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. Read more »