Why the Old Testament Matters or A Bible Is Not A Bible Without the Old Testament

Recently I was going through a box of old books trying to decide which ones to get rid of at a rummage sale that my neighbors were having. What will be surprising to no one who grew up in the United States, I found three or four copies of those little pocket-sized New Testaments made by Gideon's International, the organization that ensures that you have a dusty King James Bible in your motel room when you are on vacation. In addition to providing the hospitality industry with free reading materials, the Gideons’ are known for handing out these little New Testaments at all sorts of events.

When I rediscovered these New Testaments that had been in my possession for who knows how long, I found myself annoyed for two different reasons. First, I was bummed out to have so many of them, because there is no way to get rid of them. Being a Christian, I cannot throw them away as they contain the Word of God. And I cannot give them away at a rummage sale, because everyone else already owns three or four of them themselves. The second reason I was bothered by these little pocket sized books--this is actually the issue that I want to deal with in this short essay--is that in their very existence as bound books containing only the New Testament, they represent something very wrong with the thinking of many Protestant Christians and churches. This would be that the Old Testament is not as important as the New because of the advent of Christ and, therefore, it is helpful but not “essential” in conveying the Christian story.(1) I would argue that nothing could be further from the truth.(2)

I do not want to disparage the Gideon's for their wonderful work of providing Bibles to people free of charge through out the world. Nonetheless, I do think that even making stand-alone New Testament's available does believers and non-believers a huge disservice both immediately and in the long run. Here is why in one simple point: when you make or give out only the New Testament, you are only providing the future owner or reader with 1/3 of the Bible (i.e. For math idiots like me, that means that 2/3 of the Bible in these versions is missing). Doing this ends up robbing the Judeo-Christian story of its ultimate sense and intelligibility.

Now, some may think that I am making too big of a deal out this. "Isn't the story of Jesus the most important part,” one might ask. Or, “Isn't it a good thing that people at least have the New Testament?” In short, “No,” and, “No.” Let me answer these two questions respectively in further detail.

The narrative of Jesus and his death and bodily resurrection may be the climax of the Judeo-Christian story and considered the most important part to Christians, BUT it is not the only part of the story (and even if is the most important part, it does not make the other parts unimportant). In fact, the story of Jesus does not make sense and is not meant to make sense without the Old Testament. Just about any statement you can make about Jesus requires some form of reference to the Old Testament implicitly or explicitly. “He is the Messiah.” What the heck is a Messiah? “He died for our sins.” What does sin even mean, and what does death have to do with it? “He is the Son of God.” Which god are you referring to? History has been full of different gods. “Jesus was Jewish.” What is a Jew? To make sense of these statements requires at least some understanding of the Old Testament.

Okay. So one might concede that the Old Testament is helpful for establishing context for the New, but some might still ask, “Does it really have any authority any more, now that Jesus has come and fulfilled the Law himself? Maybe the OT is just some helpful history, but is not valid for us now. If that is the case then perhaps it is okay to be handing out only the valid and authoritative part.” While I understand the line of reasoning in this kind of thinking, I would argue that such conclusions are still faulty.

If you pay attention to what the New Testament itself says, then you have to conclude that the Old Testament is still part of God’s authoritative word for believers.(3) The New Testament cites hundreds of passages from the Old and generally does so to support or validate some sort of claim being made. The assumption in doing so is that the Old Testament is Scripture and has the weight of God’s Word behind it. For example, the Gospel According to Mark begins in chapter one, verse two, saying, “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way…” The story then introduces John the Baptist. This story in Mark, written down for the Church, uses the Old Testament to prove that John and Jesus are part of the big plan; proof is only meaning as proof if it is accepted as having weight and authority in it. Another similar example is when the apostle Paul makes his case for the bodily resurrection of the Christ in 1 Corinthians 15.3, saying, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” Paul is adding credibility to his story by saying that the Old Testament already prefigured these events of Christ’s. Again, credibility can only be established if its source is already considered credible and authoritative. Keep in mind, there is no New Testament yet; it is still in the making. EVERY TIME the New Testament mentions Scripture it is referring to the Old Testament. As Christian writer, Philip Yancey, made very clear in his book, The Bible Jesus Read, Jesus’ Bible was the Old Testament.(4) And as 2 Timothy 3.16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” While Christians today use this verse to cover the whole Bible, in its original context it was specifically referring to the Old Testament (Again, the New Testament did not exist yet).

So, if the Old Testament was considered sacred and authoritative Scripture by Jesus, by the early Church, and by the other writers of the New Testament, and if the New Testament relays on the Old Testament stories to help it make sense, then why is it considered an acceptable and good practice to hand out only 1/3 of the Bible to unbelievers and new believers? In handing out only the New Testament—whether we recognize it or not—we are communicating something very untrue about the Christian faith to the person receiving it. We are saying that the Old Testament is less important or somehow “second-class” in relation to the New. The Bible IS the WHOLE Bible, not part of the Bible. Ignoring or minimizing the Old Testament is to dismiss or rob a very valuable resource from the Christian community, without which people get an incomplete picture of God, of his story, and they lose the comfort, support, and intelligibility that the whole Scripture provides.

To end I will borrow an analogy that Duke Divinity School Church history, David Steinmetz used.(5) In some ways it is useful to think about the Bible in a similar way to a mystery novel. In a mystery story, it is usually the last chapter or two that wraps up and makes sense out of all of the previous chapters and solves the mystery. The last chapter is the most important part in making sense of the whole story, but a mystery novel is no mystery if all you read or even have is the last chapter. In fact, is there any book company that only publishes the last chapters of each Sherlock Holmes story and tries to sell those? Of course not. Why ruin a Sherlock Holmes story. Better yet, why ruin the Bible in the same way. So, please, spend the extra money and print the whole book. It’s a better read that way.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) The reader will note that I refer to the first 39 books in the Christian Bible as the “Old Testament.” In many academic circles this term has fallen out of favor. It is argued by many that “Old Testament” as a term is implicitly loaded with value judgments about the value of these 27 books as compared with those in the New Testament. Others are concerned that the term is offensive to people of Jewish faith because to call something the “Old Testament” in its very terminology demands a “New Testament.” Instead, many people use the terms, “Hebrew Bible,” or “Tanak (an acronym that describes the three main parts of the Jewish Scriptures, Torah/Law, Nev’im/Prophets, and /Ketuv-im/Writings).

I have decided to stick with using the term, “Old Testament.” I do think that in interfaith dialogue that it makes sense to adopt “Hebrew Bible” or ‘Tanak” as they are titles that can have a functionality for both Jews and Christians. However, as a Christian, I think the term “Old Testament” still has value and legitimacy. First, it is the term that most people, Jews, Christians, and non-Christians alike recognize and know what is being referred to, even if they do not care for the title. In this way it has some value in its familiarity. Second, within Christian circles, “Old Testament” does make a particular theological claim that believers in Christ would affirm, namely that the work of Christ has wrought something new and has changed things. So, while “Old Testament” would be a theologically inaccurate way of expressing what Jews believe, it remains accurate for what Christians do, even if it sounds a bit clumsy. People have proposed such sayings as, “First Covenant and Second Covenant” or “First Covenant and New Covenant.” The problem, however, with “first” and “second” is that within the Christian understanding it is not a full enough of an explanative title. “Second” is accurate, but it is not complete enough in that it does not express that something new has happened in Christ. Using “First Covenant and New Covenant” would work fine theologically, but it has the disadvantage of being completely unfamiliar to nearly all people and is not what has been used by the Church for most of its history. Such a switch would be fine by me, but would require an huge ad campaign or something to get the word out on the new terms. The third reason I stick with using “Old Testament” in public discourse is related to the second reason. Even though it is a bit clumsy and does risk being offensive to our Jewish brothers and sisters, it still conveys the Christian story and Christian claims in its own way. We do believe in a first covenant, which became “old” once Christ established his “new” covenant.

Again, I can see why in an interfaith discussion one would want to use Tanak or Hebrew Bible, but in general, I think the Church should continue with its historic terminology because it simply represents “truth in advertising” in regards to how the Church understands its own story theologically. Of course, there is always the huge danger that people will hear in “Old Testament” the notion of “less valuable” or “obsolete” which are two ideas about the OT that I am completely arguing against in this essay.

(2) For the sticklers for details, these New Testaments do contain two books from the Old Testament: Psalms and Proverbs. That these two OT books are included does not point to the value of the OT, but actually inadvertently enforces the point that I am trying to make in this essay: the OT is seen by some church traditions as being of secondary importance to the NT. That believers can simply “choose” two particular OT books because of their popular use and appeal, and exclude all of the rest bespeaks a scriptural hierarchy of importance in some segments of the body of Christ.

(3) I do want to clarify here that I recognize that the Old Testament in its continuing scriptural authority is not read, applied, or understood by Christians in the same manner that it would have been by Israel prior to the coming of Christ. Jesus’ entrance onto the scene and his death and resurrection does change things for believers (e.g. Law-keeping is no longer the sign of being God’s people or means of maintaining the covenant with God. Christ’s faithfulness in his death and resurrection and the gift of allowing us to be in him is what makes us the people of God. So, eat bacon and feel free to not cut off your foreskin or that of your baby boy’s…though I am not sure why anyone would want to have a foreskin…if you have one, I am just kidding…sort of ; ). However, even with the changes that come with Christ’s fulfillment of the Law, that does not mean that it is no longer God’s Word. It’s role seems to change, but it remains Scripture. One of my NT profs’, Peter Gosnell, used to say, “Law is contract is void. Law as Scripture, though, is still valid.” What that all means and how that plays out in detail is something for another essay.

(4) Yancey, Philip. The Bible Jesus Read, New Edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.

(5) Steinmetz, David. “Uncovering a Second Narrative: Detective Fiction and the Historical Method,” in The Art of Reading Scripture. Eds, Ellen David and Richard Hays. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003. Pp.54-65.