I’ve recently begun researching the use of some OT passages in extracanonical Jewish literature for a dissertation chapter. Six primary bodies of literature are most significant for NT studies:
- OT Apocrypha
- OT Pseudepigrapha
- Dead Sea Scrolls
- Philo
- Josephus
- Rabbinic literature (i.e., Targums, Talmuds, and midrash)
This may raise two questions.
1. Why is extracanonical Jewish literature significant for NT studies?
G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson give five reasons (“Introduction,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament [ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007], p. xxiv, bullet points added) [Amazon | WTS Books]:
How is the OT quotation or source handled in the literature of Second Temple Judaism or (more broadly yet) of early Judaism? The reasons for asking this question and the possible answers that might be advanced are many. It is not that either Jewish or Christian authorities judge, say, Jubilees or 4 Ezra to be as authoritative as Genesis or Isaiah. But attentiveness to these and many other important Jewish sources may provide several different kinds of help. Continue Reading »
Here’s an easy-to-understand illustration from Douglas J. Moo’s Encountering the Book of Romans: A Theological Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002). It’s entitled “The Many Uses of Quotations” (p. 161):
We have encountered several places in Romans where Paul does not seem to apply the Old Testament in quite the way the original Old Testament context would seem to validate. This creates a theological problem. How can a New Testament writer use the Old Testament to claim that something is true when the Old Testament does not even teach what he claims it does? Such a procedure would be like our trying to prove a doctrine from a text that we have misunderstood. Understandably, we would convince few people. Answers to this problem, which theologians have discussed for years, are not simple. In fact, each of the texts has to be taken on its own, because they present different kinds of problems. But one part of the solution is to recognize that New Testament writers sometimes use the Old Testament not to prove a point but to borrow its language and ethos. An illustration will make the point.
When I was young, and my sons were even younger, we often played basketball out on the driveway together. Then I, and they, grew. I became weaker and slower; they became bigger, stronger, and faster. Foolishly, I kept trying to compete. One day, I was playing one-on-one with my third son, Lukas. He had grown to about six feet six inches and 240 pounds, and was a very strong, highly skilled basketball player. I warned him, “Watch out, Luke, I’m going to take the ball to the basket on you!” He shot back, “Go ahead, Dad, make my day.” He was “quoting” the lines of the character Dirty Harry from the movie starring Clint Eastwood. Eastwood, portraying a cop, uses these words to dare a criminal to draw his gun on him. Luke did not have a gun; he was not threatening to shoot me. He did not intend to quote the author’s “original intention,” nor did I think that he was doing so. The language was a striking way of making a point: if I was foolish enough to try to take the ball to the basket on Luke, I could very well suffer the violence that Dirty Harry’s bad guy suffered in the movie. The quotation worked because we both knew the movie; it therefore communicated the point very well. So Paul and other New Testament writers often use Old Testament language. They know that their readers will understand it, and the application of the language often helps them to perceive a situation in a new light. Thus, in Romans 10:18, for instance, Paul quotes Psalm 19:4 not because he thinks that this text speaks directly about the preaching of the gospel to Israel; rather, he quotes it because the words would awaken echoes in his readers’ minds that would lend force to his assertion.
Related: See G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, eds., “Introduction,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), pp. xxiv–xxvi. (Cf. my post on this volume.)
I just read s-l-o-w-l-y through a 44-page article for the third time. (The last time I read it was fall 2006.) In my view this is the most brilliant academic article that D. A. Carson has written:
D. A. Carson. “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the Old and New.” Pages 393–436 in The Paradoxes of Paul. Vol. 2 of Justification and Variegated Nomism. Edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 181. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004.
It richly repays repeated, thorough readings. But be warned: it’s dense. What follows is an uneven summary that doesn’t do it justice. (Read the whole thing. It’s worth the price of the book, which amount to a little less than $1 per page.) Understanding this article will help one make connections between the OT and the NT more richly.
Note: Italics in quotations are in the original. Continue Reading »
I’m planning to write my second dissertation on the use of the OT in a passage in Romans, so I am particularly grateful that Zondervan is publishing this volume:
Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde, eds. Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Counterpoints. Ed. Stanley N. Gundry. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008 (coming November 1, 2008). 256 pp. (More info available here.)
Structure
(The table of contents and an excerpt from chapter 1 is available as a 10-page PDF.) Continue Reading »
This uniquely useful volume was published in November 2007:
Beale, G. K. and D. A. Carson, eds. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007.
- Last year I spent two or three hundred hours proofing it, so I am fairly familiar with it. It is not always scintillating reading, but it is a thoughtful, first-class reference that I will continue to consult often (especially since I am planning to write my dissertation on the use of the OT in a NT passage). I anticipate that many theological journals will publish reviews of this book that will unanimously praise it as uniquely useful. Many reviews may point out minor areas of disagreement, but this is inevitable given the eclectic theological perspectives of the contributors. (E.g., I. Howard Marshall’s Arminian perspective comes through more than once in his comments on Acts.) Continue Reading »
Stanley E. Porter, ed. Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament. McMaster New Testament Studies 8. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.316 pp. $29.00.
In fall 2006 I reviewed the above book, and the review—now available here—was published in spring 2007:
Review of Stanley E. Porter, ed., Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament. Trinity Journal 28 (2007): 153–54.
[I prepared the following book review for D. A. Carson's Ph.D. seminar "The Old Testament in the New" in fall 2006 at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I chose to review this book last year partially because its author, Barnabas Lindars, was Carson's "doctoral father" or mentor for his Ph.D. at Cambridge University. Willem VanGemeren, the director of the Ph.D. program for theological studies at TEDS, had encouraged Ph.D. students to get to know the professor whom they would like to be their mentor for the Ph.D. program. One important way to do that, he suggested, is to read and become very familiar with that professor’s works as well as the works of that professor’s mentor.]
Lindars, Barnabas. New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961. 303 pp. Out of print.
New Testament Apologetic (henceforth NTA) was the first major published work by Barnabas Lindars (1923–91). It was the published version of his B.D. thesis submitted to Cambridge University, where he would later serve as an assistant lecturer (1961–66). (F. F. Bruce adds that Lindars’s B.D. “is not as other B.D.s are; at Cambridge it takes precedence over Ph.D.!” [Review of Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic, Modern Churchman, n.s., 5 (1962): 170.])
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