Do the Old and New Testaments Tell the Same Story? Part 1
/I’m a sucker for a good story. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a novel, a movie, a TV show, or a video game. A skillfully crafted story, with its carefully paced plot-lines in which every major character and event has a narrative role, can really take my breath away. The defeat of the empire and Darth Vader’s redemption at the end of Return of the Jedi…so satisfying. Avatar: The Last Airbender bewitched me and wouldn’t let me go until Aang finally defeated the Firelord and got the girl. And I’ll never get over the rush of storming the citadel with my team as Commander Shepard at the end of Mass Effect.
Epic stories like these leave me thinking, “Man, I wish my life were that epic.” Or, more specifically: “Man, I wish all the circumstances of my life were directed towards such a meaningful and noble end.” And yes, it would also be cool to be a Jedi, or an Airbender, or a boss space marine like Shepard. I’d be willing to bet that most of us find the idea of our lives being linked to some epic story attractive.
The Christian scriptures, as it happens, claim to tell just such a story. There was a time, however, when I struggled pretty badly over the question of whether the Bible was telling just one story, or two or more. The apparent disconnect between the Old and New Testaments particularly bothered me. It seemed like on the whole, the Old Testament concerned itself with the national and religious affairs of Israel, while the New Testament focused on the multi-ethnic community of Jesus-followers, the Church. This led me to doubt the integrity and truth of the entire narrative. A story about the redemption of humankind seemed like one I wanted to be part of, but why does so much of this story focus on Israel? Did the Bible start out as just a collection of Jewish writings and only much later spawn a sort of pseudo-Jewish community based on the teachings of Jesus?
As my thinking has matured, I’ve come to see more and more that the two testaments are, in fact, telling the same story, and that’s what I’d like to talk about here. If you’ve ever struggled with this question, I hope the following thoughts will be helpful to you. At the least, it’s interesting stuff to think about.
It seems to me like the overarching story of the whole Bible centers around humanity’s fall into sin and God’s great and merciful campaign to redeem it. This is clearly the focus of the New Testament. But go back and read through the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the first of the books of Moses. The first 11 chapters of Genesis primarily concern themselves with cosmic issues, issues that are pertinent to all humanity. Most good stories have a scene near the beginning where something goes terribly wrong, a scene that sets up the conflict that carries the characters through the rest of the story toward the final resolution. That’s exactly what we find in Genesis. Chapter three introduces us to the main problem: humanity’s first parents fall into sin, and henceforth sin’s taint and the Curse will afflict all their progeny. This first part of Genesis shows us that humanity’s rebellion against God has brought about the suffering and death that we all experience. It also hints at God’s plan for redeeming the humans: a descendant of the woman will engage in a struggle against the offspring of the serpent who deceived her (the serpent is generally thought to be Satan, the enemy of God and His followers). The serpent will grievously wound the descendant of the woman, but in the end, the man will emerge victorious.
At the end of Genesis 11, the scope of the narrative narrows and focuses on the national and religious concerns of the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the Jewish people—and remains there for most of the rest of the Old Testament. The creation of the Jewish nation and the Old Testament’s focus on national concerns is a very important part of the story of God’s redemption for humankind, for some pretty big reasons. In fact, I think it merits its own discussion.
Even amidst these Jewish-centered concerns that saturate most of the Old Testament, we find reminders that God’s ultimate purpose is the redemption of all humanity. Consider these words spoken by King Solomon at the dedication of the temple:
“As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name—for they will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name” (1 Kings 8:41-43, NIV).
Or consider these words, also about the temple, spoken by God through the prophet Isaiah:
And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord
to minister to him,
to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.
Or listen to God’s words here, also in Isaiah, about the “Servant of the LORD,” whom I take to be a reference to the then-coming anointed one, Jesus:
It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
Should we expect to find such content in the Old Testament if it were simply a collection of Jewish texts about Jewish people? Wouldn’t it focus only on Jewish interests and national advancement, especially in the dog-eat-dog world of the ancient near east? I’m no expert, but I bet you’d have a hard time finding anything very similar to this sort of concern for the nations in ancient Babylonian, Akkadian, and Persian literature. At any rate, it appears that the God of Israel expresses a degree concern for all peoples everywhere, even in parts of the Old Testament that are primarily concerned with the Jewish nation.
This fits nicely with the cosmic issues of sin and redemption that we find in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. But that still leaves us with a question: Why Israel? More on this next time.
If you're curious and want more, check out Dallas Seminary's course The Story of Scripture. I was able to write some of what I wrote above (and in my next reflection) because I took this course.