How new is the New Testament?

How new is the New Testament?

How is it that the Old Testament (OT) seems to predict the coming of Christ?  Was the OT inspired by the God revealed in the New Testament (NT)?  Could be, but an answer internal to the Bible itself is persuasive.  The Gospel writers looked backward more than they looked forward, reinterpreting the experience of Jesus, which none had firsthand, as the fulfillment of OT prophecy.  Almost any statement about a good man who suffered, such as the suffering servant songs of Isaiah 52-53, was put to this use.

The Gospels were written no earlier than 40 years after the death of Christ.  Mark was written in about 70 CE, John about 100 CE.  Educated men wrote them in Greek.  The apostles were uneducated, probably illiterate, who spoke Aramaic.  The Gospels were written to make sense of the fact that the Messiah, who was supposed to be a mighty warrior who would liberate the Jews, died a miserable and degrading death by crucifixion. 

Even that seems to have been predicted by the OT, which says that if a man is guilty of a capital crime “you hang him on a tree.” (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)  Acts refers to this passage three times (5.30; 10.39; 13.29).  The principal goal of the NT was to transform a humiliating death into the liberation of humankind from the grip of death.  The OT provides plenty of evidence for this reinterpretation.

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53.5)

It certainly sounds like the prophet Isaiah was talking about Jesus.  But was he? 

Hardly any passage of the Hebrew Bible is and has been of such fundamental importance in the history of Jewish-Christian debate . . . or has played such a central role in it, as has the fourth Servant Song of Second Isaiah.  Nor has any other passage experienced such different and sometimes mutually exclusive interpretations as this one. (Schreiner, p 419)

For example, it is said that the term pierced (כָּ֝אֲרִ֗י [karah], Strongs Hebrew 3738) is a metaphor for the ravages of leprosy (Zondervan).  About that, I can’t judge, but it’s worth remembering that the context of Isaiah is not that of the NT.  Or today.

The key OT sources that seem to predict a Christ-like figure are:

• Isaiah 52-53
• Psalm 22
• Zachariah 1

Mark’s portrayal of the crucifixion alludes to Psalm 22.  The mocking crowds, their sarcastic suggestions that God should deliver him, the casting of lots over his garments, and Jesus’ final cry “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” are all taken from the Psalm.

They have pierced my hands and feet . . . they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.  (Psalm 22:16-18)

In the years following Christ’s crucifixion, Christian scribes composed what can only be called a midrashic or interpretive account of his death, portraying his suffering and death as the fulfillment of prophecy,   

We know little that is certain about Christ’s life and death.  The Gospels reflect an oral, and now lost written tradition (the hypothetical Q source), whose general outline is beyond doubt.  However, a brief mention by the historian Josephus (93-94 CE), and an even briefer mention by Tacitus in his Annals (116 CE), are all the written evidence independent of the Gospels.*  They state that Jesus lived in Judea at the time Herod was ruler, and it is there he was crucified.   What is clear is that his death was reinterpreted by the NT, so that his abjection became a victory over death itself, a sacrifice made “according to the scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

Matthew: a Jew reinterprets scripture

Almost every important event in Matthew takes place to fulfill scripture.

By far the most prolific quoter among the gospel writers, Matthew is intent on certifying that Jesus is, beyond any possible doubt, the messiah foretold by the prophets. Writing as a Jew, for Jews, he seeks to bolster the identity of a sect that finds itself increasingly at the margins of Judaism (Galambush, p 88**).

The date of composition is around 75 C.E. (though some set it as early as 60 C.E.) after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple but before a definitive parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity. Matthew sees the debate over Jesus as a debate within Judaism over whether Jesus is the Messiah.  His opponents are Pharisees, not Jews.  Matthew understands himself as involved in an internecine debate among Jews.  

This is seen most clearly in his comment that those who refuse to listen “be to you as a Gentile.” (Matthew 18:17)  Matthew’s self-identification as a Jew is taken for granted.  Those who disagree are like Gentiles and tax collectors.  In other words, only non-Jews would disagree.

Matthew still thinks like an observant first-century Jew.  He assumes that the Jesus movement is still Jewish.  Luke must argue for it. 

In his own day, Matthew wrote to resist attempts to disenfranchise his own, marginal form of Jewish belief. In the course of history, he turned out to have written the prescription for the church’s disinheriting of the Jews. (p 99)

Luke: disagreement over Jesus is like sibling rivalry

Luke treats the disagreement over whether Jesus is the Messiah as a case of sibling rivalry.  Jesus has gone about announcing God’s forgiveness to prostitutes and tax collectors, while respectable, elder-brother types like the Pharisees are offended.

As Mary (1:46-55) stated, God “has exalted those of low degree, but the rich he has sent empty away.” Once again God lifts the lowly while restraining the proud.   

Throughout the gospel, Luke has finessed the problem of Jewish antagonism toward the Jesus movement by his theme of division within Israel: The Jewish people were not hostile to Jesus and his message. On the contrary, Israel was already divided between the humble, who were open to God’s message, and the proud, who rejected it. (p 121)

Not all Jews, but the arrogant were hostile to Jesus.  Israel was already divided between those open to God and those closed in by greed and hypocritical purity.  This is the true basis of the division among the Jews over Jesus.

It is in Luke’s account of the crucifixion that the theme of Israel’s division based on status is most apparent.  The “chief priests and rulers” hand over Jesus to the Romans, but “a great multitude of the people” follow weeping as he goes to the cross.  In general, the people follow Jesus, while those in authority loathe him. 

Jesus points out that he fulfilled all that prophets had foretold

Unique to Luke’s account is the appearance of the risen Jesus to the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:25).  Jesus reproaches them not only for not recognizing him but for failing to see that all that happened to him had been foretold in the OT.  “Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” (24:44) 

Luke’s rhetoric is a tour de force of the first order. He has moved from arguing that Jesus fulfills the biblical prophecies about the Messiah (one can understand Jesus by seeing how he conforms to the model of scripture) to having the resurrected Jesus explain the “prophecies about him” in the Bible (one understands scripture when one sees how it conforms to the model of Jesus). (p 123)

No longer does scripture set the standard.  Jesus sets the standard for scripture.  Indeed, Jesus supplants Torah, which is now measured by how well it conforms to his life. 

John: does Jesus become God?  

John is unique among the gospels, the only one to seemingly equate Jesus with God.  The elaboration of Jesus’ identity is the topic of the gospel: not what Jesus did, but who he is.  His miraculous healings are not to help the sick; they are to prove his identity.  His identity is God.  “I and the Father are one” (10:30).  Not only is Jesus the way to the Father (14:6).  He is the Father. 

Jesus’ identity with God is stated most dramatically in his proclamation, “Before Abraham was I am.” (8:58)  His audience would have recognized the reference to the Hebrew scriptures, where Moses asks God what he should be called.  God replies, “I Am Who I Am.” (Exodus 3:14) When Jesus claimed the name “I am” for himself, his listeners heard blasphemy and tried to stone him, only Jesus slipped away. 

A equally well-known episode occurs when Jesus approaches his disciples while walking on the water (John 6:20).  Most translations render Jesus as saying “It is I, do not be afraid.” (NIV).  But that fails to capture what is unique to John’s Gospel, where a more literal translation reflects God’s self-identification to Moses.  “I AM, do not be afraid,” says Jesus. ***  Once again, Jesus identifies himself with the “I AM” who is God.

To be sure, Jesus’ claim to identity with God is mixed with statements recognizing that he is less than God.  John is ambiguous about the status of Jesus.  Immediately prior to his “before Abraham” statement, Jesus says “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.” (8:54).  Elsewhere in John’s gospel Jesus prays to the Father, goes to the Father, and is close to the Father’s heart. 

Jesus has a special relationship with the Father, but the evidence is mixed regarding whether he claims to be identical to God.  Jesus is both a Jewish prophet and more than a prophet.  The men who wrote the Gospel of John were evidently uncertain about what they were claiming.  The best explanation for the confusion is that the gospels were redacted several times.  Presumably, different editors had different views, and the result was a mash up.   Almost 100 years after the death of Jesus the movement toward a separate Christianity was underway, but not yet established.  So too, the identity of Jesus as co-equal with God took at least a millennium to become the standard, and many Christians still seem unclear.

What to conclude from all this

The NT is not so new.  It’s built on a reinterpretation of the old so that it predicts the New.  The NT transforms events described in the OT, such as the suffering servant of Isaiah 52-53, into a preface to Christ.  From the Gospels, we learn much that is new about Christ.  However, the outlines of his life and death are those laid out in the OT.     

Consider the root and branch analogy of Paul in Romans 11:13-24.  Paul compares Gentile Christians to branches that have been grafted onto the tree that is Israel. Paul is warning Gentile Christians that although Israel may reject the salvation that God has offered through the messiah Jesus, Israel is not to be devalued. The Gentile Christians are a branch that lives and grows only by drawing its life from the trunk and root, that is, from Israel.

Christians who wish to avoid supersessionism—the claim that Christianity has made Judaism obsolete, are keen on this metaphor.  However, it’s a complicated image, for at the same time it suggests that Christianity is a more developed religion, higher up on the evolutionary scale (p 243).  

A better image might suggest that the NT was knitted from the yarn of the OT, so that they really cannot be separated.  Of course, Christianity developed into something quite different, but its Bible is best read as a reinterpretation of, rather than an addition to or replacement of the OT. 

This analogy is hardly perfect, but it is better, suggesting not only the dependence of the NT on the Old but also that the Old frames the NT’s account of the experience of Jesus.  As noted above, there is little independent historical evidence of the life of Jesus. We remain almost entirely dependent on the gospels and Paul.  Which means we can’t step outside the OT either. 

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Notes

* Paul adds nothing about the life and teachings of Jesus not in the Gospels.  His focus on the resurrected Christ as our guarantee of eternal life (1 Corinthians 15), a theological doctrine, is actually less dependent on the OT, even as Paul wrote at least a decade before Mark, the first Gospel.

**  Page numbers without an author refer to her book, The Reluctant Parting.  A Protestant minister in Columbia, Maryland, where I live, for over two decades, she converted to Judaism.  She inspired this post.

***  (Hebrew: eh-ye, Strongs, 1961; the Amplified Bible has the correct Greek translation, ego emi me, Strong’s 1510).

References

Julie Galambush, The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament’s Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book.  HarperCollins, 2005. 

Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ.  Baker Academic, 2008. 

zondervanacademic.com/blog/suffering-servant-isaiah-53.