There are a number of different ways to have introductions to the Old Testament. Some people will introduce the Bible to you based upon certain important themes. They will talk about covenants, or they will talk about God’s presence, or they will talk about holiness – and they will trace these themes through the Old Testament. They will trace a number of themes. In a way, that gives you an introduction to the basic content of the Old Testament.
Another way of doing Old Testament introduction, and this is much more common, is basic content. That is a good and necessary introduction to the Old Testament.
We are going to do what I am going to call a hermeneutical introduction to the Old Testament. You cannot simply jump into the Bible and think that you are going to properly understand it without any other help or introduction.
Presuppositions#
1. The Bible is Inspired#
The Bible is from God. It is God-breathed. It is, in the words of 2 Timothy 3:16, theopneustos, God-breathed. Now, it is a very unique word. It is a very descriptive word.
How many times in the Bible is something ever described as God-breathed? There are only two things in my Bible that are really described that way theologically.
The Bible is God-breathed, inspired. The Bible is the living and active word of God.
It comes to us in Genesis 1 and 2, where God takes some dirt (some dust of the ground) and He forms it and He does something to it. He breathes into it the breath of life.
They are the only two inspired things in the Bible.
2. The Bible is Inerrant#
Because the Bible is inspired, God-breathed, I also believe it is inerrant. It is without error. And so, it is a book worth basing our lives on.
3. The Bible is Authoritative#
Because the Bible is inspired and inerrant, I also believe it is authoritative. It has authority over me and over you, whether you believe that or not.
As an interpreter of the Scriptures, I believe that my job is not to be master over the text, but to submit to the text. That is what proper interpretation does. It is someone who is submitted to the text and exposition. It is not someone who conceives of themself primarily as lord over the text.
That is a huge difference, especially as you conceive of your work in the churches as those who may preach or teach or educate using the word of God. You are not in authority over the text. Your only authority comes from the text as it is inspired and inerrant.
Assumptions#
I have a couple other basic assumptions that may be important for you to have before you.
1. The Christian Bible Includes both Old and New Testaments#
First, is that the Old Testament is only the first part of the Christian Bible. The Christian Bible that I am primarily concerned with contains the Old and New Testaments. That is my complete canon. The Old Testament is larger. It is just over 75% of your Christian Bible.
Some people will humorously call the New Testament the answer key to the Old Testament – just because of the size. I am concerned here primarily with the whole Christian canon: the Old and New Testaments. But we are going to focus in this course on the Old Testament. That is important because Jesus and the apostles interpreted the Bible in such a way. I want to know what they did and how they thought about my Bible, my Old Testament and my New Testament. So that is going to be important as well.
2. The Old Testament is just as Christian as the New Testament#
Secondly, the Old Testament is just as Christian for me as the New Testament. There is nothing sub-Christian about the Old Testament. It is just as Christian as the New Testament. The gospel is there. If you read the book of Hebrews, it is clear in the first few chapters in that book that the people of the Old Testament heard the gospel preached even in the wilderness. That refers to Israel’s time in the wilderness after the Exodus and before their entrance into the Promised Land. They heard the gospel.
3. God is the Primary Author of the Old Testament#
Thirdly, the primary author of the Old Testament is God. Now that may be shocking to some of you. Most books that treat topics of Old Testament introductions and issues of Old Testament interpretation spend more time talking about the human author than the divine author.
How many Isaiahs were involved in the writing of Isaiah?
Did Moses truly write the Pentateuch?
There is all kind of speculation. For now, if I believe in an inspired, inerrant and authoritative Bible, I believe it is God’s word.
Basic Methodology#
How are we going to approach this course?
1. Providing the Big Picture#
These first few lectures are very concerned with seeing the forest before the trees. We want to look at what is the big picture. We will look at individual books and individual blocks of books or groupings of books. But first, we are going to look at the entire Christian Bible. Then we will look at the Old Testament. Then we will look at certain divisions within the Old Testament. Then we will look at individual books. We are going to continually narrow our scope of interpretation down and down and down.
What that does for us is that it allows the context to always set the agenda.
Where are we in the Bible: Old or New?
Where are we in the Old Testament?
Are we in the first part that Moses wrote?
Are we in the prophets (who appear to most people as cranky people?
Or are we in the writings where you have praise and wisdom and all of that good esoteric material that you like to quote and memorize?
Those things will determine how you interpret the text.
Where you are in the Bible will determine how you interpret the Bible. This is very important.
For example, you cannot impose the Sinai Covenant stipulations upon Abraham because he lived before the law. Nor can you impose them on the apostles, because something that has happened with Jesus has changed their relationship to the law. So there are things like that.
2. Dealing with the Final Form of the Bible#
Another aspect of our methodology is this. Our methodology is going to be primarily descriptive of what in fact does exist in the final form of Scripture. In Old Testament studies in general, that is not the prevailing mood or ethos or scope of study. There is a big interest in what came before the text. How did the text look before? Does that help understand it? For our purposes, we are going to skip that. If you are interested in that material, you can get introductions to the Old Testament that cover it in writing. Given that we only have a few hours, I am going to do what I think is most helpful at this point.
Basic Epistemology#
In terms of basic epistemology, I think it is important to cover a couple of other things first as well. I will give you three points.
First, you cannot understand the Bible without divine help.
Secondly, you cannot believe or obey the Bible without divine help.
Thirdly, you cannot appropriate the Bible for teaching or preaching or anything like that without divine help.
That is to say, we need God’s help every step of the way to understand the Bible.
1. We Need Divine Help to Understand the Bible#
All human effort would be for nothing if God had not first redeemed us, put His Spirit in us and illuminated us with that Spirit. Without that, we might as well pack up our books and go home and call it quits, because we do not have the tools necessary in our hearts to get at the true nature of Scripture. We need God’s help.
Let me give you a couple of Biblical references that may help you think about these things. John 3:3. “It is written, ‘I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again’.” For me, the kingdom of God is going to be one of my controlling frameworks for thinking about the Bible. For me, the Bible is about the kingdom of God. Here in Scripture it says: no one can see that kingdom unless he is first born again. So we must be born again.
Luke 24:45 is another great text. Jesus is resurrected and He is on the road to Emmaus with a couple of disciples. They are befuddled by what has happened and they are trying to understand the events. Then it says, “Then He,” that is, Jesus, “opened their minds so that they could understand the Scriptures.” These disciples had seen Jesus, walked with Him, heard Him teach and seen Him crucified. They had been through all this and they still did not have a clue. They still did not have a clue because they needed something that we need. They needed divine illumination.
We must pray for that when we study and when we teach. In all aspects of our Biblical devotion we must pray for understanding the Scriptures. We must ask for God’s help to understand His word and to see the kingdom of God. Graeme Goldsworthy, one of my favorite Biblical theologians, says it this way in Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics
“Our ability to interpret Scripture must be saved, justified and sanctified through the gospel… Hermeneutical conversion takes place when one becomes a believer. The Bible will never be the same to us again, because we, as believers, have made a quantum shift from unbelief and rejection of God’s word to faith and trust in that word and submission to it.”
2. We Need Divine Help to Believe the Bible#
You cannot believe or obey the Bible without divine help. For example, the approach to understanding the Bible which Carl Henry characterized Augustine with was this: “It appears in the well-known expression, ‘I believe in order to understand’.” That means faith precedes proper understanding. Faith precedes proper understanding. You cannot appropriate the Bible, either in order to ascertain the gospel or, for most of us, to teach that gospel, without divine help. We are constantly dependent upon God.
The Goals for this Course#
What are some of the goals for this little brief course? Here is what I am intending as a few basic goals for this hermeneutical introduction to the Old Testament.
At the end of this introduction on the Old Testament, we should be able to:
outline the basic history of Israel presented in the Old Testament from Abraham through Ezra-Nehemiah;
describe the basic structure of the Old Testament especially as it relates to the canon and covenant model presented in the following lectures;
summarize the basic content and message of each individual book located in the Old Testament;
finally proclaim the Christological significance of the Old Testament message in the person of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.
Outline the Basic History of Israel#
We are going to outline the basic history of Israel presented in the Old Testament from Abraham down through the history to Ezra-Nehemiah. That does not mean that there is not history in the Bible before Abraham. We just cannot date it with any certainty. The earliest precise dating we can have in the Old Testament is Abraham. Then it takes us down through Ezra-Nehemiah.
In terms of concrete history, the Old Testament covers from the beginning of time with creation all the way down to 400BC. That is the Old Testament, creation to 400BC. But in terms of actual datable history that I can get my hands around, we are talking about Abraham, roughly 2000BC to 400BC. That is 1600 years, which is a remarkable amount of time to cover in such a short body of literature. It has obviously been a selective history of Israel. It does not include everything Israel did. Even when David and Solomon and Saul and all the other kings after them have their episodes completed in the Bible, they do not include everything. At the end of their lives there is this little phrase that is included: “And are not all the other acts and deeds of Solomon or David written in the annuls of the book of kings of Israel.” There was a record of what they did in a more literal, specific, daily event in those annuls. It was more comprehensive perhaps. But this is what God, as the author of inspired Scripture, has chosen to include to preach the gospel to us in the Old Testament. We are going to look at those events carefully. That is the first goal.
Describe the Basic Structure of the Old Testament#
Secondly, we want to describe the basic structure of the Old Testament, especially as it relates to the canon and covenant model presented in the following lectures. I want to describe the Old Testament in terms of its structure, because, for me, structure is going to help you understand meaning. Structure and meaning are related.
Let me give you an example of that. If I were to come up here and lay before you a bunch of parts and give you tools and tell you take the tools and take the parts and put it all together for me. Suppose I did that, but I gave you no structure. Or if I just said, in a very postmodern sense, do whatever you want with it. Make something out of it. There is no structure to that. You are probably not going to get it right. But if I came and put all the parts here and then all the tools and said make for me this mousetrap. And if I gave you the structure of the mousetrap, you could probably do it. Or if I told you these are the parts of an air-conditioning unit. Put it together. You could probably do it. Or if I said these are the parts for an automobile engine, then you could probably at least have a guess at what it should look like (if you have ever looked under the hood). You need structure to put all the parts together. If you do not have the structure, you have no idea what the parts should do. Those things are important. I want to describe the structure for you.
Summarize the Basic Content of Each Book#
Then thirdly, I want to summarize the basic content and message of each of the individual books. Few people can get out of Genesis in thirty-nine different lectures much less cover the whole Old Testament. So we need to figure out a way to summarize the content of each book. For me, content and structure go together to describe meaning.
Proclaim the Christological Significance#
One of the things the Bible does is tell us that ultimately the meaning of the Old Testament is Christ and the kingdom of God. I am going to argue that in a little bit. So we have got the outline. Then we have got the structure and the summary of the contents. Together they provide us with the meaning. And we know that the meaning must ultimately be Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. I am just saying that now, but in a little bit I will argue for that.