emphasizing their commitment, so their faithfulness, their subsequent Christian hard to come by, it is important to understand what a real hero is. Nevertheless, I remember my surprise when I actually got around to reading the Old Testament stories themselves after having heard only Christian interpretations of these stories. Some of the realistic and seamier aspects of the biblical characters came as real surprises. The horrors of polygamy didn’t really snap clear until I read the biblical edition of the story of Jacob’s family. The book of Esther is even more surprising. I had pictured her as a virtuous young lady without any taint—the feminine counterpart of Daniel. But when I actually read the biblical account, I began to realize that her standards of morality were quite different from mine. Not only was she willing to keep quiet about her convictions (Esther 2:10), but she was willing simply to be one of the girls, a part of the Persian king’s harem (Esther 2:12-18)! Daniel stood firmly for his convictions and his standards of morality line up rather well with what a modern Christian would consider appropriate. But then there is Esther …!
I began to realize that Christians have often taken a “high road” approach to the Old Testament, which, in my case at least, had left me quite unprepared for the reading of the Bible itself. Subconsciously I had formed an image of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as classic saints who could quite easily slip into twentieth century dress and, if called upon, could easily assume positions of leadership in the Christian community. I suspect that this glorified conception of Old Testament saints is at least part of the reason why many Christians tend to read interpretations and adaptations of the Old Testament instead of actually reading the Old Testament itself. The emphasis on the good qualities of biblical characters is very necessary, especially in the training of younger children, but I feel keenly about the need to prepare Christians for the actual reading of the Old Testament, and to prepare them for coming to grips with the real Old Testament stories, even though many of them are not pretty when viewed strictly from an aesthetic point of view.
I sometimes use the term “low road” to describe an approach to the Old Testament which takes account of the failings of the biblical characters and their strange, even barbaric, customs. The implications of this “low road” approach will be pursued further in chapter 2, but the point I wish to make here is, that the “high road” approach (cf. Hebrews 11), when not accompanied by the “low road,” leaves one quite unprepared for the reading of the Old Testament itself. Thus, when a sensitive person comes upon a story which depicts how far the people had fallen, rather than how far they had grown, the natural reaction is to shy away from the Old Testament and resort to safer reading in the Gospels. In a sense, then, the New Testament has got in the way of the Old.
This predominance of the “high road” approach in dealing with the Old Testament came rather forcibly to my attention one day in my elementary Hebrew class. The class was composed of upper division ministerial students who were, in most cases, not more than a few months away from entering the ministry. The exercises in our grammar book had been modeled on biblical phrases so as to prepare the students for the reading of the biblical passages, and it was one of these exercises that caused an interesting problem for several members of the class. Correctly translated, one particular exercise should have read: “And Samuel cut off the head of the king.” Since the Hebrew was not difficult even for first-year students, I asked why this particular sentence had been a problem. Most revealing was the reply volunteered by one of my students: “We thought that was what the sentence said, but we didn’t think that Samuel would do such a thing!” I suggested we take our Bibles and read (in English) the story of Agag in 1 Samuel. To one thoroughly familiar with the Old Testament, the story of Agag might raise certain questions, but the particulars would not be surprising. Yet it was a subdued group of ministerial students who listened in some astonishment to the following words: “And Samuel said, ‘As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.’ And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal” (1 Sam. 15:33).
In the discussion that followed, it became evident that they had been deeply impressed with the “high road” picture of the innocent and obedient boy Samuel in the temple, saying: “Speak, for thy servant hears” (1 Sam. 3:10). How could that little boy take a sword and hew a man in pieces—even if it was before the Lord? Such a strange act for such a good lad! To come down to our own age, it would seem even stranger for my pastor to take a sword and to hew a wicked elder or deacon to pieces before the Lord. But that is part of the Old Testament picture which we must seek to understand and one to which we must return later.
NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATIONS OF THE OLD
There remains yet one more major way in which the New Testament has tended to get in the way of the Old, and that has to do with the way that Christian interpreters have tended to take later usage or interpretation of a passage as the correct and only possible one. In actual practice, this approach has meant that when a New Testament writer refers to an Old Testament passage this later interpretation becomes authoritative in a way that subtly implies that the study of the original passage is really no longer necessary. Such an attitude has tended to limit greatly the study of the Old Testament, for when someone studies an original Old Testament passage he may find that the Old Testament writer has given a different emphasis from that in the New. To illustrate, we could simply refer to the interpretation of Moses’ killing of the Egyptian in Hebrews as compared with the original thrust of the story in Exodus. Inspired writers are often legitimately creative in their use of other inspired material, but to appeal to Hebrews, for example, as the source for the original as well as the final meaning of the Exodus passage is quite inappropriate. Yet Christian interpreters are strongly tempted to do just that type of thing.
Perhaps the classic example of a New Testament interpretation getting in the way of an Old Testament passage is Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14 as a proof text for the Virgin Birth in Matthew 1:22-23. Conservative Christians have always appealed to Matthew 1 as one of the passages that establishes the Virgin Birth. And the meaning in Matthew is clear: Jesus was born of a virgin. But the interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 is quite a different matter. If we try to read Isaiah 7 as an Old Testament someone in Isaiah’s day might have understood it, we are hard pressed to see how such a person could see in Isaiah’s words a clear prophecy of the birth of Jesus Christ. The context of Isaiah 7 would, in fact, suggest that the child Immanuel was to be a sign in Isaiah’s own day to the then reigning monarch, King Ahaz. When Matthew cites that passage he is giving a second meaning of the prophecy, one which “fulfils” the original meaning, or in other words, fills the original prophecy full of new meaning. Matthew’s use of the term “fulfil” is a matter to which I shall return later (see chapter 7), but the point we need to make here is that to find out what Matthew meant we must read Matthew; to find out what Isaiah meant we must read Isaiah.
That conservative Christians have often opposed this principle either consciously or unconsciously, is illustrated by the fact that when the Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament was first published, considerable opposition arose in connection with its treatment of Isaiah 7:14. The King James Version had used the term “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14 as well as in Matthew 1:23; thus the language of the “prophecy” and “fulfillment” matched up quite nicely. But the RSV translators rightly retained “virgin” in Matthew while choosing to use “young woman” in Isaiah, a term which more accurately reflects the Hebrew original. In fact, there is a beautiful ambiguity about the Hebrew word almah, which allows both the original application in Isaiah’s day and the secondary and more complete application to Mary the mother of Jesus. Yet the RSV translators were accused of tampering with the doctrine of the Virgin Birth by their translation of Isaiah. Irate Christians staged Bible burning parties in protest, evidence enough that feelings were strong.
This is not the place for an extensive study of the way in which the New Testament treats the Old Testament. But the examples we have cited illustrate the freedom which generally characterizes the style of the New Testament writers. I do not want to deny the biblical writers this freedom in interpreting and applying other biblical material, but I am concerned lest that freedom, originally a result of the Spirit’s
