I wanted to post here a good discussion Dick Norton and I have been having on the polyvalence of the Old Testament for some time. He is taking the position that the Old Testament passages had double meanings but that they were understood at the time of writing.
Dick:
There are at least two major problems with your polyvalence theory in my estimation.
First, to use Isaiah 7 as an example, the prophet Isaiah himself saw the coming of Messiah foreshadowed in his original prophecy to Ahaz, for Isa. 7:14 is in an expanded context that ends with Isa. 9:6-7. Of course, Isa. 7:14 was meant for Ahaz, but as Isaiah contemplated the near term fulfillment of that prophecy through the birth of his own son, he also began to see that the birth of his son was a foreshadowing of the birth of a greater Son to come in the future. Therefore, it is altogether appropriate for Matthew to see the fulfillment of Isa. 7:14 in Messiah's birth. He is simply following the greater context of Isaish's prophecy!
Second, if the N.T. writers and preachers made such cavalier use of the O.T. by seeing fulfillment of the O.T. prophecies in Jesus, why would they not have been laughed out of the synagogues by the Jewish scholars? In order to proclaim such an astounding message that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Messiah, they would have to use the O.T. in the way the O.T. interprets itself. Jewish scholars wouldn't have let them get by with such "spiritualizing" of the O.T. message! I have made both of these arguments with you before, and I don't remember your having answered either one of them.
My fear is, brother Ken, that you are using exegesis that is destructive to the true original meaning of the O.T. because you haven't grasped the true unity of God's word. Jesus is indeed the Messiah promised by the O.T. writers, looked forward to by the Jews of antiquity, anticipated by first century Jews such as Simeon, and openly revealed by Jesus himself as he expounded the O.T. Scriptures about himself on the Emmaus Road.
Ken
Dick, I do indeed believe that God knew these texts would have these resonances at the time of Christ and am even willing to believe he tweaked wording for them to do so (for example, the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 7:14). I just don't think it likely that Isaiah or the Israel of his day heard them that way. The original meaning question must always be, "What would this text have meant to its first audience?"
Our debate is not over whether these words can have Christological meanings, which I believe they legitimately can. Our debate is whether the original authors and audience intended those meanings. For example, I don't see how anyone can be called a competent original meaning interpreter who thinks Hosea was thinking of Jesus when he wrote 11:1 (or that anyone prior to Jesus thought of the verse that way).
My response to your second point is two fold. First, that you are being modernist even in your picture of Jewish scholars. The New Testament authors were using exactly the same methods that Jewish scholars of the time used (e.g., the interpretive canons of Hillel the Pharisee). That's why these methods cannot be considered in error. Only when a modern standard is applied can they be considered in error. In fact, many think that Paul's allegory of Sarah and Hagar was a counter-allegorical interpretation to an initial allegorical interpretation by his opposition.
But also, there was Jewish opposition to the NT author's use of the OT. It is often suggested that the translations of Symmachus and Aquila were produced specifically because the Septuagint was too easily used by Christian Jews to make their arguments.
As for Isaiah 9, I do wonder if God did a lot of nudging in the wording. But did you realize that no NT text applies Isaiah 9:6 to Jesus (Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God)? We're so used to Handel's Messiah that we might not realize the Bible never uses this verse of Jesus. The NT does use other verses in this chapter of Jesus (e.g., 9:2 in Matthew), but not the one that seems so naturally to be a prediction of Christ.
Nevertheless, the question for this post is whether Isaiah himself understood the verse that way. What would this text have meant to Israel at the time? There was already a king so would they not have read it in terms of a coming heir to the throne? Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, is usually suggested by original meaning scholars.
The exalted titles of 9:6 are similar to the kinds of divine titles Egyptian kings received, and Psalm 45:7 shows us that the human king of Judah could be figuratively called God (Psalm 45 was originally a wedding psalm) in lieu of him being God's earthly representative. So I am very willing to say that God formed the wording of Isaiah 9 to be ripe for the time of Christ. But there is nothing in this chapter that could not have been said, given the standard practices of the day, about Hezekiah or a human king.
And I believe that is how Isaiah understood the words. I don't know of any evidence of any Jew prior to Christ reading these words in the Christian way. In fact even the NT doesn't of the verse you most have in mind.
Again, I have no problem with seeing Christ in the Old Testament or with reading the biblical text theologically as a unity. The problem is with a reading that will not let the original Old Testament meaning speak also on its own terms. I believe it will lead many honest interpreters into a faith crisis.
Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again!
Showing posts with label NT interpretation of OT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NT interpretation of OT. Show all posts
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Saturday, June 30, 2012
3.1 What was Matthew thinking?
I have now completed two chunks of reflecting on my own hermeneutical autobiography. I'll at least continue through this third chunk. The two previous ones were:
1. Learning to read in context and
2. Determining the original text
In the first group of posts, I talked about my earliest realizations about what it means to read the Bible in its literary and historical context. In the second, I talked about my early struggles with questions of manuscripts and the original text. This group has to do with the way the NT reads the OT.
_______________
When I was in college, Dr. Marling Elliott was, at least in retrospect, a very influential teacher for me. His classes moved at a turtle's pace, mind you. He had little set agenda. The class could easily set an agenda for him. Every once and a while he would stop and ask, "Are we doing any good here?" Every class was like a Rogerian counseling session.
But he was incredibly intelligent and he did a good job of raising questions. He was completely non-directive. He mainly wanted to facilitate our own processing of issues. Who knows what he actually thought about them.
I applied the fundamentalism of my pre-college years to his classes as well. At one point I wrote a paper trying to reconcile the gospel accounts of Peter's denial historically, for example. If I move on to a fourth chunk of reflections, I'll return to it. In this chunk, I remember him in a Gospels class raising the question of how Matthew was using the Old Testament when it quoted Hosea 11:1.
Matthew quotes this verse and says that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stayed in Egypt until the death of Herod the Great, "in order that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, 'Out of Egypt I called my Son.'" I was well acquainted with the page at the back of my Thompson Chain Reference KJV that had a chart of all the prophecies from the OT that Jesus had fulfilled. I just had never actually gone back to read any of those passages in context.
Dr. Elliott took us back to Hosea 11:1-2 and we read it, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son, but the more they were called, the more they went away. They sacrificed to the Baals and burnt offerings to idols." It sure didn't seem to be about Jesus. In fact, it wasn't even a prophecy. It was talking about the past, about the exodus. What was Matthew thinking?
At the time, I always smiled when things like this one came up. I was confident there was an answer and that I could figure it out. If Dr. Elliott gave an answer, I don't remember it. My thoughts always wandered like a fly buzzing around the room, only occasionally knocking into the professor... and perhaps occasionally dozing in some corner.
At the end of my first year of seminary, though, I still had no answer. It was troubling me greatly. Was God asking me to make an irrational leap of faith? Was it a test? Would God ask me to force myself to believe a lie to show my submission to him?
This was the issue that I brought to my pastor at home in the summer, the one where he suggested perhaps the original manuscript of Hosea or Matthew read something different. It was a nice try, but there are no textual variants in relation to these passages. At the time I tied the question to inerrancy, which I don't now. I assumed that the question was whether Matthew was right or wrong about the meaning of Hosea.
I now believe that it is rather the fundamentalist approach to Scripture that is wrong and that it was perfectly appropriate for Matthew to read Hosea in a figurative way like other Jewish exegetes of his day...
1. Learning to read in context and
2. Determining the original text
In the first group of posts, I talked about my earliest realizations about what it means to read the Bible in its literary and historical context. In the second, I talked about my early struggles with questions of manuscripts and the original text. This group has to do with the way the NT reads the OT.
_______________
When I was in college, Dr. Marling Elliott was, at least in retrospect, a very influential teacher for me. His classes moved at a turtle's pace, mind you. He had little set agenda. The class could easily set an agenda for him. Every once and a while he would stop and ask, "Are we doing any good here?" Every class was like a Rogerian counseling session.
But he was incredibly intelligent and he did a good job of raising questions. He was completely non-directive. He mainly wanted to facilitate our own processing of issues. Who knows what he actually thought about them.
I applied the fundamentalism of my pre-college years to his classes as well. At one point I wrote a paper trying to reconcile the gospel accounts of Peter's denial historically, for example. If I move on to a fourth chunk of reflections, I'll return to it. In this chunk, I remember him in a Gospels class raising the question of how Matthew was using the Old Testament when it quoted Hosea 11:1.
Matthew quotes this verse and says that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stayed in Egypt until the death of Herod the Great, "in order that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, 'Out of Egypt I called my Son.'" I was well acquainted with the page at the back of my Thompson Chain Reference KJV that had a chart of all the prophecies from the OT that Jesus had fulfilled. I just had never actually gone back to read any of those passages in context.
Dr. Elliott took us back to Hosea 11:1-2 and we read it, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son, but the more they were called, the more they went away. They sacrificed to the Baals and burnt offerings to idols." It sure didn't seem to be about Jesus. In fact, it wasn't even a prophecy. It was talking about the past, about the exodus. What was Matthew thinking?
At the time, I always smiled when things like this one came up. I was confident there was an answer and that I could figure it out. If Dr. Elliott gave an answer, I don't remember it. My thoughts always wandered like a fly buzzing around the room, only occasionally knocking into the professor... and perhaps occasionally dozing in some corner.
At the end of my first year of seminary, though, I still had no answer. It was troubling me greatly. Was God asking me to make an irrational leap of faith? Was it a test? Would God ask me to force myself to believe a lie to show my submission to him?
This was the issue that I brought to my pastor at home in the summer, the one where he suggested perhaps the original manuscript of Hosea or Matthew read something different. It was a nice try, but there are no textual variants in relation to these passages. At the time I tied the question to inerrancy, which I don't now. I assumed that the question was whether Matthew was right or wrong about the meaning of Hosea.
I now believe that it is rather the fundamentalist approach to Scripture that is wrong and that it was perfectly appropriate for Matthew to read Hosea in a figurative way like other Jewish exegetes of his day...
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