Jesus and Paul, reading in the light of Christ

The first Christians were Jews. They read the same Scriptures as their neighbours, often in the same synagogues. But they read them with a new conviction: what these texts announced had come true in Jesus.

A key to reading: fulfilment

According to Klein, Blomberg and Hubbard, “the literal fulfilment by Jesus of Old Testament prophecies” is the basic interpretive principle of the first Christians. Jesus himself applies it:

• At Nazareth he reads Isaiah 61:1-2 and declares: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-21).
• To the disciples of John he replies by taking up Isaiah 35:5-6: the blind see, the lame walk (Luke 7:22).
• On the road to Emmaus he interprets “in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).

The Jews were still waiting for the prophet like Moses, the son of David, the servant of the Lord. For the Christians these expectations were already fulfilled. So the stone rejected that became the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22) is identified with Jesus (Acts 4:11).

The present as an echo of the past

Another habit, already present in the Old Testament, carries on: new events are read as repetitions of old ones. The return from Babylon was a new exodus. For the Christians, the death and resurrection of Jesus are the great deliverance that the earlier ones foreshadowed. This is what is called typology.

From this also comes the idea that the prophecies were mysteries whose solution awaited the time of the New Testament. This conviction would prepare the ground for allegory, which later became very popular.

Paul’s six ways of reading

Paul quotes the Old Testament about ninety times. The theologian Gerald Bray identifies at least six methods in his writings:

1. Literal: Romans 7:7 simply quotes Exodus 20:17, “You shall not covet”.
2. Midrashic: in Romans 3:10-18, Paul strings together several quotations from the Psalms and Isaiah to build an argument.
3. Hillel’s rules: in Romans 5:15-21, he reasons “how much more” between Adam and Christ.
4. Out of context: in Romans 10:6-8, he applies to faith in Christ words from Deuteronomy 30 that spoke of the Law.
5. Allegorical: in Galatians 4:21-31, Hagar and Sarah become two covenants.
6. The pesher: in Colossians 1:26, Paul speaks of a mystery hidden for ages and now revealed.

So Paul did not have a single method. He read as a man of his time, trained in the school of the Jewish teachers, but with a conviction that changed everything: Christ is the key to the Scriptures.