Snodgrass
Klyne Snodgrass is Dean of the Faculty and Paul W. Brandel Professor of New Testament Studies at North Park
Theological Seminary in Illinois. He holds the
from Columbia Bible the from Trinity Evangeli-
cal and the Ph.D. from the University of St.
Andrews. He also studied at and Tubingen universi-
ties. His articles have appeared in such journals as New Testament Studies, Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Covenant Quarterly, and The Second Century. He has also authored The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mohr [Siebeck]) and Between Two Truths
Chapter Fourteen
The Use of the Old Testament
in the New
No subject is perhaps more important for the understand- ing of the Christian faith than the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament. The Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures were, of course, the only Bible the early Christian thinkers and writers had. Many of these Christians were transformed Jews and would have known Hebrew. Other early Christians would have known the Jewish Scriptures only in Greek translation. Regard- less of their language, however, all Christians would have been engaged in relating the two most important realities of their
Scriptures and Jesus Christ.
At every point early Christians attempted to understand their Scriptures in the new light of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They used the Old Testament to prove their Christian theology and to solve Christian problems. The Old Testament provided the substructure of New Testa-
ment The Old Testament also provided the language
and imagery for much of New Testament thought, although this is not always obvious to a casual reader. Therefore, New Testament concepts must be understood from Old Testament passages. Virtually every New Testament subject must be approached through the contribution of the Old Testament. As Augustine observed, "The New Testament is in the Old concealed; the Old Testament is in the New
However, not everything in the Old Testament is brought into the new faith. There is both continuity and discontinuity the Old Testament and the New Testament. That is, while some parts of the New Testament are direct extensions of the Old Testament message, some parts of the Old Testament
410 I Snodgrass
message have been superseded. Even so, none of the New Testament writers ever suggests that the Old Testament is less than fully the Word of God.
The analysis of this continuity and discontinuity is a much
more fascinating and intriguing study than many people have realized. Too often Old Testament texts are considered as only so many prophecies to be calculated and at which to marvel. Any serious reading will show that the way the New Testament uses the Old Testament is far different from what we expected or have been led to believe. The New Testament writers have been disturbingly creative in their use of the Old Testament. Not only do New Testament quotations of the Old Testament sometimes differ from the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures on which our translations are based, the New Testament writers also have applied texts in surprising ways. For example, why does Matthew 2:18 view Jeremiah 31:15 as a prophecy of Herod's slaying of innocent babies, while Jeremiah's words obviously relate to the Babylonian invasion of Judea? Do the New Testament writers twist the Old Testament Scriptures, as some have
In addition to being fascinating, the study of the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament is comprehensive and demanding. To enter this arena is to be engaged in studies on the history of the text. Serious study requires the knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic because one has to compare the New Testament wording with the Hebrew text, the Septuagint (the translation of the Old Testament into Greek), information from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the targums (Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament), and other Jewish or Christian uses of the Old Testament. Do not think that this is an exercise in tedium, however, for the use of the Old Testament
in the New Testament also engages a person in hermeneutics, exegesis, and theology, study that in many cases will require adjustment of previous conclusions. How the Old Testament is viewed is the theological issue dividing many Christians. Dispensational theology, which views God as operating in different ways in different eras, and covenant theology, which emphasizes the unity of God's action throughout history, divide from each other and also from other approaches specifically over this
Our subject also has the potential of being a troublesome one. There are issues here that have not been treated adequate-
Use of the Old Testament in the New I 411
We often proclaim our theories about Scripture in the abstract, but the use of the Old Testament by New Testament
writers raises questions about our theories. Are all the discus-
sions about inerrancy or other labels irrelevant in view of the
selectivity by which the New Testament writers use the Old Testament? Obviously there are numerous Old Testament texts that were and are ignored by Christians, and we would argue
that many are not to be Why?
BRIEF HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The question of how the Old Testament should be appropriated exists already with the teaching of Jesus. His way of reading the Old Testament angered the religious authorities, for he did not focus on sabbath keeping and laws of purity as they did. In fact, according to the Gospels, Jesus appeared to flaunt violation of the purity code by touching lepers, a woman
with an issue of blood, and corpses, and by eating with defiled people (note especially Mt 8-9 in contrast with Lev 13;
and Ezr 10:11). He argued that sin defiled a person, not eating with unclean hands (Mt 15:10-20). Mark 7:19 extends Jesus'
teaching so that all foods are So much for dietary laws!
Jesus focused on the intent of the law in the love commands and on the theme of mercy. Still, he claimed that none of the
Scripture was set aside (Mt 5:17-20) and complained that the
Jewish authorities substituted human traditions for the com-
mands of God (Mt In Luke 24:44-45 the risen Christ
claimed that all three sections of the Hebrew Scriptures (law, prophets, and writings) find their fulfillment in him. He then
opened the mind of his disciples to understand the Scriptures.
Clearly the issue both for the earthly and risen Christ is how the Hebrew Scriptures are to be interpreted correctly. The usual reading of the religious authorities was not sufficient.
The same question dominated the life of the early church. When asked whether he understood the text from Isaiah 53, the
Ethiopian eunuch replied, "How am I able unless someone
should guide me?" Beginning from that text Philip then proclaimed Christ to him (Ac 8:26-35). This account points both
to the way in which the early church interpreted
the Old Testament and to the need of guidance in understand- ing.
412 I Snodgrass
how to treat the Old Testament commands on circumcision. At the "Jerusalem Council," surprisingly, explicit Old Testament commands on circumcision were set aside because of Christian experience and other Old Testament texts focusing on the inclusion of the Gentiles (Ac 15). One can well ask how Paul
could say, "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is
nothing, but keeping the commands of God is what counts"
7:19), when circumcision was obviously an Old Testament
command. Clearly it was no longer a relevant command for him. Still, the discussions of law in the epistles to the
and to the Romans show how much the debate continued over the right use of the Old Testament. However, even when conclusions were drawn that a command was not binding, they were made from the Old Testament itself and with no thought of nullifying the Word of God.
In the second century a radical solution to the problem of the Old Testament emerged. of Sinope, influenced by Gnosticism, argued that the whole Old Testament should be rejected, even though he found value in some sections of the Old Testament. Marcion repudiated the God of the Old Testament as the creator of evil and sought to separate Christianity from anything Jewish. Consequently, he accepted as canonical only Paul's epistles (excluding the Pastorals) and the Gospel of Luke. In addition, he expurgated sections of these books that he felt were influenced too much by the Old Unfortunately, there are still those around who are essentially Marcionite in their approach.
Most Christians, thankfully, did not follow Marcion. Instead, they sought to extend the interpretive practices of the New Testament writers and appropriate the Old Testament for Christian purposes in new ways. The Old Testament was combed for passages that could be understood of Christ and his church. Christians used the Old Testament to teach morality, to
explain who Jesus was, and to provide illustrations of Christian
thought. Unfortunately, however, usually there was little historical sensitivity or treatment of extended texts. Instead, the Old Testament was viewed as prophecy about Christ, as providing types of Christ, or as holding hidden ideas and
symbols that may be spiritually understood through
Martyr, for example, and numerous others found references to Christ in places most of us could hardly imagine. The stone cut out without hands in Daniel 2:45 was understood
The Use of the Old Testament in the New I 413
as a reference to the Virgin Birth. Nearly every stick, piece of wood, or tree was understood as pointing to the
In the centuries that followed, the Old Testament and New Testament were interpreted along two diverge New Testament paths. The School, represented by John
and Theodore of argued against allegorizing and engaged in fairly straightforward exegesis. Far more influential, but far more unacceptable from a modern view- point, was the Alexandrian School represented by and Augustine. This school engaged in allegorical exegesis, by which a spiritual meaning could be assigned to a text, especially if that text were Allegorizing made it easy to read Christian theology into Old Testament texts. Allegorical exegesis was dominant until the Reformation and is still encountered today as pastors read into texts spiritual meanings that have nothing to do with the original purposes of the authors.
The Protestant reformers turned away from allegorical exegesis to focus on the plain meaning of the text, although Martin Luther on occasion still allegorized. Both Luther and John Calvin were aware of the unity and the differences between the Testaments. Luther stressed the discontinuity between the Testaments because of his distinction between law and gospel. Calvin, on the other hand, focused on continuity between the Testaments and argued for a "third use" of the By this he argued what Luther was not ready to accept, that the law still has a role in guiding Christian morality. These differences in understanding the Old Testament have character- ized the followers of Luther and Calvin to the present day. How the Old Testament should be viewed in relation to the New Testament is still a matter of debate. In his Two Testaments:
One Bible, D. L. Baker presented eight modern solutions to the
problem of the relation of the Some of these solutions, such as that by A. A. Van Ruler, place priority on the Old Some are much more negative in the assess- ment of the Old Testament, such as the view of Rudolf Bultmann, for whom the Old Testament is the necessary presupposition of the New Testament, but in actuality is only a
history of Israel's The other solutions all view both
Testaments positively, but vary in the degree to which they see