Old Testament Interpretation Part 1 - Lecture 1
Summary
TLDRThis lecture introduces the importance of studying Old Testament interpretation, emphasizing its long-standing intellectual tradition in the Western world. The speaker highlights the challenges of understanding the Old Testament, given its unfamiliarity to many modern readers, and addresses common misconceptions such as the idea that the Old Testament has been superseded by the New Testament. The course aims to help students become responsible biblical interpreters by exploring the text's relevance, understanding its content, and engaging with its rich interpretive history.
Takeaways
- 📚 This course focuses on Old Testament interpretation, aiming to help students understand the Old Testament and become responsible interpreters.
- 📜 The study of the Old Testament is part of the longest-lived unbroken intellectual tradition in the Western world, extending back to the 1st millennium BC.
- 📖 The Old Testament continues to play a crucial role in the lives of Christians, Jews, and Muslims, but it is often unfamiliar to modern readers, even within faith communities.
- 🤔 Many people today are unaware of the contents of the Old Testament, with some assuming it contains sayings that aren't actually in it.
- 📅 The Old Testament often plays a small role in the Christian church today, with only a limited selection of readings included in church lectionaries.
- 🚫 Supersessionism, the belief that the New Testament replaces or supersedes the Old Testament, is a widespread issue, both theologically and secularly.
- ⚖️ Theological supersessionism was declared a heresy by the early church, as the New Testament is heavily based on the Old Testament.
- 💡 Secular supersessionism is more dangerous because it suggests the Old Testament is outdated and irrelevant to modern life.
- 🔄 Old Testament interpretation should not focus on making the text relevant to modern times but rather on understanding it within its historical and interpretive tradition.
- 🎓 The course will explore the concept of canon and the history of interpretation, emphasizing the ongoing process of interpreting the Old Testament for each generation.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the course discussed in the transcript?
-The course focuses on Old Testament interpretation, aiming to help students understand what the Old Testament is, how it has been interpreted historically, its contributions to contemporary religious communities, and how to become responsible biblical interpreters.
Why does the instructor emphasize the academic significance of studying the Old Testament?
-The instructor emphasizes the academic significance because the study of the Old Testament represents the longest-lived unbroken intellectual tradition in the Western world, surpassing even the classical tradition of Greece, which was interrupted and later revived.
What challenge does the instructor identify regarding modern readers' familiarity with the Old Testament?
-The instructor notes that many modern readers, even those within faith communities, have little knowledge of what is actually in the Old Testament, leading to misconceptions and a lack of understanding of its content.
What is supersessionism, and how does it relate to the study of the Old Testament?
-Supersessionism is the belief that the Old Testament has been replaced or made irrelevant by the New Testament. It exists in two forms: theological, which views the Old Testament as theologically irrelevant, and secular, which considers it culturally outdated and irrelevant to modern believers.
Why does the instructor argue against the attempt to make the Old Testament 'relevant' to modern communities?
-The instructor argues that trying to make the Old Testament 'relevant' implies that it is currently irrelevant or outdated, which is presumptuous. The problem lies not with the Old Testament but with the modern community's understanding of it. The text's relevance is inherent, and interpretation should focus on understanding it within its historical and theological context.
What role does the concept of 'canon' play in the study of the Old Testament, according to the instructor?
-The concept of 'canon' signifies the fixed nature of the text, indicating its authority within a community. The instructor explains that while the text is fixed, interpretation involves understanding what the text says and how it is relevant to contemporary questions about God.
How does the instructor view the relationship between the Old and New Testaments in terms of interpretation?
-The instructor views the Old Testament as foundational for understanding the New Testament, as the early Christian community relied on the Old Testament for its theology. Therefore, knowledge of the Old Testament is crucial for interpreting the New Testament accurately.
What does the instructor suggest about the role of interpretation in religious communities?
-The instructor suggests that interpretation is an ongoing process that each generation and community must undertake. It involves understanding the text within its historical context and applying it to current theological and social questions.
Why does the instructor believe that the Old Testament is still relevant to contemporary believers?
-The instructor believes the Old Testament is still relevant because it continues to speak as the Living Word of God to various communities, both Jewish and Christian. The issue of relevance lies more with modern interpreters' understanding than with the text itself.
What will be the focus of the upcoming lectures in the course?
-The upcoming lectures will focus on understanding the concept of 'canon,' exploring the history of interpretation, and examining how these elements contribute to the ongoing process of interpreting the Old Testament within religious communities.
Outlines
📜 Introduction to Old Testament Interpretation
The speaker introduces the course on Old Testament interpretation, emphasizing its importance in understanding the Old Testament's role in contemporary religious communities and in becoming responsible interpreters of biblical texts. The study of the Old Testament is highlighted as one of the longest-lived intellectual traditions in the Western world, continuously practiced since the 1st millennium BC. The importance of the Old Testament in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities is discussed, along with common misconceptions about its content and relevance.
📚 Challenges in Understanding Sacred Texts
This paragraph addresses the challenges faced by contemporary religious communities in understanding their sacred texts, particularly the Old Testament. It discusses the selectivity and gaps in knowledge among Christians and Jews regarding their scriptures. The example of a Jewish rabbi who lacked knowledge about the prophets despite extensive training illustrates the limited exposure to various parts of sacred texts. The speaker emphasizes the need for a comprehensive approach to understanding the Old Testament and other scriptures to avoid partial interpretations and misrepresentations.
🔍 Theological and Secular Supersessionism
The speaker explores the concept of supersessionism, which is the belief that the New Testament replaces or supersedes the Old Testament. This belief manifests in two forms: theological, which views the Old Testament as theologically irrelevant after the New Testament, and secular, which sees the Old Testament as primitive and outdated. Both forms of supersessionism are critiqued for their simplistic views on the relationship between the Testaments and the continuous relevance of the Old Testament in understanding God's nature and human struggles, as portrayed in biblical texts.
⚠️ Dangers of Secular Supersessionism
This paragraph delves deeper into the dangers of secular supersessionism, which regards the Old Testament as a product of a primitive culture irrelevant to modern times. The speaker argues that this perspective promotes a sense of superiority over the Old Testament and leads to misguided attempts to 'fix' the text to make it relevant to contemporary contexts. The speaker cautions against dismissing the Old Testament's cultural context and encourages understanding it within its own historical and theological framework, recognizing its enduring relevance in modern religious discourse.
🛠️ Relevance of the Old Testament Today
The speaker discusses the misconception that the Old Testament needs to be made relevant to modern Christian communities. They argue that this view is both presumptuous and out of touch with reality, as the Old Testament continues to be a living, active text in many religious communities. The speaker suggests that the issue lies not with the Old Testament but with the communities that fail to engage with it. Rather than trying to adapt the Old Testament to modern norms, communities should strive to understand and integrate its teachings into their own religious practices.
📖 Canon and Interpretation in Biblical Studies
In this paragraph, the focus is on the concepts of 'canon' and 'interpretation' as fundamental to the study of the Old Testament. The speaker outlines the importance of understanding the text itself and the tradition of interpretation that accompanies it. They emphasize the need for readers to situate themselves within this long history of interpretation, contributing their own understandings and questions. The lecture preview suggests further exploration of how the canon was formed, the role it plays in theology, and the historical trends in biblical interpretation.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Old Testament
💡Interpretation
💡Supersessionism
💡Canon
💡Intellectual Tradition
💡Faith Communities
💡Theological Relevance
💡Historical Context
💡Secular Supersessionism
💡New Testament
Highlights
Introduction to the course: Focus on Old Testament interpretation and its relevance in contemporary religious communities.
The Old Testament represents the longest unbroken intellectual tradition in the Western world, dating back to the first millennium BC.
Comparison between the uninterrupted tradition of Old Testament interpretation and the disrupted classical tradition of Greece.
The Old Testament plays a crucial role in the faith traditions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims, influencing contemporary believers' lives.
The challenge of interpreting the Old Testament: Many modern readers are unfamiliar with its contents, which often leads to misconceptions.
The selective knowledge of sacred texts is prevalent across different faith traditions, not just among Christians but also Jews and Muslims.
The Old Testament's limited role in modern Christian practice, exemplified by its sparse inclusion in church lectionaries.
Supersessionism: The belief that the Old Testament has been replaced by the New Testament, and its two forms— theological and secular.
Theological supersessionism: The belief that the Old Testament is theologically irrelevant, declared a heresy by the early church.
Secular supersessionism: The belief that the Old Testament reflects a primitive culture, making it irrelevant to modern believers.
The danger of secular supersessionism lies in its influence on the interpretation of the Old Testament, leading to misguided efforts to 'fix' the text.
The importance of understanding the Old Testament in its original context rather than trying to force it to fit modern perspectives.
Old Testament interpretation should not focus on making the text relevant but on understanding its place within a long tradition.
The role of the Old Testament in providing insight into the human condition and the ongoing dialogue between the community and the deity.
The importance of Canon and interpretation: The text is fixed, but interpretation is an ongoing process that each generation must engage in.
Transcripts
all right so I want to say a few
introductory things about what we are
going to do this semester and why it is
important to do them this is a course in
Old Testament interpretation loosely
translated that means that this is a
course in which we try to help you
understand what the Old Testament is how
it has been interpreted how it
contributes to the lives of faithful
people in contemporary communities of
Christians Jews and Muslims and most
important how to become responsible
biblical interpreters ourselves we take
the course title seriously I've already
said that this is a course in Old
Testament interpretation as an academic
Enterprise the study of the Old
Testament deals with the longest-lived
unbroken intellectual tradition of the
Western world and that is quite an
important thing to remember the study of
this text goes well into the 1st
millennium BC and continues unbroken
down to the present day the only thing
in the West that even approaches it is
the great classical tradition of Greece
which was interrupted with the fall of
the Roman Empire and not recovered until
the late Middle Ages when Muslims
brought Arabic translations of the Greek
text to the west and Spain became the
place of intersection of the classical
world with what was then the height of
the
world so that tradition was interrupted
for several centuries
whereas in monasteries in various places
in Europe the business of the
interpretation of the Old Testament
continued as it did in rabbinic
academies in various places during that
period so don't let anyone try to tell
you that the study of the Old Testament
has no place in the modern university it
represents an intellectual tradition
that is longer than anything else you
can study here that has to do with the
West we talk about China and India and
Africa those are different stories but
we can you can do that here too
so just to get our academic credentials
in place at the very beginning is
important equally important the Old
Testament continues to play a crucial
role in the flourishing of three great
faith traditions and in the daily lives
of contemporary believers at the same
time when we undertake to learn how to
interpret the Old Testament we are faced
with a number of problems up front that
we need to recognize first of all for
many modern readers even those who are
faithful members of faith communities
the Old Testament is unknown territory
we have very little idea of what he is
actually in it there are many people who
still think that somewhere buried in the
book of Proverbs is the maxim
cleanliness is next to godliness you
won't find it there at all this is
something that is attributed to the
Bible for a want of something else to
attributed
it to accept your great-grandparents
all right so people generally today have
a very little idea of what is in and
this is true generally across the faith
traditions Christians are woefully
ignorant these days of what's there if
you had been here at Yale in the
colonial period it would have been a
very different story but now most people
come to this place not really knowing
what is here in the Old Testament and
very little incidentally if what's in
the New Testament if you want to know
what's coming so there are good reasons
for that within the Christian tradition
particularly but even in the Jewish
tradition
I was once hired by a local Jewish rabbi
to do a session of five sessions in his
synagogue on the prophets and I
eventually asked him why why import this
I mean he has five years worth of
seminary training to be a rabbi and he
said to me well we studied the Torah and
we study it mostly through the Talmud
and that doesn't really deal with
prophecy so I don't think I know
anything about prophecy it's so this
kind of selectivity of what people know
in their sacred texts stretches not only
across Christian community it stretches
across the Jewish community and I
suspect the Muslim community as well and
what is there so right up front if we're
gonna do a course like this we've got a
problem trying to deal with what is
actually in this text there's some basic
work that we need to do before we can
start interpreting if we're going to
interpret the text we need to have an
idea of what the text is that we're
going to be interpreting so this is not
surprising in the Christian community
particularly where it is obvious the Old
Testament too often plays are relatively
small role in the life of the church
take a look for example at the
lectionaries lectionaries include an Old
Testament reading every week except
during the Holy Week but those readings
are almost always from Isaiah from the
Psalms and occasional forays into
Jeremiah and Genesis and a little Exodus
and that's it look at how much is
missing the glories of Ezekiel are not
in there you will not find anything from
chronicles Ezra Nehemiah none of that is
there even Amos which became so popular
and necessary during the civil rights
movement you will not find readings
there or intensive engagement with the
Book of Amos as important as it was for
stirring the ideas of social justice and
their importance that is not part of the
lectionary and for that reason it often
drops out of the preaching tradition so
I mean how long has it been since you
heard a sermon on Chronicles it's been a
long time I suspect so this is largely
missing from the life of the church so
we need to find out first of all and
that's our main order of business in or
at least our first order of business in
this course is to try to acquaint you
with what is actually here and you will
at least take a passing look at
everything that is in here in this text
people and get the idea they're going to
read the Bible and learn about the Bible
and they start with Genesis and that's
about as far as they get
you may have done this yourself so there
there are other ways to address this
problem but we don't do a very good job
with it a second problem that we need to
face is a widespread belief in the
church that the Old Testament has in
some way been replaced or superseded by
the New Testament this idea usually
called appropriately supersessionism
exists in two forms the first form of it
is theological and it involves the
belief that knowledge of God and
salvation comes only through the New
Testament the Old Testament is therefore
theologically irrelevant and many church
members believe this even though if you
do not you will not have to look very
far in a Christian congregation until
you discover people who do now there is
a kind of irony about this because if
you really read the New Testament and
those of you who already had the New
Testament course already know this if
you read the New Testament you will find
that what is taken over from the Old
Testament is virtually in its entirety
everything that the Old Testament has to
say about God and the nature of God and
if you don't get that you're gonna have
a lot of trouble understanding what the
New Testament writers are about because
the Old Testament was the only scripture
of the early Christian community and so
when they talked about doing biblical
theology in the New Testament period
they talked about interpreting properly
what is in the Old Testament and not to
know that creates a major issue when you
try to understand the New Testament and
what the arguments are
that are going on and there are to be
sure arguments about interpretation as
the there always have been and we will
look in a couple of lectures at a really
whirlwind tour through the history of
interpretation both Jewish and Christian
that's that's just a preview of things
to come okay so we need to remember a
couple of things about this theological
supersessionism before we start the
first is that belief in the theological
irrelevance of the Old Testament was one
of the first beliefs that the early
church declared to be a heresy it has
that distinction and they never gave it
up if you've already had a New Testament
you will know that the New Testament is
simply saturated with allusions to and
quotations from the Old Testament the
church has always had a two-part Bible
and the Old Testament is the first part
of the Bible however there is a second
type of supersessionism which is purely
secular rather than theological the
secular version is more dangerous than
the theological version because of the
way that it influences our
interpretations of the Old Testament the
secular version of supersessionism holds
that the Old Testament reflects a
primitive culture that modern religious
groups have left behind the Old
Testament is irrelevant to contemporary
believers because we have advanced we
think far beyond it in the Old Testament
world people committed murder hated
their neighbors supported non-ag a lot
Arianism supported social oppression
tolerated slavery and political
injustice supported social oppression
although from time to time we have the
sinking feeling that we have not really
moved very far from the old testament
world and that we have a lot more in
common with our old testament ancestors
than we would like to admit now it
doesn't take long to have these growing
doubts about where we stand in our ideas
of developmental theology and social
consciousness all you need to do is read
the New York Times in the morning or
look at CNN and you will see how little
we have travelled along a road that
represents an increase the insensitivity
to important social and theological
issues we are just about like the Old
Testament community in its struggles to
understand who God is and what God wants
us to do and if you want to understand
the human condition and how people have
tried to solve the problems that humans
face the place to go is not the New
Testament which is much shorter in
compass but the Old Testament where you
get a much clearer sense of a community
struggling with its deity and how it is
responsible to that deity and what the
deity requires of the community and we
will be surprised to learn how the
community in turn reacts our rather the
deity in turn reacts to the struggles of
the community there is an ongoing
dialogue over time
that is portrayed in this text which you
will not get in the New Testament the
New Testament time period is much
shorter and you will not see it as
clearly as you will in the Old Testament
so the second kind of supersessionism is
in that way more dangerous than the
theological variety the theological
variety is simply wrong on the face of
it the second variety is much more
insidious and is liable to lure us into
thinking that we face our Old Testament
text in apna with a kind of superiority
over it that in fact probably does not
exist
and so we need to keep that in mind the
way that it influences interpretation
directly is to encourage us to think
that the way to interpret the Old
Testament or to fix it because of its
embeddedness in a culture which granted
is not our own culture and we have our
own cultural problems they had theirs
and they are trying to come to grips
with them we are trying to come to grips
with ours that is true enough but to
think as many people do that the Old
Testament is not relevant to the modern
community because it has this outlook
that it has gotten from the context in
which it was written to that we can
somehow fix that by making it relevant
to our own particular context that is an
exegetical error to try to do it that
way
when we do it that way we produce very
odd interpretations we will admit for
example that parts of the Old Testament
are embarrassing
we will DeMuth Allah gize some stories
to get at their true theological meaning
this is a way of saying it didn't really
happen or they didn't really mean it
when they said this we will work at it
with our laborious ly acquired
interpretive tools until the obvious
errors are corrected and nothing
offensive remains in this way through
diligent effort we will try to salvage
at least some of the old testament for
the church to paraphrase the prophet
amos with whom we will become intimately
acquainted next semester we will be like
the Shepherd who rescues from the mouth
of the lion to legs or the piece of an
ear now there is a tendency among
scholars to get defensive about this
kind of treatment of their text but when
we begin to think about it I would
suggest that this way of approaching the
Old Testament text by mirela making it
relevant to the present is wrongheaded
so let me state that theory in its most
sharp form Old Testament interpretation
should not concern itself with the
question of the relevance of the Old
Testament and we as interpreters should
not spend our time trying to make the
Old Testament relative to the modern
relevant to the modern community now
before you quote me on this let me
explain why I think this is true there
are basically two reasons the first is
that when we talk about the need to make
the Old Testament relevant to the
Christian community we imply that the
Old Testament currently plays no role or
only a limited role in Christian
experience we imply that the Old
Testament is out of date and out of
touch with modern reality and it must be
somehow brought into
21st century in short we imply that the
Old Testament needs a lot of help if it
is to be salvaged for the Christian
community this view is both presumptuous
and out of touch with reality is I've
already indicated there are now and
always have been communities for which
the Old Testament continues to speak as
the Living Word of God and I'm not only
talking about Jewish communities I'm
talking about Christian communities as
well the very existence of such
communities suggests that the problem of
the relevance of the Old Testament is
not the Old Testaments problem it's our
problem if we are not now a members of a
community to which the Old Testament
speaks then perhaps the fault does not
lie with the Old Testament but with us
and our community instead of worrying
about making the Old Testament relevant
and trying to save it from our for our
community perhaps we should be doing
something else we should be looking at
communities where the Old Testament has
spoken and still speaks so that we can
better understand those communities and
become a part of their life there's a
second reason that we should not concern
ourselves with making the Old Testament
relevant to the church when we speak of
making the Old Testament relevant we
usually mean that we want to fit what we
can of the Old Testament into our modern
understanding of the Christian life we
want to make it conform to our norms we
want to salvage from the Old Testament
what we can we want to fit our own
experiences of God to what we find to in
the Old Testament it seems to me that
this terms the interpretive process on
its head that this is not in fact what
we should be doing and it is not in fact
what the
the Christian tradition has done
traditionally rather it is the text
itself embedded in its long history of
interpretation that provides the
starting point into which we then need
to fit our own experiences and questions
we need to try to understand how we make
ourselves a part of this long tradition
and where we belong in it so that we
will eventually take our place in this
long history of interpretation and
therefore it seems to me that what we
ought to be doing in fact and in fact
what we will be doing in this course is
beginning with a text which has a long
history in our community it is a history
that has been furthered and developed by
generations of readers and students
trying to figure out where they fit in
this and how this text addresses the
current needs of the congregation this
needs to be done in every generation and
in every place it is not something that
is done once for all and that is why we
are not in the business here of teaching
you and interpretation but we are
teaching you how to interpret because
when the time comes it will be your job
to interpret for your community and to
help your community understand what this
text says to you in the present
condition so interpretation is never
definitive yet is always an
interpretation for a particular time in
a particular place and it will be
replaced by a different community
in a different at a different place and
in that sense the process of
interpretation is an ongoing process of
which you are now to become a part you
are the most recent generation to take
on this challenge and what you begin
with is a text it is a fixed item it was
once in oral form it was not necessarily
in the form that we now have it in
writing and we will learn something
about that but we will also see that
there came to be an understanding in the
community that this text was in some
ways theologically relevant to the
community and that it was a revelation
of God to the community about what at
that moment God wanted so the text is a
fixed item we signify the fixing of this
text with the word canon that is it
becomes authoritative for the life and
practice of that community but what the
community has to do with it is to
interpret it so these two items Canon
and interpretation are the cornerstones
of what we are going to be up to and the
interpretive part of it involves a
understanding of what the text says that
is we have to spend some time trying to
figure out what those words mean in a
language that we understand and then we
have to understand I understand how that
is relevant to the questions that we
have about God and what God is up to in
our own particular time those are the
two focal points of interpretation the
text itself the cannon and the
interpretive tradition of which we are a
part so in the next lecture I want to
spend some time fleshing out this idea
of Canon and what Canon is how people
have thought about it
the role that it plays in the modern
discussion of theology and following
that not surprisingly I will do this
whirlwind tour of the history of
interpretation from which we will learn
how interpretation has gone on and what
the general trends within the
interpretations have been and what the
importance of that is for our own
efforts at interpretation so we'll take
up canon in the next hour on Friday
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