Reading the Old Testament
The past two Sundays I’ve preached from the assigned Old Testament lesson, and plan to do so for the coming two Sundays as well. I’m thankful that a few of you have asked me about the Old Testament, specifically how Christians ought to read and understand it. This is an important question, and I don’t pretend to have a perfectly satisfying answer, but I’ll make a few observations and suggestions that may be helpful.
First, it’s important to understand what the Old Testament is. The Jewish community divides the Old Testament into three sections: The Law (Torah), the Prophets, and the Writings. The Torah includes the first five books of the Old Testament (commonly called the Pentateuch), while the Prophets include Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and “The Twelve” – the so-called “minor” prophets (minor in the sense of “smaller,” not “lesser”). The Writings include Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
Written almost entirely in Hebrew (in fact, especially in discussions with the Jewish community, the Old Testament is often referred to as the “Hebrew Bible,” acknowledging that the title “Old Testament” assumes a Christian perspective. There are, however, portions of both Ezra and Daniel that are written in Aramaic, a “sister” language to Hebrew that was likely the spoken language of Jesus), and spanning roughly 1,200 years (the first Old Testament writing is possibly from 1400 BC, while the final Old Testament book was likely compiled in the mid-second century BC), the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew (and Aramaic) into Greek in the second century BC. According to legend, 70 scholars assembled, and each produced a translation. When they met together, they discovered that each translation was identical. Because of this, the common name of this translation is the Septuagint, or simply LXX (from the Latin “sept,” for “70”).
The translators of the Septuagint organized the books slightly differently, grouping Ruth, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah, and the Chronicles with Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and dividing Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah each into two separate books (thus 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel) to form a “history” section, then adding Daniel and Lamentations (written by Jeremiah) to the Prophets, in addition to making each of the twelve minor prophets independent of each other. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon then formed a section, between the “History” and the “Prophets” often called “Wisdom literature.” Interestingly enough, Eastern Orthodox Christians understand the Septuagint as the inspired text, while most Roman Catholics and Protestants view the original Hebrew writings as inspired by God.
In the second century BC, other Greek writings began to emerge from the Jewish community, but these were never accepted by the Jewish community as inspired scripture. However, many of these writings were appended to the Septuagint, and have found their way into Christian scripture in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bibles. Martin Luther removed these texts, usually known as the “Apocrypha,” from his German translation of the Bible. Anglicans, predictably, have taken a “middle way” approach. In Article VI of the 16th-century 39 Articles, which give the theological orientation of the Church of England, we read about the Apocrypha: “the Church doth read [them] for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” In other words, the books of the Apocrypha can be read like devotional literature, but not for the formation of doctrine. That is why, when we have a reading from the Apocrypha, we end the reading by saying, “Here ends the reading” rather than “The Word of the Lord.”
One of the first conflicts in the early church was how to understand the Old Testament. One of the first heresies in the early church was that of Marcionism, which suggested that the “god” of the Old Testament was lesser than the God of the New Testament. That sentiment certainly exists today. I often hear people say that “The God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and the God of the New Testament is a God of love.” This is Marcionism. Marcion was a bishop and teacher in the second century who discarded the Old Testament completely, and also discarded many parts of the New Testament that were deemed too much like the Old Testament. This prompted the church to reflect on the nature of the Old Testament, and this reflection led them to conclude that the Old Testament is very much the scripture of the church, thus inspired by God and bearing witness to the truth of God. The Old Testament was, and still is, the Bible of the Jewish community. Thus, the Old Testament was the Bible that Jesus read, and the Bible of the early church before the New Testament books were written, circulated, and finally (thanks in many ways to Marcion) identified as inspired by God.
However, the Old Testament can often be problematic for modern readers, especially when God not only condones, but even commands, violence. Here are three suggestions for reading the Old Testament that might help as we wrestle with these difficult questions.
First, read the text as it was intended to be read. This, of course, involves learning about the culture and language of the ancient Near East, and, while every Christian doesn’t need to be fluent in Hebrew and have a degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, there are a wealth of accessible introductions to the Old Testament that can give a basic cultural and linguistic orientation, and also outline how to read and understand the different genres included in the Old Testament.
Second, read the text in the context of the entire Bible, which includes both Old and New Testaments. Christopher Wright, an Old Testament scholar and Anglican priest, points out that, for every passage that describes God as angry and violent, there are more that describe God as loving and merciful. For every passage in which God commands violence and judgment against nations, there are others that call God’s people to bless and serve the nations, with the final vision of the nations streaming to Mt. Zion to worship the God of Israel. For every command given to Israel to attack its neighbors, there are many more commanding Israel to welcome strangers into their land.
Also, understand that the entire Bible forms a narrative, a story, and the Old Testament is a portion of that story. As N.T. Wright points out in his book “Scripture and the Authority of God,” the authors of the New Testament believed that Jesus’ death and resurrection had brought to a climax the story of Israel – a story of vocation to be both a light to the nations and a means to judgment, as well as a story of failure to live up to God’s good intention for them.
Finally, read the text in light of God’s decisive revelation of himself in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. St. Paul writes that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God,” and that, in Jesus, “all the fullness of God bodily dwells.” We see Jesus coming to the assistance of the weak and vulnerable, all the while condemning the self-righteous. Then, finally, we see Jesus take the consequences of sin – the judgment of God in all of the wrath and violence it entails – onto himself, thus breaking sin’s power and, in the resurrection, inviting us into a life of intimacy with the triune God.
Even this, however, is not enough to remove the tension we (or at least I) often feel reading the pages of the Old Testament. Chris Wright, commenting on the brutally painful Canaanite genocide in his helpful book “The God I Don’t Understand,” writes, “Humble submission to the biblical teaching on the sovereignty of God on the one hand, along with robust reflection on the mystery of the cross of Christ on the other, combine to strengthen our faith in the midst of things we do not understand.”
Peace,
Chris