Jesus read the Jewish Scriptures, what Christians today call the Old Testament. In the first century, the New Testament did not yet exist. When Jesus, his disciples or Paul speak of “the Scriptures”, they mean the books of the Jewish Bible.
Which books exactly?
The New Testament never gives the precise list of books Jesus regarded as Scripture. This silence suggests that the list was not an issue at the time. Jesus probably shared the twenty-two books mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus. The Jews arranged their sacred writings in three parts: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, hence the name Tanakh.
Jesus refers to them constantly. He quotes Isaiah and Jeremiah (Luke 19:46) and Zechariah (Mark 14:27), and he often asks his opponents: “Have you not read…?” (Matthew 12:3; 19:4; 22:31). The first Christians read these texts in Hebrew or in their Greek translation, the Septuagint.
Texts he held to be unbreakable
For Jesus, these Scriptures carry full authority. “Scripture cannot be broken”, he says in John 10:35. He has not come to abolish “the Law and the Prophets” but to fulfil them (Matthew 5:17-18).
He does not simply quote. He explains and reinterprets, like the Jewish teachers of his day: “You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…” (Matthew 5:21-48). The crowds are amazed that he teaches “as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:29). His authority does not come from the Scriptures alone: he also speaks in his own name, as the Son of God.
A Bible that speaks about him
Above all, Jesus reads these texts as fulfilled in his own person. In Nazareth, he reads Isaiah 61 and declares: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). On the road to Emmaus, he explains to his disciples “in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).
The temptation story (Matthew 4) adds a further lesson. Satan also quotes Scripture, Psalm 91, and Jesus answers him with other passages. The text is the same for both, but the use they make of it is opposite. A perfect text can be misused: everything depends on the one who interprets it.
For the first Christians, this way of reading would become the key to the whole Bible: Christ is the one the Scriptures announced.