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p. 7 The Problem of the Relationship between the Two Testaments

The primary problem for the early church was the relationship between the two Testaments; a problem that took two closely related forms.


The primary focus of the early church’s exegetical concerns was not the New Testament. Even though the New Testament itself (see 1 Peter 3:16) acknowledged that some of Paul’s writings were “hard to understand” and that some people were trying to “twist” (Paul’s teachings) to their own destruction,” the first Christian preachers and teachers were close enough in culture and language to the New Testament to assume an immediate access to its meaning, which could not be assumed with regard to the Old Testament.

The primary problem for the early church was the relationship between the two Testaments; a problem that took two closely related forms.

First was the problem of trying to interpret the story of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ-event for believing Jews who would see the ignominious death of Jesus on the cross as God’s repudiation of his teaching and of the claims of his disciples that he was the Messiah (see Deut 21:22-23).

The first disciples had to interpret that death as part of God’s plan, which was brought to its completion by the vindication of Jesus through resurrection and exaltation at God’s right hand.

In telling the Jesus story, the first Christians attempted to show that the Old Testament itself was the basis for the messianic claim.

This was done in various ways: by presenting Jesus’ birth midrashically so as to show

*that he was the New Moses fleeing a contemporary pharaoh and returning from exile in Egypt as the mediator designation by God to save and form a new people (see Matthew 2); by showing

* that he was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy (e.g., that he was the Suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah (see Luke 4:17-21 in relation to Isa 6: 1-2);

* or by showing how the events of Jesus’ life and death, if properly understood are seen as the global working out of a divine plan that can be discerned only now that it has been fulfilled in Jesus (see Acts 2:14-36).

The second task, even more difficult than showing that the New Testament was a fulfillment of the Old, was that of showing how the Old Testament could be interpreted in terms of the New.

This was necessary if the Old Testament was to be “saved” from those who wished simply to abandon it as either totally irrelevant now that the new covenant had been established in Jesus or as unworthy of the God revealed by Jesus.

The sound intuition of the early church was that the Scriptures that were so dear to Jesus, which had prepared a people for him even if not all recognized him when he came and which had been faithfully held to be the word of God from time immemorial, could not be rendered null and voice—much less, evil—by the final revelation of God in the fullness of time.

On the other hand, it was clear that priority had to be assigned to the New Testament and that the Old had to be brought into a relationship with it that honored the Old but subordinated it to the New.

This is an example of the hermeneutical problem, the recognition that an ancient document is no longer assimilable purely on face values but that it is too significant to be abandoned as irrelevant or assigned merely historical interest. The actualizing of the perennial value of the classical text is the central task of interpretation.

In the New Testament itself the foundations are laid for the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. Paul, for example, skilled as a rabbinical exegete, used the rabbinical techniques of verbal interpretation, so strange to the modern mind, to extract Christological significance from Old Testament passages.

An excellent example of this technique of interpreting words in isolation, without regard of the context, is Paul’s building of a whose promise-fulfillment Christology on the fact that the divine promise of salvation was made to Abraham’s “offspring” in the singular, that is, to Christ, rather than his “offsprings” in the plural (Gal 3:15-18).

Therefore, Christ, by fulfilling the promise, validated the priority of promise over law. Paul also employed allegory, a term used rather inclusively of interpretation based on similarity. For example, in Gal 4:22-31 Paul develops the Old Testament story of Abrahams two wives and their respective sons as an allegory of the relationship between the two covenants, the old being a dispensation of slavery to the law, the nee new a dispensation of freedom according to grace.

Paul’s exegesis of the Old Testament, which he continued to hold in the highest esteem after his conversion, was thoroughly Christological in content even though his methods remained largely rabbinic.

Another interpretive technique that appears in the New Testament itself is typological interpretation. A type is an Old Testament reality (person, place, thing, or event) that is understood from a later perspective, to have been a foreshadowing of a New Testament reality.

For example, Paul sees the rock that Moses struck to provide life-giving water for the Hebrews during the wandering in the desert. (Exod 17:6) as a type of Christ, the source of life for Christians (1Cor 10:4).

In John’s Gospel Jesus himself is presented as interpreting the brazen serpent that Moses lifted up in the desert to save the rebellious Hebrews who had been bitten by fiery serpents (Num 21:6-9) as a type of the Son of man who would be lifted up so that all who believed in him would have eternal life (John 3:14-15).

New Testament typological interpretation of the Old Testament is most strikingly evident in the Letter to the Hebrews, which is a prolonged explanation of how the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New, how the “law has but a shadow of the good thins to come instead of the true form of these realities” (Heb 10:1).

Another New Testament basis for the Christological interpretation of the Old Testament is found in the Fourth Gospel’s presentation of the Paraclete Jesus, according to john, had much to say to his disciples which his earthly companions were not able to bear (John 16:12-13); consequently, subsequent generations of Christians under the influence of the Holy Spirit would have to draw out the full meaning of the Christ-event.

This interpretive activity, authorized by Jesus himself and guaranteed by the gift of the Holy Spirit, would consist partly in showing how Jesus and his messianic activity were already present in the Old Testament.

The fourth evangelist himself is quite explicit in presenting Jesus as the one of whom Moses and the prophets spoke (see John 5:45-47; 12:12-16; 12:38-42).