The Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament

Koot van Wyk, (DLitt et Phil; Thd) Visiting Professor, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia

Texts are formed and texts are used

One aspect that is very crucial considering Qumran is the difference between formal and functional biblical texts. A formal biblical text purports to be a duplication of CMT even though it is actually at Qumran in a degenerative condition due to the normal human slips of the ear, hand, eye, memory and tongue. A functional text is a biblical text that is shortened (omissions); elaborated or transformed in form to serve other purposes than duplication of its content. They become applied texts as opposed to merely copied biblical texts. The applied biblical texts became parabiblical texts since the Bible is approached with scissors and glue to put together for functional purposes some supportive array of prooftexts around the same topic. Paraphrases are made, quotations of sections from the biblical text are freely rewritten, paraphrases of the first verses in Ezechiel 30 were made. Florilegium are texts that strung together a number of CMT verses from different books. Commentaries are sometimes continuous or thematic. Some of the Qumran manuscripts can fulfill other functions like liturgical references in writings for worship (Thanksgiving hymns).

Paul is not forming text, although he is forming the New Testament without knowing it yet, but he is not merely duplicating the Old Testament. It is an exegetical living text that stands in the plan of God’s salvation from Adam to his own time and further until eternity.

Targums brought out the depth of the original

The Targums brought out what they understood to be inside the text already. Paul in Hebrews is bringing to the surface what is in the deepstructure of the Old Testament source text.

They felt that they were scholarly

The dynamic that drives the midrash forward is located not in the pure meditation on scripture but in the need to validate the tradition. They felt that they were working with an ongoing tradition of scholarship.

It is mostly argumentative and it is said that “they felt that they are working with an ongoing tradition in scholarship”. As McNamara put it using the Latin: Affert ad eam (i.e. Sacra Scriptura) sua quisque dogmata. Invenit in ea dogmata quisque sua – “they took their own beliefs to the scriptures and believed that they found them there.”

It was the scholarly practice in both Palestine (Qumran texts) and Alexandria (works of Homer).

Not only in Palestine was this methodology applied, it can be seen also in the scholarship of Homer’s works at Ptolemaic Alexandria.

Eupolemos freely adapted and changed the CMT in haggadic style to make it more acceptable for the Hellenistic audience.

When the scribes of the 3^rd century CE utilized the Jewish traditions for their education they were also influenced by this Eupolemic-Talmudic historiography so that when the LXX was “improved” by Jews as Justin the Martyr is complaining, the Hebrew CMT was that of the adjusted Eupolemic CMT and the Greek is reflecting these adjustments and when the scribes were copying the Greek manuscripts of the LXX, will it be odd to suggest that they aligned these issues in similar fashion in the LXX manuscripts? What Eupolemus was doing was done to the Homeric texts at Ptolemaic Alexandria since the days of Antiochus Epiphanes.

Targum Neophyti also used the repetitive style or multiple readings

Targum Neophyti has many problems of its own well discussed by scholars but what is interesting is to see the repetitive style or multiple readings also portrayed here.

The one verse lends content to the other and it is considered legitimate content-elaboration.

They wanted to treat the text coherent and self-consistent as part of Scripture in a harmonizing way

There is still the beauty of the objective to treat the text as totally coherent and self-consistent and to interpret any part of Scripture in the light of any other part of it and harmonized it. Contradictions are viewed as apparent and not real.

The text of Paul and Jesus was used and misused by Judaism and that was the problem, not the text itself.

It was not the biblical text that Jesus had problems with but with Judaism’s midrashic illegitimate ideas and conclusions from the biblical text. The midrashic methodology of Jesus and Paul’s day was then a common method used and misused and can be seen as a scholarly modus operandi with normative texts. When the sinful heart wants to sin it can use prooftexts from the Old Testament to weave numerous rules to be followed but then in fact created many loopholes through which the sinful actions can continue.

Legitimate preservation of the core-message of the CMT separates one sect from another

What separates one product from another, tapping from this stream of common methods or modes of articulation, is whether the core was legitimate enough. That core had to be within the confines of the CMT or otherwise the product was in jeopardy like Psalm 110 and Isaiah 53 in the Targumim. The moment the product is in conflict with the CMT or an illegitimate adaptation of it, it creates controversy with those who are interested in preservation of the veracity and exactness of the CMT. That is why Jesus and Paul were in constant dialectics with Judaism of his day.