Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament

Book

Stanley E. Porter, ed. Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.

Reviewer

Derek Suderman, Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo, ON

Drawn from a 2003 colloquium at McMaster Divinity School, this collection of essays tackles how New Testament writers use the Old Testament. An introductory essay by Stanley E. Porter and a concluding scholarly response to the papers by Andreas J. Köstenberger provide a helpful orienting perspective and summation.

Two essays dedicated to general topics introduce the volume. Dennis L. Stamps seeks to clarify terminology, contrasts “author-centered” and “audience-centered” approaches, and describes persuasive rhetoric in the early church period. R. Timothy McLay introduces issues concerning canon and scripture, and identifies “pluriformity” as “an essential characteristic of the Scriptures of the early church” (55).

Michael P. Knowles (Matthew) and Porter (Luke-Acts) both argue that the evangelists’ interpretive perspectives not only center on but derive from Jesus himself. Craig A. Evans (Mark) and Sylvia C. Keesmaat (Ephesians, Colossians, and others) place these documents within the political milieu of the Roman Empire to striking effect. Paul Miller (John) and Kurt Anders Richardson (James) describe the use of OT characters, while James W. Aageson (Romans, Galatians, and others) and Köstenberger (pastorals, Revelation) provide contrasting perspectives on reading epistles.

The range of foci engages the reader, and Köstenberger’s responses prove helpful, providing additional information or a contrasting perspective. His adamant response to Aageson’s paper is particularly striking and underscores significantly divergent methods and assumptions, as well as perspectives on the implications of Paul’s hermeneutics for the contemporary Christian community.

This said, the volume’s overarching author-centered perspective prompts an uncritical assumption of continuity that, in my view, should be reconsidered.

Early in the volume Stamps appropriately criticizes the idea that “NT writers use the OT” because it is “anachronistic to speak of the OT when referring to the perspective of the NT writers since the differentiation between old and new had not yet occurred” (11). Though he suggests “Jewish sacred writings” (11) as an improvement, repeated statements in the rest of the volume about how NT writers, and even Jesus himself, use the “OT” reflect the prominence of such anachronism.

Indeed, the difficulty runs deeper than Stamps suggests. While the writers in this book attempt to uncover the intentions and hermeneutics of Luke, Paul, and even Jesus, these biblical figures neither read an OT (which implies a NT) nor consciously wrote Scripture (they sought to interpret the one(s) they had).

Even the common designation “NT writers” proves historically anachronistic; the most that can accurately be said is that these people wrote what later became the NT. More attention to how Scripture is designated within the NT would have raised this issue and strengthened the volume.

The book’s orientation leaves potentially significant discontinuities unexplored. For instance, what should we make of Paul’s distinction between his own opinion and elements “from the LORD,” once his writing becomes part of a NT? Should our reading of his epistles be affected by this transformation into scripture, a shift that transcends his “original intent”? The description of “Paul’s shorter epistles” as “rang[ing] from Paul’s supposedly earliest epistle to those seemingly written so late that Paul was dead when he composed them” (182) suggests further difficulties with an exclusively author-centered approach.

What of the shift from Luke’s two-volume work (Luke-Acts) to a “gospel” and a non-“gospel” separated by John, or the Emmaus story’s claim that the disciples see Jesus in “the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms” only through an impromptu Bible study led by the risen Lord? Unfortunately these writers do not address such discontinuities at historical, literary, and canonical levels.

A collection of essays has the benefit of various perspectives and the drawback of limited flow. The papers here are well written, engaging, and accessible for interested people with some background in the subject matter. While most essays do not focus on implications for contemporary interpretation, individual chapters would be helpful as supplements or orientation for studying a specific NT book. Several essays also situate themselves within broader scholarship, which proves particularly beneficial for the non-specialist.

Overall, these writers do an admirable job of tackling a significant, complex issue. However, although the volume explores how “NT writers used the OT,” it proves less satisfying for “Hearing the OT in the NT.” While the latter implies the perspective of a two-testament Scripture, most essays here seek to uncover the pre-NT use of Scripture (not OT!) by writers of what later became the NT. Thus, this volume serves an author-centered approach well, but it does not address discontinuity in the transformation from “authorial writings” to Christian Scripture.