old testament passion
after a 3 year hiatus, i feel i should resume blogging on this until i reach the last book of the o.t.! that's a mighty tall order, considering the number of books in the o.t.
we have finished the first 5 books of the Torah. let us take an overview of the 5 books. the jews believed moses wrote the Torah. most conservative christians believed that too, following the jewish position. today, more critical scholsrship would deny mosaic authorship. one reason they cite is that moses couldn't have written the last chapter of deuteronomy which concerns his death! someone else would have to write that chapter. another reason quoted is the presence of doublets in the books. doublets are repetitive passages e.g. in the noah's story, there are 2 accounts conflated together. at 1 time, we read of 1 pair of clean and 1 pair of unclean animals going into the ark, at another time, we read of 7 pairs of clean and unclean animals. a third reason is the repetition of laws in the different law codes (the book of the covenant in exod. 20:22-23:33; the holiness code in lev. 17-26, the deuteronomic code in deut. 12-26) which looked like they were being added at different times.
my own thinking is that moses may have written a core of the books but the 5 books were obviously updated, redacted and edited by later hands. that moses wrote something, we can be sure when we read the book of joshua. joshua was given the book of the law written by moses to meditate upon. this was probably a proto-type of the law book, still in its infancy stage. so, moses was responsible at least for kick-starting the Torah. how many hands were involved in the final shape of the book, we will never know. my understanding of inspiration of scriptures cover even the redactors and editors, so that nothing not allowed by God would have made it into scripture. in that sense, all scripture is inspired by God.
after a 3 year hiatus, i feel i should resume blogging on this until i reach the last book of the o.t.! that's a mighty tall order, considering the number of books in the o.t.
we have finished the first 5 books of the Torah. let us take an overview of the 5 books. the jews believed moses wrote the Torah. most conservative christians believed that too, following the jewish position. today, more critical scholsrship would deny mosaic authorship. one reason they cite is that moses couldn't have written the last chapter of deuteronomy which concerns his death! someone else would have to write that chapter. another reason quoted is the presence of doublets in the books. doublets are repetitive passages e.g. in the noah's story, there are 2 accounts conflated together. at 1 time, we read of 1 pair of clean and 1 pair of unclean animals going into the ark, at another time, we read of 7 pairs of clean and unclean animals. a third reason is the repetition of laws in the different law codes (the book of the covenant in exod. 20:22-23:33; the holiness code in lev. 17-26, the deuteronomic code in deut. 12-26) which looked like they were being added at different times.
my own thinking is that moses may have written a core of the books but the 5 books were obviously updated, redacted and edited by later hands. that moses wrote something, we can be sure when we read the book of joshua. joshua was given the book of the law written by moses to meditate upon. this was probably a proto-type of the law book, still in its infancy stage. so, moses was responsible at least for kick-starting the Torah. how many hands were involved in the final shape of the book, we will never know. my understanding of inspiration of scriptures cover even the redactors and editors, so that nothing not allowed by God would have made it into scripture. in that sense, all scripture is inspired by God.
Comments
Am excited by your passion for the OT and aim to write a brief overview on each book of the OT! I'm also encouraged by your view of the inspiration of the Bible - that God will not allow what He does not intend to be in there.
Just to share my thoughts on the authorship stuff, is it not significant that Jesus Himself thought and taught Moses authorship? eg John 5:45-47, Luke 16:31, Luke 24:25-27 & 44-47.
And on these verses as well, I find the OT extremely exciting as it brings us ever deeper into contemplating who Jesus is what He does; to share in the life and history of Jesus as He personally fellowships with the OT saints.
Maybe as you write on each OT book, you could explain some ways which He interacts with the ancient church and the significance of these interactions in teaching His beloved Bride about His future incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and return?
Fellowship with the OT saints?
Anyway, one thing about OT is that when we were doing Isaiah series in church recently, someone spoke my mind when she commented "huh?" at nearly all the sermons preached supposedly on Isaiah. It seemed that Isaiah was just made a vessel to contain the "evangelical" gospel. It made me frustrated when the OT is treated this way, when we bend and ignore the historical value of the OT and its message in and of itself and made it a stepping stone into the so called gospel.
I would rather the sermon topic be direct Jesus or the gospel or salvation than masquerading it with Isaiah exposition but ended up spiritualizing every war and battle and salvation and infusing NT into the OT.
Sometimes I would actually think that Jesus actually infused the OT into his NT ministry; claiming the theme of the OT as his own agenda. A topic which is really cool and worthy of going back again and again, esp. in regards to understanding the OT in second temple Judaism.
Jack
like jack said commented, the end result is we tend to spiritualize every OT passage to read it in the light of the NT. hence, we see things in the OT texts which the Jews themselves do not! one good example is Isa. 52;13-53:12, the 4th suffering servant song. christians immediately jump to the conclusion that the servant is Jesus, and no other. to me, that is only one of the possible interpretations in this multi-layered text. the servant is also the exilic prophet who authored isa. 40-55. the servant is also the ideal israel as the nation ought to be. the servant by collorary is also the Church. even to the Jews today, they do not see isa. 52:13-53:12 as a messianic text whereas Christians do.
that is my position and operating principle. i let the OT texts speak for themselves first, and only then do i make the interpretative jump to what it means for us Christians today.
as for Jesus speaking of mosaic authorship of the Torah, Moses is commonly accepted as the 'author' of the first 5 books. but we need to qualify 'author' here. i take it to mean Moses was responsible for the 'core' of the books, not the final form as we have it today. surely Moses could not have wrote the last chapter of Deuteronomy - he was already dead! so, there is the possiblility of redactors or editors at work in compiling the final shape of the books. thus, it is not enitrely wrong to speak of Moses as the author of the Torah. in one sense, he is. but in another sense, he is not.
same with isaianic authorship. i take the multiple authorship position of the book. written by more than 1 author. long story here but from linguistic, contents, theology etc, we can argue for more than one author for the 66 chapters. still, nothing 'wrong' to speak about isaianic authorship if we understand what the term means - it means isaiah and his disciples (plus editors) all involved in the long line of tradition to produce the final shape of the book.
"i let the OT texts speak for themselves first, and only then do i make the interpretative jump to what it means for us Christians today. "
I guess what I am suggesting is that there does not need to be an inconsistency between what Jesus and the apostles say in the NT when compared to the OT. Could it possibly be that when the OT texts speak for themselves in their original contexts, the plain and intended message is the gospel of faith in Jesus, so no jump needed?
I know Jews would interpret the OT differently to Jesus and the apostles, but aren't we on solid ground by learning OT interpretative skills from Jesus (and apostles) rather than from those who reject Him?
So for example, I suppose Jews would deny that Isaiah is writing about Jesus. But if we look at John 12:41, when John tells us that when Isaiah writes Is. 53 and Is.6 (and maybe all the stuff in between), "Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about Him."
I guess this mean that the King of Israel whom Isaiah sees in Is. 6 is Jesus and the prophets began to write about His death etc. So when we read or when people preach from Isaiah, they should preach Jesus pretty much straightforwardly.
Or another example, Psalm 16. As we first read it, we might be forgiven for thinking that David was writing about his own resurrection. But then the other day I was looking at Acts 2:25-31, and it says that David wrote about Jesus and even goes on to explain how Ps 16 cannot be about David's resurrection.
As for "OT saints"? I guess assume (maybe naively) that they are our faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. Again this is from looking at Hebrews 11 the other day. Check out Heb. 11:26 - Moses regarded disgrace FOR THE SAKE OF CHRIST as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt.
Sorry for my ramblings. What do you think of these thoughts. Please bear in mind I am no scholar at all!