The Old Testament and the Significance of Jesus
Holmgren, Fredrik C. The Old Testament and the Significance of Jesus: Embrancing Change – Maintaining Christian Identity. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999.
This book is interesting for many reasons. One of them is that the author tries to show the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, both of which share in common what Christians call the Old Testament. He tries to explain the various interpretive methods that Jews and Christians use to understand “their Bibles.” For example, he argues that Christians did not find Jesus by reading the OT but tried to explain their experience of Jesus through the Scriptures. This involved a depth/imaginative interpretation (which I think is his way of referring to midrash). For this reason it is hardly fair for Christians to criticize Jews for not seeing Jesus in their Bible. Of course, the same holds true for Jews who also engage in depth/imaginative interpretation for their own purposes. Jacob Neusner says:
Judaism inherits and makes the Hebrew Bible its own, just as does Christianity. But just as Christianity rereads the entire heritage of Ancient Israel in light of the “resurrection of Jesus Christ” so Judaism understands Hebrew Scriptures as only one part, the written one, of the one whole Torah of Moses, our rabbi” (124).
The author then talks about the meaning of “and it was fulfilled” in the NT. For the author the Greek word for “fulfill” can have the meaning of “corresponds to,” “is similar/analogous to,” or even “reminds one of” (42). Then he tackles the subject of Jesus and the sinaic covenant (in other words, how Christians came to see the law). He attempts to show that the attitude towards Torah in the NT is not unified and failure to understand the different emphases is due to a failure to pay attention to the context within which the subject of Torah is being treated. He then talks about the “New Covenant” in Jeremiah 31:31-34 both in the OT and NT.
I thought the beginning of the book was quite helpful. Although I do not agree with everything the author says, I thought that the examples he used to show how the NT writers used the OT were informative. The way the NT uses the OT is of great interest to me, and his discussion of certain passages were helpful in demonstrating some of the issues.
His chapter on “fulfillment” is interesting because I sensed he was trying to “protect” the NT writers by nuancing the meaning of the word “fulfill” which would make their use of the OT a little more palatable to us. But, although I think it may be helpful to think of fulfillment the way he described (even if it is just for the sake of argument), I seriously doubt that was what was in the mind of the biblical author. This is the same problem that I have with some commentary writers who go to great lengths to explain the use of the OT in the NT when “midrash” would make much more sense even though it does create some problems in our understanding of Scripture (in which case the problem is with us and not the bible).
Although there were some good things in the other chapters in terms of outlining the different issues when we think of the NT as a New Covenant, it became apparent to me that the author seemed to want to keep the door open for a Jewish understanding of the passages (for example he believes that Jeremiah 31:31-34 is really “irony” and that the passage is really referring to the Sinaic covenant). I also did not like his section on Romans 9-11 because of some simplifications and the omission of some important exegetical issues there. That’s when the book sort of started to go downhill for me.
However, I thought the last two chapters were actually quite good. I rather liked the chapter entitled “Is Old Testament a suitable Title?” Part of the reason I liked this chapter is that shows not only the issues with using “Old Testament” but also term “Hebrew Bible” from both a Christian and Jewish perspective. Although he thinks that the titles “First Testament” and “Second Testament” are probably the best, he does think there is something to be said about the word “new” in New Testament because of the significance of the “new covenant” for the NT writers.
The last chapter talks about Christology and it does something I have never seen a book of this genre do. It talked about the early creeds, Nicea and Chaceldon. There is a lot of food for thought there and I’d better hold judgment on it until I have read a little more broadly on this subject. His bibliography is pretty helpful here.
Overall this book was a mixed bag but I thought it was well worth the read. I learned quite a bit and made me want to pursue the study of some areas I had not considered before.
