All That the Prophets Have Declared: The Appropriation of Scripture in the Emergence of Christianity, ed. Matthew Malcolm (Paternoster, 2015).
This book was the product of a symposium in Perth Australia at Trinity Theological College. Key speakers were Larry Hurtado, Roland Deines, Allan Chapple, and Mark Seifrid. As the title indicates, the papers focused on the use of Scripture in early Christianity and what we can glean from that for knowledge about the emergence of early Christianity, and topic very well connected with Hurtado’s work.
There are twelve essays divided into five parts:
- Appropriation and Interpretation
- Gospel and Acts
- Pauline Letters
- Non-Pauline Letters
- Appropriation Today
Matthew Malcolm introduces and concludes the volume by noting the key issues at stake in the debates, including the contextual use of the Old Testament (or not), use of Jewish hermeneutical techniques (or not), and what their use of Scripture can tell us about early Christianity.
There is a good mixture of essays in this volumes that cover most of the NT. Hurtado’s essay leads off and is notable for his interaction with Ps 110:1 and Isa 45:22-25, the former which has received so much attention, especially in Hengel’s 100+ page essay. Roland Deines’ essay on the self-understanding of Jesus and the use of Scripture makes some good points, but he chastises most evangelicals (picking on the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old and Beale’s Handbook) for not distinguishing between the Evangelists’ use of Scripture and the use of Scripture already in the sources and the use of Scripture by the historical Jesus. He sees a big problem with believing most of the citations of Scripture from Jesus’ mouth in the Gospels actually came from Jesus, and thus a need to do much more historical Jesus work in tandem with NT use of the OT studies. Well, I guess that approach will give us all a lot more to write on for a while.
A couple essays of note by participants that were not key speakers were Martin Foord’s on Ps 68:18 in Eph 4:8 and Mark Keown’s on the use of the OT in Philippians. The former topic has seen a flurry of articles recently and has since the early church baffled commentators–that is, why Paul changes “you received gifts” to “he gave gifts.” Foord’s analysis excels in his history of interpretation section, although he excludes most modern articles on the topic, but his main argument is on track. In fact, it’s so on track, it’s nearly the same argument I’m making in my dissertation! I suppose it’s time to get on my horse and get that thing done. The essay on Philippians is important because no full scale treatment of the topic has been undertaken. Oddly enough, a colleague of mine is also working on the same topic for his dissertation. I’m not sure what the odds are of that happening, but there it is.
Founding off the non-Pauline section are essays on the use of the OT in 1 Peter and Hebrews, and I was disappointed not to see any attention to 2 Peter/Jude and especially James. In these letters the main question seems to me to be how to deal with the second temple literature which the authors seem to allude to quite often (Peter Davids argued these Catholic epistles viewed the OT only through “second temple lenses” in a recent JETS article).
The final essay by Rory Shiner focuses on whether Gentiles today are able to fully appropriate the OT story as their own story. He builds on D. W. B. Robinson’s view of the church, which Goldsworthy has explained in detail (and built on as well) in his Christ-Centered Biblical Theology. I’m less impressed by this line of thought for the NT church since the church is so frequently referred to with the same language as Israel, e.g., in 1 Pet 2:4-10. Nevertheless, the question of how Gentiles fit into the use of Israel’s Scriptures is admittedly a very important one – e.g., my wife pointed to a verse in Isaiah one time that referred to the Servant and asked it it applies to us directly. I suppose the fact that my answer put her to sleep shows that there is still some clear thinking needed on this issue.
On the whole, this volume is useful for NT use of the OT studies, as well as thinking about the emergence of early Christianity, but more for the former. Some essays were less helpful, but thankfully they were mostly the short ones! My last complaint is that the publisher used endnotes–endnotes! I stand firm that there’s absolutely no reason to torture readers by making them keep a finger in the back of the book, constantly flipping between the text and endnotes.
Check out this new volume on the NT use of the OT Click To TweetIn any case, for the content, I commend the volume to any interested readers.
Find it here on Amazon.
