A Theological Approach to the Old Testament: Major Themes and New Testament Connections

A Theological Approach to the Old Testament

Major Themes and New Testament Connections

Leslie C. Allen

A THEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE old testament

Major Themes and New Testament Connections

Copyright © 2014 Leslie C. Allen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

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isbn 13: 978-1-62564-249-3

eisbn 13: 978-1-663087-463-6

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Allen, Leslie C.

A theological approach to the Old Testament : major themes and New Testament connections / Leslie C. Allen.

xii + 206 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 13: 978-1-62564-249-3

1. Bible—Old Testament—Theology. 2. Bible—New Testament—Relation to the Old. I. Title.

BS1192.5 A45 2014

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/29/2014

Permissions

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, with the Apocrypha, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® [2011]. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

When cited as (GNT), Scripture and additional materials quoted are from the Good News Bible © 1994 published by the Bible Societies/HarperCollins Publishers Ltd UK, Good News Bible © American Bible Society 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992. Used with permission.

Scripture quotations marked (NJPS) are from the Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures—The New JPS Translation according to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Copyright © 1985 by the Jewish Publication Society. Used by permission from University of Nebraska Press.

Ideas as discussed in Types of Actualization in the Psalms, from The Spirit and Spirituality: Essays in Honour of Russell P. Spittler, © W. Ma and R. P. Menzies (eds.), 2004, T. & T. Clark International, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, have been used with permission.

Preface

This book has grown out of a lecture course given at Fuller Seminary in Fall 2012 as part of the Korean Doctor of Ministry program. Since a script was required, to be translated into Korean and given to the students, it lent itself to development into a book. The course was titled Biblical Theology of the Old Testament for Pastors. It was a companion to my colleague Seyoon Kim’s Biblical Theology of the New Testament for Pastors. So from the start, consideration of the other Testament was envisioned. We were a bit like the two groups of engineers, digging Hezekiah’s tunnel from either end, each focusing on their own side but deliberately working toward the other. In my case, regular forays were (and here are) made into NT material without, I trust, intimating that this is the OT’s only value. But, as one purpose of the book, I do hope to show what the NT looks like from the perspective of the OT—a perspective nuanced by the Second Temple literature that bridges them. The themes and subthemes of the OT (and the roles that go along with them), and also theological exegesis of key OT texts (with references indicated in bold type) are the organizational means employed for presenting the OT. It is hoped that this introductory book will be of use not only to pastors but also to students and indeed to any thoughtful reader of the Bible.

English versification of biblical texts is used in the book. The final form of OT literature is the basis of discussion, with a postcritical perspective that accepts moderate historical criticism.

I am grateful to Cascade Books for agreeing to publish the book and especially to K. C. Hanson in his editorial capacity, Jeremy Funk as copy-editor, and Ian Creeger as typesetter. As always, I need to express my appreciation of the unstinting help given me by the librarians at Fuller’s David Allan Hubbard Library, especially Genalyn McNeil and Gail Frederick. Susan Carlson Wood, Technical Editor and Writer at Fuller, has done her usual sterling work in adapting the manuscript to fit the publisher’s standards for publication.

Abbreviations

AB Anchor Bible

AGJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums

BDB Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1907

BNTC Black’s New Testament Commentaries

BO Bibliotheca Orientalis

BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin

BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

ConBOT Coniectanea biblica: Old Testament Series

gnt Good News Translation (Good News Bible)

HB Hebrew Bible

HBT Horizons in Biblical Theology

HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs

IBC Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

ICC International Critical Commentary

IDB The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by G. A. Buttrick. 4 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1962

JQR Jewish Quarterly Review

JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series

m. Mishnah

NICOT New Interational Commentary on the Old Testament

NIGTC New International Greek Testament Commentary

niv New International Version

njps New Jewish Publication Society Translation

NovTSup Novum Testamentum Supplements

nrsv New Revised Standard Version

NT New Testament

OBT Overtrues to Biblical Theology

OT Old Testament

OTL Old Testament Library

PTMS Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series

reb Revised English Bible

SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series

SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

SOTSMS Society for Old Testament Studies Monograph Series

TOTC Tyndale Old Testament Commentary

TSAJ Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum

TynBul Tyndale Bulletin

VTSup Vetus Testamentum Supplements

WBC Word Biblical Commentary

1

Introduction

The task of the church is to hear the Old in the light of the New, and the New in the light of the Old. So Christopher Seitz has well said. ¹ To fail to accomplish that double task is to ignore the truth for the Christian church that the Old Testament is incomplete without the New, and the New Testament incomplete without the Old. The title Old Testament that Christians give to the Jewish Hebrew Bible (a term short for Hebrew-Aramaic Bible) sends a clear signal. ² It indicates a perspective that finds adequate room for the New Testament as the sequel that depends on the contribution of the Old. To speak of the Old Testament is to utter an unfinished sentence. ‘Old’ is not a temporal term only, but a term pointing to a character understood only in relationship with a second witness. ³ Most Christian treatments of OT theology leave the NT on the edge of their discussion, if they discuss it at all. Indeed, the sheer mass of material in the OT pushes them toward that limited viewpoint. However, trying to take seriously Seitz’s comment obliges us to keep one eye on the NT as we go along, valuing the OT as an essential part of the Christian Bible, even while respecting it for its own sake and studying it on its own terms. There is an obvious tension between staying faithful to the OT’s own concerns and broaching NT developments, but both perspectives are equally necessary. The use of the OT by the NT is not a substitute for Christian theological reflection on the OT in its own formal integrity. ⁴ Indeed, John Goldingay has observed that "only when the theologian is not concerned about the contemporary relevance of his study is he likely to do justice to the Bible itself." ⁵ At the close of the book, we will reverse the process of prioritizing the OT and examine the use of the OT in the NT by placing emphasis on the NT itself in some general conclusions. Overall, in turning from OT to NT, our aim is to show what the NT looks like from an OT perspective.

We should not make our study a purely academic exercise. We must never forget J. S. Whale’s challenge to respond to the Bible in a confessional spirit: Instead of putting off the shoes from our feet because the place whereon we stand is holy ground, we are taking nice photographs of the burning bush from suitable angles.⁶ Nor can we ignore the exhortation of the Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson in the prologue to his poem In Memoriam:

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell, That mind and soul, according well, May make one music.

Such an approach to the OT is vital, for pastors and laity alike. The way Elmer Martens has defined the importance of biblical theology is relevant: Biblical theology poses for the church the question whether or not the church still adheres to its founding document and functions in keeping with it.⁷ In focusing on the OT aspect of biblical theology, it is hoped that this book will especially encourage pastors to preach more from the OT in their services and give it more prominence in the teaching programs of their churches. Christians under their care should come to realize that they cannot live without the OT because they have discovered its depth of meaning and relevance for the life of faith. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that pastors, at least in the United Kingdom and the United States, do not know what to make of the OT and find it easier to stick to the NT, which has the advantage of directly addressing Christians. (I have noticed too that they tend to have an even smaller canon within the NT canon, by restricting themselves to those parts of the NT that accord with traditional faith and contemporary culture.) If I may give a personal testimony, in my early forties, as a lay preacher, I was so appalled by the blatant ignoring of the OT in the pulpits of the churches I knew that I made a vow to God to preach and teach in churches only from the OT as much as possible. When assigned a NT text, I decided I would use it as a window to a corresponding OT text and truth. If I, as an OT specialist, did not do so, who would?

Biblical Theology

Biblical theology is a strange, hybrid creature. It developed historically from Christian systematic or doctrinal theology, while in turn systematic theology was based on the Christian creeds rather than directly on the Bible. As John L. McKenzie provocatively stated, most of the Bible is irrelevant to systematic theology.⁸ Accordingly it does not get reflected there. The hybrid nature of biblical theology is that it presents a synthesis of systematic theology and biblical texts. James Barr has defined biblical theology as a sort of intermediate activity between normal exegesis of the individual texts and the regulative decision-making of doctrinal theology. He rightly affirmed that biblical theology has to depend upon detailed exegesis and submit to its authority.⁹ It will not do to subordinate the Bible to systematic theology by simply finding in the Bible proof texts for Christian theology. In fact, biblical theology is more a kind of historical theology than a systematic one.

The Part That Exegesis Plays

How does the synthesis between theology and exegesis work out in practice? The answer varies according to the particular biblical theologian. The two giants of OT theology in the twentieth century, Eichrodt and von Rad, gave different answers. Eichrodt adopted a systematizing approach to the OT and tended to relegate to footnotes lists of texts that backed up his careful conclusions. Von Rad, on the other hand, gave much more space to exegesis of texts in presenting his views and so was able to accommodate the diversity of those texts in his work. Rolf Rendtorff has written approvingly about von Rad’s approach: The theological interpretation of the OT must not exempt itself from a scholarly examination of the texts; it must be developed and justified in the light of that examination, difficult though this venture may often be.¹⁰ Von Rad himself wrote: Theology’s interest in exegesis and the methods of understanding used there is a keen one, because it is here that the decisions which are important for it are taken. It cannot unfold itself without constantly referring to detailed exegesis and its results, and it only becomes trustworthy as it constantly allows the reader to see exegesis, which is its proper basis.¹¹ In turn, our own investigations will give prominence to key OT texts that push theology to the fore and will study them in the light of their contexts. This approach will be of especial benefit to pastors, who habitually use texts as the basis for their sermons, and who encourage their congregations to read and study the Bible for themselves.

Biblical Theology Defined

Robin Routledge has given a helpful definition of biblical theology as having four characteristics:

1. It seeks to engage with the biblical text in its own right, rather than forcing a structure on it.

2. It accepts the text as divine revelation.

3. It focuses on the canonical text as a whole, looking for synthesis and coherence within the OT and in the relationship between the OT and the NT, while not ignoring the considerable diversity.

4. It is concerned with the theological content of the text and its application to the life and practice of the church.¹²

Paul’s Definition of Old Testament Theology

We find a definition of OT theology in the NT itself. In Rom 9:4–5 Paul gave his own survey of it in terms of Israel’s eight theological privileges, as B. W. Anderson has pointed out.¹³

1. Their adoption refers to their election out of all nations as God’s special family.

2. Glory is the presence of God among Israel, especially in the sanctuary.

3. Covenants reflect Israel’s unique relationship with God through the covenants with the patriarchs, Moses, and David, and the promise of a new covenant.

4. The giving of the law highlights the revelation of God’s will for Israel’s life through Moses.

5. Worship is Israel’s religious response to God’s glorious presence in the temple.

6. The promises have Abraham especially in mind, to whom were promised the land, posterity, and a relationship with God through which the other nations would be blessed. They also include the promises made to Israel and the world through the prophets.

7. The patriarchs look back to the fundamental beginnings of God’s relationship with Israel.

8. The Messiah, by way of climax, looks forward to a particular eschatological promise via Davidic kingship, now claimed to be fulfilled in Jesus.

A Thematic Approach

Some OT theologians divide their work into separate discussions of books. Paul House has done so in his Old Testament Theology, though he is also sensitive to themes. So have Kevin Vanhoozer and his collaborators in the volume he has edited, Theological Interpretation of the Old Testament, and Marvin Sweeney in his Jewish theology of the Hebrew Bible, Tanak. The advantage of this approach is that it follows the progression of the biblical text step by step. However, it is problematic in that it restricts comparison between books. As Barr complained: How am I to know how [theological study of one book] relates to the theology of any or all of the books?¹⁴ Presumably this is why Rendtorff divided his own theology into two parts, the first dealing with individual books and the second with themes.

Other scholars opt for a purely thematic approach, such as Routledge, William Dyrness in Themes in Old Testament Theology, and Victor Matthews in his Old Testament Themes. From a wider biblical perspective, so do Charles Scobie in The Ways of Our God and James Mead in Biblical Theology. The advantage of a thematic approach is that it permits a natural focus on theological particulars and also comparison and contrast with aspects found in various books. It is difficult to appreciate a theological perspective unless one relates it to presentations in other biblical books. However, there is a drawback to this approach. Walter Brueggemann has complained that thematic approaches lack literary continuity: they fail to communicate the open-ended vitality of the text.¹⁵ In turn, Brevard Childs raised a concern about taking texts out of their context.¹⁶ Perhaps the study of themes is the lesser of two difficult decisions or at least a better initial approach to the OT as a whole. Certainly a thematic approach does justice to the diversity of OT theology by bringing to the fore complementary and contrasting aspects in a challenging and comprehensive way.

Theological themes may be especially relevant for the OT because so much of it consists of material that we do not find easy to translate into the stuff of theology, such as narrative or rhetorical poetry. We cannot ignore narrative or poetry. The NT letters would be terribly incomplete without the Gospels and Acts. And yet, as Barr has written, citing Dietrich Ritschl, it is easier to speak of Pauline theology because in Paul there are detailed declarations, arguments and definitions that we can follow.¹⁷ He wryly went on to suggest this was the reason why the Reformers focused on Paul’s theology! Not much of the Bible is written in Paul’s reasoning style of theology. In both the NT Gospels and in much of the OT our task is to extrapolate theology from narrative and metaphor.

This book reflects a commitment to a thematic approach. We will be studying the two main themes of the OT, creation and covenant, and how they go on to interact with NT perspectives. We will begin with creation because that is where the Bible starts. The two themes will be broadened out into subthemes: wisdom as a subtheme of creation, Israel’s religion and the Davidic covenant as subthemes of God’s covenant with Israel, and internationalism, which mostly develops the theme of covenant and partly the theme of creation. Then some of the relations between the two themes of creation and covenant in the OT will be discussed. Finally, we will turn expressly to the NT and present some general considerations of its interpretation of the OT that lie beyond the study of specific themes and subthemes.

The Primary Importance of the OT

The Christian Bible begins with the OT, while the NT presupposes the OT and builds upon it. There could have been no NT without the OT. Barr was right: For Christianity . . . it seems essential that the Father of Jesus of Nazareth was the One who in ancient times was the God of Israel and that the matter of the OT is a valid testimony to the being and nature of that God.¹⁸ I do not come to the OT to learn about someone else’s God, wrote Childs, but about the God we confess, who made himself known to Israel . . . I do not come to a hitherto unknown subject, but to the God whom we already know.¹⁹ C. S. Lewis wrote provocatively in the foreword to his wife Joy Davidman’s book on the Ten Commandments: The converted Jew . . . has taken the whole syllabus in order, as it was set, eaten the dinner according to the menu. Everyone else is, from one point of view, a special case, dealt with under emergency regulations.²⁰ We Gentiles, for whom the Israelites were our ancestors (1 Cor 10:1), have a lot of catching up to do. The NT gives the impression that its writers presuppose a shrewd knowledge of the OT. They not only quote its texts but also allude to them in ways that are tantalizing and cryptic to those of us who are unschooled in the OT. It will not satisfy the inquiring Christian mind to ignore the OT or even to simply start with the NT and look back at the Old. That would be to put the cart before the horse. The best way to understand the Bible is to retrace God’s footsteps, at the canonical pace of his revelation, and come to see the church as God’s people in continuity with Israel. The NT is the next installment in an ongoing serial story. We need to know yesterday’s happenings in order to understand today’s sequel and get ready for tomorrow’s.

What was God doing before he revealed himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Or, as a child once put it, before God became a Christian? He was playing the role of the God of Israel. And we in turn should learn to play the role of Israel as we read the OT. I myself realized this perspective only gradually. For six years in the course of my academic career I was required to turn to teaching Judaism, along with Hebrew and Aramaic. I understood my task in teaching it to Christian students as one of teaching them to be good Jews, in order to give them the empathy they needed to appreciate Judaism. When I resumed teaching the OT, I came to see that correspondingly my primary task was to teach the students to be good Israelites and to listen to the God of Israel revealed in the OT as their God. Israel’s story, because it is God’s story, becomes our story. That is the canonical way God intends for us to prepare to become good Christians. The Christian creeds have not served us well in jumping from Genesis straight to the NT. The definition of the word God is already thirty-nine books long by the time we reach the NT, there to be lengthened in another twenty-seven books.

Yet we Christians have a problem with the OT, a problem that Christian believers in NT times never had. No longer has the OT the impact on the contemporary Christian that it had in the early Christian period. Then the Bible was only the OT. The OT was the primary and authoritative written revelation of divine truth. Now the NT writings share that role. In practice they have stolen the limelight from the OT. So the OT is left with a secondary role, and it has less impact on Christian readers. Yet the NT regards itself as the legitimate continuation of God’s written revelation. Accordingly its present-day readers lose out if they in turn do not take the OT seriously. So often does the NT appeal directly to the OT for support or speak in OT categories that we fail to understand what the NT means if our knowledge of the OT is deficient. We cannot ignore the fact that for the NT the OT passages it cites are Scripture. In our turn we must embrace that conviction, along with the NT’s own awareness of its continuity and discontinuity with the OT.

As to the continuity between the OT and the New, the basic doctrines of the NT are already set out in the Old. There we read amply of creation, election, the covenant relationship, salvation, blessing, sacrifice, sin, grace, forgiveness, and moral living. The OT is a virtual theological dictionary, which we need in order to explain and illustrate the New. In fact, Barr, citing Manfred Oeming, points to places where [the OT] represents a plus as over against the New and thus complements the latter: aspects such as monotheism, creation, the personal conception of God, the language of prayer, joy in nature, in husband and wife and children, in good eating and drinking—and also deep skepticism and desperate accusation of God.²¹ The OT has much, much more to offer to the believer than the NT explicitly finds in it.

The this-worldly perspective of the OT sounds a distinctive note for readers used to the predominant otherworldliness of the NT. Goldingay has observed: In the incarnation the OT’s this-worldliness is presupposed and vindicated²² and "the ‘worldliness’ of the OT as a whole reflects its conviction that humanity’s redemption by God releases us to live life in the world, which God created, not out of it."²³ Dietrich Bonhoeffer prized the OT because of its this-worldliness. He wrote from prison that

in recent months I have been reading the Old Testament much more than the New . . . It is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything seems to be over that one may believe in the resurrection and a new world . . . In my opinion it is not Christian to want to take our thoughts and feelings too quickly and too directly from the New Testament.

He wrote later of the this-worldliness of Christianity:

I don’t mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection. I think Luther lived a this-worldly life in this sense.²⁴

Bonhoeffer was well aware of the loss as well as gain that the NT represents, and so of the wisdom of a Christian canon that embraces both Testaments.

Does the OT Have a Center?

A concern of twentieth-century OT theologians was to try to find a center for their subject, although the variety of their proposals became clear evidence of the difficulty of such a task. The center they were looking for was, as Reventlow has defined it, a basic idea or central concept, something that was capable of summarizing to some extent [the OT’s] entire theological content.²⁵ A center like this is a unifying topic that integrates all other topics, a controlling theme all the other themes depend on or are substantially linked with. It is like the hub