Do the Old and New Testaments Tell the Same Story? Part 2

Have you ever looked at one of those optical illusions with the hidden images? Those pictures where, when you first look at one, all you see is a pattern of shapes and colors. But after you’ve stared at it for long enough, all of a sudden an image emerges. A face, a horse, or whatever. The place of the Jewish people in redemptive history was kind of like that for me. I had this picture of history in mind (history from a Christian perspective) and I kind of understood where the Jewish people fit in, but not entirely. 

You see, God makes a promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” How will the peoples of the earth be blessed through Abraham? The classic Christian answer to this question is Jesus Christ (a descendant of Abraham). I wholeheartedly agree with and affirm the truth of this answer. Hands down, the biggest way God has blessed the nations through Abraham has been through the provision of His Son. But during a personal period of doubt, that answer seemed a bit trite to me. It took coming through to the other side of the valley of the shadow of doubt for me to really buy into that answer again. During my time in the valley, however, I stumbled across some other ways God fulfilled (or will fulfill) His promise to Abraham. These discoveries were much like signposts (among other signposts) that pointed me toward the way out. I want to talk about some of these things here.

Throughout history, the Jewish people had been God’s primary vehicle of revelation to the world. Jews wrote (or at least compiled) the entirety of the Christian Old Testament (the Jewish Tanakh). Because of the Old Testament, we know without question that sin is wrong. The sacrifices prescribed by the Law gave the Jews, and all who fell under their influence, the important idea of atoning sacrifice, and prepared the way for the ultimate sacrifice yet-to-come—that of Jesus Christ upon the cross.

Contrary to what some Christians might think, one cannot properly understand the New Testament apart from the Old. Even most of the New Testament was written by—you guessed it—Jews. Christianity is rooted in a very Jewish worldview. The New Testament teaches us about Jesus, the coming of the Spirit, and the Church. It gives us a new way to live. All this not to mention the Father’s ultimate revelation of Himself in Jesus.

God used the Jewish worldview, based on His revelation in Scripture, to prepare the ancient Western world for the gospel. He did this in a couple of different ways. First, Israel is situated in the crux of the African-Eurasian supercontinent. It’s kind of the center of the world. Its central location is conducive for maximum global influence. Second, the Jewish people experienced displacements, or diasporas, during the eras of Assyrian and Babylonian domination, ensuring that Jewish people lived in places relatively far-flung from the homeland. By the time of early imperial Rome, a traveler could find Jewish synagogues scattered throughout the Mediterranean world, along with a handful of God-fearers, non-Jews who had adopted a monotheistic, Jewish worldview. God used these two circumstances to prepare the ancient West for the coming of His Son.

From Constantine until quite recently, the (decidedly Jewish) Christian worldview dominated the Western mindset. Now, some pretty horrible things came out of the Christian West; the crusades, Catholic-Protestant warring, and the African slave trade, to name a few. But some pretty great things came out of the Christian West too. Leaps forward as regards human rights and freedoms, unprecedented innovation and codification of the artistic disciplines, and great advances in learning which led to the rise of modern science and medicine.

I believe the single biggest reason for this flourishing is Christianity—a worldview which disposed its adherents to affirm the dignity and creativity of humanity as the Imago Dei (the image of God), and to expect their world to exhibit the kind of orderliness and design that would evince a Grand Designer. And it was God’s dealings with the Jewish people in the Old Testament and His creation of a new covenant community in the New that made all of this possible.

Finally, according to my understanding of Scripture, Jesus will return, restore Israel to glory (and give her a glory she has never known), and reign over the earth from Jerusalem for a thousand years before the beginning of the eternal state. All Christians believe that Jesus will return, but not all believe that He will reign on earth for a thousand years. But many of us do. I think His reign will be the culmination of all human society prior to the eternal state. It will be a Jewish monarchy, and a true theocracy. If this interpretation of Scripture is correct, then not only will the Jewish people have been God’s vehicles of revelation and human cultural flourishing, but the culmination of all human society will be Jewish.

All this finds its ultimate expression in the biggest way God has blessed the peoples of the world through Abraham—His provision of the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Truly, God has used the Jewish people to bless humanity. In so many ways.

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.