In response to my previous posts on “Reading the Bible in the Right Direction,” one reader asked, “so where does one begin on this journey of rediscovering the full context of the bible through the old testament?” I think this is a great question. So in departure from my standard conceptual model of discussion, I purpose here to tease out a few practical suggestions in following the line of biblical interpretation I laid out previously.
First it would be appropriate to say that understanding the Bible in this manner (i.e., interpreting the NT through its OT context) is not only for scholars. We have to remember that the Jews in Jesus’ day were mostly illiterate, but were able to interpret his actions in their OT, Jewish context. While granted, they were living in that context, it at least tells us it is possible without a PhD in Jewish studies.
However, it also tells us that this is not something that will be fully grasped in a day or a week. The Jews in Jesus’ day had a lifetime of formation in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the story of God’s dealings with Israel. If we want to take Jesus life, words and actions seriously in their Jewish context we have to be willing to expend the effort to reorient ourselves from whatever story we have been living in (i.e., the Modern Progress Myth, the American Dream, the American Apathy, the MLB schedule, etc.) to the story of God’s dealings with his creation through the Jewish people. While not requiring post-graduate work, it does require that we immerse ourselves (this takes time and effort) in narrative thought world of the Old Testament.
And now for being practical…
1) Make reading the OT a regular part of your “spiritual diet.” Many Christians spend all their time in either the gospels or Paul (both of which I love!) but very little time elsewhere. Don’t be afraid to spend a few months reading and studying a section of the OT. Don’t worry – you won’t “get into law” and lose grace. When at a later time you come back to focus in the NT it will be richer and fuller, not diminished.
One easy way to do this is follow the OT readings in the Daily Office Lectionary, which gives two digestible portions of the OT each day, which covers most of the OT in a given year.
2) Don’t get bogged down in details. If your goal is to memorize the entire king list of Israel and Judah so be it. If your goal is to understand who Jesus is in his Jewish context and what God did in and through him, it is not critical to memorize every detail of every story in the OT. Neither is it necessary to glean every possible “principle” that can be squeezed out of each story. I think this is one of the reasons people avoid the OT – they think they need to master all the content – THIS IS NOT TRUE. What is critical is to notice the reoccurring themes and motifs and how they are functioning in the narrative. Some themes and motifs to pay attention to are: creation, covenant, exodus, promise, land, inheritance, children (progeny, childbirth, pregnancy), obedience/faithfulness, sin/idolatry, justice/injustice, forgiveness, exile, return from exile, restoration/redemption, king/kingship, life/death, temple, nations/foreigners. I’m sure there could be many others, but I think you get the point.
3) Though I may get shot for saying such, I do believe that certain parts of the OT are (a lot) more important than others. This is a corollary of the previous point. Memorizing every detail in the historical books is not essential for grasping the overall flow of the OT narrative and its primary messages. If you don’t remember who every king is and what they did, but do remember that king after king after king violated the covenant, led the people in sin and idolatry, promoting grave injustice, which was the ultimate reason for them being removed from the land, for the temple being destroyed and for them being sent into exile to be ruled over by foreign nations, you would not be far from the Kingdom of God. With that said, it is not necessary to spend months memorizing all the details unless you want to be a scholar whose expertise is in the historical books of the OT.
My humble (and open to change) opinion is that some of the more significant sections of the Bible (that bear the greatest weight in shaping first century Judaism and the NT) are Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms and Isaiah 40-55(or 66). I know these are long and scary books. Read them anyway! If you read them over and over they will in due time become familiar. As for the Psalms – I do not mean thirty selected verses in your favorite eight psalms – I mean ALL of them. There’s some weird stuff in those psalms, but they are the recorded prayer life of Israel. It is how Israel understood, interpreted and responded to the events described in the other books of the OT. I am really passionate about the book of Psalms in its entire. I am very tempted to digress, but will make a note to write an entire post on the Psalms in at a later date.
Spend time in these books attempting to grasp their key messages. If you memorize details but cannot say what the main themes are you are missing the point. Chill out with the memorization, read the books in long chunks and then reflect on what stands out as thematic.
4) Read the Bible in long chunks. I know I just said that, but it bears repeating. Do not content yourself with reading a list of isolated verses. Single verses are great for meditation and reflection, but that is not Bible study. Let there be frequent times when you read five or ten chapters of the Bible in a row. Read short books in one sitting. Find a Bible without chapter and verse divisions so to avoid artificial segmentation of sections of the Bible that need to go together (check out http://thebooksofthebible.info for a great new Bible like this).
It used to be assumed that the central unit of meaning was the smaller unit like the sentence, the word, or even parts of words. However, it is more and more being asserted that the primary unit of meaning are the larger units (paragraph, groups of paragraphs). Each individual unit only has its meaning with the whole. Apart from the whole the smaller units do not mean the same thing. For this reason it is essential that all the parts are incorporated into the larger whole. Reading verses one by one in isolation will not communicate the full meaning, because the meaning is likely in the larger unit (this approach is called discourse-analysis, in case you are interested).
5) When you see a quotation from the OT in the NT, go back and read the larger context of the quotation. I often hear remarks that the authors of the NT took OT scriptures out of context. Before you come to that conclusion, go back and read the entire passage. Then bring those ideas into the NT passage and see how interpretation may be impacted. The authors of the NT are much more subtle and their meaning is much more profound then simple proof-texting.
6) When reading the NT, regularly ask what concepts mean in the OT. What does sin and forgiveness mean in the OT? How does its connection with the exile and return in the OT impact our understanding its meaning in the NT? What does redemption mean in the OT? How does its connection with the exodus in the OT impact our understanding of it in the NT? What is a “soul” in the OT? How does this bear on our understanding of NT anthropology?
7) Stop treating the OT like a second-class member of the Bible. Last night I was talking with some people about the OT and interpreting a specific passage and someone said in jest (because they know what I think about these kind of things): “oh, its just the Old Testament,” as in, “we let weird things slide in the OT because now that we have the NT we can forget about all those other things we don’t understand.”
Let’s treat the Old Testament as real inspired and authoritative scripture. When we find things that don’t line up to our preconceived ideas, lets allow ourselves to be challenged by them rather than dismissing them as being “in the Old Testament.” The Bible is a book that refuses to be tamed by our contrived theological systems. The Bible does not need the sedatives of eisegesis to make it palatable to the modern Christian ethos. Much of what is in the OT can, will and should challenge our pre-existing ideas when we too-confidently have our concepts and ideology neatly arranged, cleaned, packaged and trimmed.
Nice summation of your first two posts (yes, I do read your blog regularly when you are posting. :-p). I think this is very challenging. I typically spend a good portion of time in Psalms and Isaiah, but think I will go back to the beginning and revisit those early books. I haven’t read them in quite a while.
I think this is my favorite post in this series up until (probably because I am inclined to measure the value of something by how pragmatic it is). The main two impacting points that I take away are that we should read the OT for it’s main themes and as the broad story of God and His people, not just a bunch of random short stories. This makes everything so much more exciting and engaging. Everybody loves Tolkien’s epic story in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but nobody has ever even heard of his short stories.
The second point I liked was to read NT words as if there was actually some continuity with the OT meaning of them. I was so shocked when it first struck me that we give an entirely different meaning to words like forgiveness and righteousness in the NT than is given in the OT. How did that all of a sudden happen?
Figuring out what a NT concept meant in the OT is hardly an easy task. There are at least three complicating factors:
1. The size of the OT. Doing a word study on a word like “Righteousness” in the OT is, to say the least, daunting.
2. The languages involved. Starting with a single Greek word in the NT, you will end up with several Hebrew words that were translated that way in the Septuagint, and then you have to figure out the range of meaning for those to see which were important translations and which were incidental. And then you have to get the whole thing back to English, while taking into account the way those words have been translated in English (e.g. like the KJV translating mishpat as judgment all the time).
3. The over-familiarity of some of these verses as proof-texts (e.g. “he who wins souls is wise” – Prov 11:30)
Not that it’s not an important thing to do, but I think the only way for a non-scholar to really pull it off is just in the reading of the OT regularly over years. The only way that these concepts are likely to “stick” is if they are found incrementally in a “self-discovery” kind of way. I think that’s actually the primary way that the Bible fixes our worldview – one devotional at a time, over decades.
Jeff – good points – I think the best way to gain the understanding of an OT word is to read the OT regularly over a long period of time. You can also speed it up by applying suggestion #3. I guess I didn’t justify this notion at all in the post, but the sheer volume of quotations from the OT in the NT from the Psalms and Isaiah, at least hint that these books were really significant to the early church. I would start by limiting the word studies to Psalms and Isaiah, which of course are not short books, but as a whole a bit shorter than the entire OT. Another short cut is to read bible dictionaries like the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament.
If I remember correctly… I was probably the one who jested about the OT- I apologize
However I would add Deuteronomy in the list of OT books that are important. Paul quotes from there liberally not least in Romans. So when are details important and when are they permissible but non-beneficial? I get bogged down with this alot of times because I like to know much about what I read in the bible. I understand that we need to get the big picture but I assume details are important sometime right?
Loved your point about grasping the overall flow of the OT narratives by simply reading them in larger sections and recognizing common themes. Though simple, this is revolutionary to the way I read the OT (especially reading the few Psalms I love, as opposed to the whole book). As one who is somewhat intimidated to dive into the scholarly arena, I was encouraged with the possibility of grasping the larger story by simply investing time and energy.
I also enjoyed the part about reading large chunks of the OT and getting the overall theme. So often i find myself lost in a random part of the OT (probably a genealogy) wondering why in the world it would matter, but instead of doing that to really dig into “what does this book as a whole say” and from that seeing the meaning of the little sections. This is a lot less intimidating and a more productive use of time!
I also so enjoyed this post, I love when teachers take what they are teaching us and give us tools to do it our selves. I also had a few questions. I desire to look at all the terms we see in the NT and see how they are used in the OT (for example: “ransom”), how would I do this?? Would some research in a OT dictionary be enough?? And are there other tools we can use to do this??
One tool would be a copy of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) and the Hebrew Bible (both preferably digital). You can then compare which words in Hebrew were translated into Greek, and then study those Hebrew words. This information would also be found in some Bible dictionaries, the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, for sure.
Then the best tool that I know of would be the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, which at a whopping 16 or 17 volumes covers every theologically significant word in the OT. It may be a little too technical at this point, but it is the most thorough resource. There are some others that are less in depth, particularly one by Jenni-Westermann.
More important than “word studies” are “concept studies.” You know from speaking English that words are not 100% air-tight separate containers. There are what is called “semantic domains” which are groups of words that cover similar territory. For example words like delight, gladness, pleasure and joy would be a “semantic domain.” There might be some minor nuances to the words, but in normal language they are used almost interchangeably. So when doing a word study, you would want to explore the “semantic domain” as well.
I like this post. I enjoy the day to day stuff like including reading the OT in your daily reading of the Bible. I enjoy reading the Bible in chunks as well but have recently been asking more questions about the weird stuff in the OT and then get side tracked. I like that you said read it and see what the over all theme is which is very helpful.
It’s really freeing to be reminded that it’s good to read large portions without memorizing all the details. I love to stop and think on a few verses, but just knowing that it’s good to read larger portions makes me feel better because I like to do that too! Thanks for the helpful resources, ex. reading plan for OT. Helpful!
These are helpful tools to reading the OT. It seems much more manageable than just sitting down and reading it from beginning to end and trying to grasp it along the way. I’m not sure that I agree about some parts of the OT being more important than others. I do think that certain books carry more of the story of Israel and how God deals with them but, how does that make them more important? What about Jeremiah, the minor prophets, Deuteronomy…? Why do you think some are more important than others? I’m open to the concept but not sure that I understand where you’re coming from with it.
Richard, so glad you put this article next in this series… I was at the point of, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Thank you for a simple, common-sense approach that I could grasp. (Even though, as Jeff pointed out, the overall execution is far from simple.) I particularly appreciated the recommendation on where to focus my energy: Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, and Isaiah 40- 66. And I tend to get bogged down in detail so it is refreshing/liberating to hear someone say – read it, get the flow of the story, and just look for themes (which is where I would probably still tend towards too much analysis).
It is very helpful and gives concrete way to approach OT. While reading OT I usually get stuck at the step of questioning. Just like you said in point (6) I try to ask those fundamental questions but I get lost in finding connections. It kind of became one of the reasons for me to have some sort of fear of reading OT.
Amen to reading Gen. Exo. Ps. Isa!! Yes and Amen to that in due time they will become familiar..
Love it. Not getting bogged in details is huge. When I’ve read lots of the OT even in a short time (a month) it has impacted my whole view of scripture. Thanks for the practicals.
This post was helpful. I appreciate you sharing your opinion about which OT books are more important. I think it will be a good way for me to start by reading those books since I don’t spend much time in the OT at all in the present moment.
An Inquiry:
Do you really believe that the vast majority of the necessary storyline and themes can be gleaned by simply reading Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah 40-66, and Psalms? You made the comment in your blog that you know these are big books, but my response was actually the opposite. I thought, wow, if it’s really this easy, then I must not understand what he’s talking about. Definitely one of the most deterring dimensions of OT study is its length. To hear this is really encouraging, if it’s actually true. =)
I was reading a blog the other day where the author was listing the “two most important books is you are ever going to understand Paul and his mission” the list, Genesis and Isaiah.
I wonder though how ready for interpertation the OT is to 21st Century Westerners. I mean, to some extent the question is, how did first cerntury Judaism read these texts. I think it is important to seee that even to them, certian parts were, on the whole, much more important than others (I.e., the Saduccess who really only counted the Torah, or Qumran with its focus on Isaiah). We seem to, on the whole, read text rather differently today (or not read much at all). I wonder what, if anything, would in our culture be comparable to the the sort of wholistc way the story of the Israel, as presented in the OT, was intergrated into the life and practice of Second Temple Judaism. The best analogy I have so far is maybe Star Wars, though it undoubtably fall short in sevral areas.
Love your practical steps on how to read OT, especially 7) Stop treating the OT like a second-class member of the Bible.
whew, sigh of relief. This seems more do-able (though, as you mentioned, i’m aware it will still take some work). I’m very detail-oriented (don’t know if you noticed), so i tend to focus on little details and understanding all the details and, well, being told I have to understand the OT becomes overwhelming. But I don’t have to do that! I just have to notice the recurring themes and main points. I’ll have to work on training myself to notice those important themes.
Thank you for pointing out Genesis, Exodus, and Isaiah as some of the most important books to read! I get incredibly overwhelmed when I think of all the books in the OT, and I have no idea where to start. While I want read through and become acquainted with the whole OT, that’s gonna take a while. And this smaller goal is incredibly doable.
The practical tips are most helpful and a delightful diversion from the “standard conceptual model of discussion.” Your suggestions not only put forth dos and don’ts but present a new way of approaching the Scriptures particularly the Old Testament.
I couldn’t resist commenting on this sentence:
“The Bible does not need the sedatives of eisegesis to make it palatable to the modern Christian ethos.”
All I have to say is Wow! and Ouch!
This is very helpful! I am encouraged to read the OT. I especially liked in #3 when you said to read these books (Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, and Isaiah) anyway! And that if you read them over and over, in time, they will become familiar. Just do it, give yourself to reading it regardless of if you understand or not, but get to know the OT, and give it time. I also liked #5 which is a new practice that I have not really done before (some of the other ones are new as well, but this one stood out to me), that while reading the NT, when I come across an OT passage, go back and read the larger context of that passage. This was very helpful.
As I was reading through your previous posts, I was starting to feel stirred to read the OT but didn’t know how to start. This helps me read it through a different lens. Instead of going into the OT while feeling the pressure of having to know every single details, I can read it and look for the recurring themes. This way, I will also be able to understand OT quotes easier when I’m reading the NT.
Thanks for giving us practicals!! I love them!
As a person who naturally sees life from the “big picture” and absolutely despises details, this post was a breath of fresh ruach to my soul. Liberation from frequent word studies into simply recognizing the big concepts! Amen and amen!
Some things in the Pentateuch/Psalms/Isaiah only seem weird to us who live in this age/season/place because for the longest, most readers, myself included, have only only used what I would consider a juicy verse for proof-texting in a limited time basis. Once that limited time expired (like selecting a verse, more out of context than not, to spruce up a beginner’s exegetical paper), that verse would in my experience, be left in the haze of the unsearched-out Old Testament.
I’m inspired to go read straight through the OT! Maybe that’s too ambitious… I agree with James that the charge to read the OT for the big picture is refreshing, and completely contrary to my upbringing of applying each verse to my personal life. It’s liberating to know God’s story is a lot bigger than my personal life!
Once i get out of school i think i will spend all my time in the old testament for about four years.
Richard’s last comment on how we justify preconceived notions by discounting the OT was really good. I know I tend to do that sometimes. I’m having to accept what Paul said in 2 Tim. 3 ” 16All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” ”
And though we take seriously the OT, that doesn’t mean we forget the teaching of the NT. But we understand it better, and understand what is not in the OT better.