The second strand is drawn from Psalm 110:1: “The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Earlier in the week he had quizzed the Pharisees about their understanding of who the Christ was. Whose son was he? When they replied that he was the son of David, he pointed out to them that in Psalm 110:1 David calls “Lord” the person to whom God says, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet” (Matt. 22:41-44). So if David calls him “Lord” or “master”, how can he be his son? They don’t have an answer to this riddle, and the exchange ends there. But we need to follow the trail of thought forwards, all the way to Jesus’ response to Caiaphas. The one who is instructed to sit at the right hand of God is told to rule in the midst of his enemies; God will “shatter kings on the day of his wrath” and will “execute judgement among the nations” (Ps. 110:2, 5-6). We may safely assume that Caiaphas would not have been slow to grasp the political implications of Jesus’ retort.

Paul tells the story: Philippians 2:6-11
In his “lament against the king of Babylon” Isaiah records the ambition of the dead king to ascend to heaven, to set his throne above the stars of God, to ascend above the clouds, claiming, “I will be like the Most High” (Is. 14:13-14 LXX). But now the oppressor of the nations has been crushed by God; the “exactor” and “taskmaster” over Israel has ceased (14:4-5).
A similar story is told in Ezekiel 28 about the ruler of Tyre. His heart was exalted, and he declared, “I am a god; I have inhabited a dwelling place of a god in the heart of the sea”. But the word of the Lord in response to this blasphemy is that “you are a man and not a god” (Ezek. 28:2 LXX). Because he has made his heart “as the heart of a god”, God will bring the nations against him; they will bring him down, and he will “die by the death of the wounded in the heart of the sea”. Will he still boast then of being a god before his executioners? No, for he is a man and not a god (28:6-10). At the climax of his systematic assault on Judaism it is said of Antiochus Epiphanes that he “will become angry and will be exalted against every god and will speak strange things against the God of gods” (Dan. 11:36). In Daniel’s vision of the vindication of “one like a son of man” Antiochus is the little horn on the head of the fourth beast, who will “speak words against the Most High” and make war against the “saints of the Most High”. The divine court will sit in judgment over him; his authority will be destroyed; and “the kingdom and authority and greatness” of all the kingdoms under heaven will be given to the “people of the saints of the Most High” (7:19-27). We may add to this picture the account in 2 Maccabees 9:5-12 of the final degraded condition of Antiochus. Bent on destroying Jerusalem, he is suddenly afflicted with severe internal pain, falls from his chariot, and suffers extensive injuries. Worms break out of his eyes, his flesh begins to rot away, and the stench is so strong that his litter-bearers are unable to carry him further. This is naturally interpreted as fitting divine judgment on a king who had imagined, “through super-human boasting”, that he could act the part of God, commanding the waves of the sea and weighing the mountains in a balance. In the end, broken in spirit, he concedes that “It is just to be subjected to God and for a mortal not to think things equal to God.”
The extensive overlap between these portraits allows us to construct a composite archetype: a pagan ruler makes it his ambition to become a god, to be like God, to have a mind equal to the mind of God; he desires to surpass or displace the God of Israel, to ascend above the clouds, to set his throne in the heavens; he is aggressive towards Israel; but he is judged by God, brought down, humiliated; and in the end he is shown to be nothing more than a man, subject to death and the corruption of the flesh.
The relevance of this figure for understanding Paul’s compressed account of the story of Christ in Philippians 2:6-11 is plain. If we exclude such background Old Testament narratives from consideration, we are likely to read verses 6-7 as a statement primarily of ontology or identity: Jesus is in the form of God but empties himself of his divinity. But if we bring the blasphemous pagan ruler into view, it becomes an argument about authentic kingship. It is not the self-aggrandizing pagan king, whether the king of Babylon, the Prince of Tyre, Antiochus Epiphanes, or finally Caesar, who would rule the nations, to whom every knee would bow and every tongue confess, but the one who refused to grasp at equality with God, who made himself of no account, not an emperor but a slave, who was obedient even if it meant a humiliating death on a cross because he was regarded as a threat to good order.

Do the narratives line up?
I suggested that the Old Testament narrative leaves us with the expectation that the relationship between Israel and the nations would be turned on its head, that Israel’s God would be confessed by the nations, that Israel’s king would judge and rule the nations, and that this transformation would not come about apart from the suffering of the righteous. The story that has been told through a very limited selection of New Testament texts, through which Old Testament narratives are brought into play, is that at a time of severe national crisis God is with his people to judge and to deliver, that Jesus himself will be the one who suffers and is vindicated, in anticipation of the suffering and vindication of his followers, that he will come to rule over a renewed people of God, and that eventually Jesus and not any divinized Caesar will be confessed as Lord by the nations, to the glory of Israel’s God. I suggest, therefore, even on this limited evidence, that the narratives line up very well. By reading forwards, rather than backwards, we arrive at a degree of narrative coherence that escapes us if we simply go looking for “Christian” or New Testament meanings and foreshadowings in the Old Testament. This does not necessarily invalidate traditional approaches—the hermeneutics is inevitably more complex than the argument here suggests. But I think there is something fundamentally compelling about an approach that gives full weight to the historical priority of the Old Testament.