Category Archives: Old Testament

Goldingay: the destruction of the Canaanites

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With regard to the parts of the Old Testament that record, encourage, or even command violence, a frequent response is that we should interpret them with a ‘Jesus hermeneutic’.  Trouble is, Jesus didn’t seem to find these accounts nearly so problematic as we do.

Distinguished Old Testament scholar John Goldingay (not exactly a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist) puts it like this:-

‘Many modern people don’t like the way the book portrays Joshua’s leading Israel in killing many Canaanites, but there is no indication that the New Testament shares this modern unease.

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A legacy of violence?

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In his book Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did, Derek Flood claims that OT texts which represent God as encouraging, or even commanding, genocide ‘have been used repeatedly by Christians to justify genocides, beginning with the crusades and continuing up to present times.’

Flood mentions the Crusades, the killing by Oliver Cromwell of large numbers of Irish Catholics, the slaughter of many native Americans, and the killing of nearly a million Tutsies in the Rwandan genocide. …

How do we get from the Old Testament to Jesus?

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Allan Moseley poses seven questions that can help us to see how the Old Testament points to Jesus.

  1. Is the passage referred to in the New Testament?  For example, Habakkuk 2:3 is directly quoted in Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38.  Sometimes, however, the allusion is not so straightforward, as when, according to Matthew 2:23, it had been written ‘the prophets’ that Jesus would be called ‘a Nazarene’.
  2. Does the OT passage address a theme that is also addressed in the NT?
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Evidence of an early proto-church?

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I’m been giving some thought to the subject of ‘undesigned coincidences’ in the Bible.  One of the pioneers of this field of exploration was J.J. Blunt, in his book Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings both of the Old and New Testaments. (published 1847; enlarged edition 1869)

Blunt presented evidence that suggested to him the possibility of a gathered people of God before the time of Moses.

Calum Miller summarises:-

Suggestion that there was an early proto-church [Blunt calls it a ‘Patriarchal church’] despite this never being mentioned:

a.…

Ten reasons we need the Old Testament

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Summarising this post by Jason De Rouchie:-

  1. The Old Testament (OT) was the Bible of Jesus and the apostles, Mt 5:17; Lk 24:44; Acts 24:14; 2 Tim 3:15.
  2. The OT shapes our understanding of key biblical truths.  It includes many promises whose fulfilment is recorded in the New Testament (NT).  It is key to our understanding of, for example, creation (Gen 1:1-2:3) and of substitutionary atonement (Isa 53).  The NT repeatedly explains itself by means of references to the OT.
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Praying the Psalms politically

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John Goldingay writes:-

In his book Where Your Treasure Is: Psalms that Summon You from Self to Community, Eugene Peterson studies “psalms that shaped the politics of Israel and can shape the politics of America” [or Great Britain]:

2            the unselfing of America
87          unself-made
110        unself-centered
93          unself-government
46          unself-help
62          unself-assertion
77          unself-pity
14          unself-righteous
82          unself-serving
114        unself-sufficient
45          unself-love

He comments, “writing about prayer is not prayer; neither is reading about it.…

Who are ‘the righteous’ in the Psalms?

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On a number of occasions, David and the other psalmists claim for themselves an innocence that appears to be unwarranted.  Was not David guilty of grievous sins, and did he not know it (Psa 51)?  Are we all not at best forgiven sinners, for whom protestations of innocence are always and entirely out of place?

This issue is helpfully discussed by Christopher Ash in Volume One of Teaching Psalms (chapter 6).  Here’s a summary.

We meet those who can be referred to as ‘righteous’ as early as Psalm 1:5.…

Jesus’ view of the Old Testament

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See also: Christ and the Bible (John Wenham), chapter 1, the substance of which is available in the form of this article.
There is overwhelming evidence that Jesus regarded the Old Testament scriptures in an entirely positive light in respect of their inspiration and authority.  The following summary of this evidence comes from The Topical Analysis of the Bible (ed. Elwell).

1. Christ Affirmed the OT’s Historicity

a) The Historicity of OT Persons

(1) Abel, Matt.…

Jesus in the Old Testament

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This is an unpopular thought in some academic circles; but it is the clear teaching of our Lord himself.  As Goldsworthy says: ‘We do not start at Genesis 1 and work our way forward until we discover where it is all leading.  Rather we first come to Christ, and he directs us to study the Old Testament in the light of the gospel.’ (According to Plan, p55)

On the road to Emmaus, Jesus preaches on the theme of ‘The Things Concerning Himself’, taking as his text Moses, all the prophets, and all the Scriptures (Luke 24:27).  …

Preaching Christ from the Old Testament

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How can we preach Christ from the Old Testament?  Sydney Greidanus outlines seven ways:-

1. Redemptive-historical progression—seeing the message of the passage in the context of redemptive history from beginning to end, especially following the progression of redemptive history as it moves forward from the text’s historical setting to Jesus’ First and/or Second Coming.  [Example: Gen 3 and the ‘Fall’, finding its remedy in the saving work of Christ]
2. Promise-fulfillment—showing that the promise of a coming Messiah was fulfilled in Jesus’ First Coming or will be fulfilled in his Second Coming.  …