“Old Testament. New Testament” —One Story.
I missed posting last week. I needed to take some time to address some of the things we repeat, and accept as truth simply because we have heard them for so long— things we have been taught from childhood; reinforced by our families, our churches, our communities, our culture, and even the language we use when we talk about Scripture. Some of these ideas have been passed down for generations—long before we were ever born and because we hear these things often enough, we eventually stop asking where it came from. We simply repeat it.
We pass on what we were taught, we defend what we were programmed to believe and sometimes, without realizing it, we build an entire understanding of the Most High around ideas we have never actually stopped to examine for ourselves. This has made me increasingly uncomfortable with how casually we sometimes speak about Scripture.
One of the most common examples I’ll be exploring is:
“That’s Old Testament.”
Or:
“We’re in the New Testament now.”
Most people who say these things mean no harm— I would argue that many have never even considered what they are actually saying. It is simply familiar language— something they heard from someone else, who heard it from someone else, who heard it from someone else.
What exactly are we implying when we say that?
Are we saying that something the Most High previously said became irrelevant simply because another part of the book came later?
Are we suggesting that the character of the Most High changed?
Did the Most High become a different El (God) between Malachi and Matthew?
Think about almost any book that is divided into multiple parts.
Take The Lord of the Rings. You cannot fully understand The Return of the King without understanding what happened in The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.
Or consider Twilight, if that's your thing, follows the same basic principle. The later books do not make the first book irrelevant. The first book gives you context for what follows.
The story progresses, new information is revealed but the beginning does not suddenly become meaningless because you have reached the end. In fact, the opposite happens.
The further you get into the story, the more important the beginning becomes.
Something that seemed insignificant in the first book suddenly becomes important several books later. Why would we approach Scripture differently?
The Bible is not a collection of unrelated books thrown together without connection. It is a collection of writings that tell an unfolding story of the Most High, humanity, covenant, rebellion, judgment, mercy, redemption, and restoration.
The New Testament should not cause us to discard the foundation upon which it was built.
The New Testament simply gives us another layer of understanding. It shows us how earlier promises and prophecies are being fulfilled out by the Messiah— Son of the Most High. The New Testament is not a completely new story— it is part of the story.
A Little History
There is something important to understand about the language itself. The division of the Bible into what Christians commonly call the Old Testament and New Testament developed historically within Christianity. The writings that Christians now group together as the New Testament were written over the first century, circulated among communities, read alongside the Hebrew Scriptures, and were gradually recognized as authoritative across the early Christian movement.
This historical development should remind us that the physical Bible sitting on our nightstand did not simply drop from heaven in its present table of contents. The writings existed before the collection did— the communities existed before the final canon was formally recognized and most importantly, the first followers of the Messiah did not walk around carrying a New Testament.
They had the Scriptures that already existed.
They taught from them.
The Messiah Himself quoted them.
The writers of the New Testament constantly appealed to them.
There is also a broader cultural story— the world in which early Christianity developed was deeply influenced by Greek language and culture. After the conquests of Alexander the Great, Hellenistic culture spread throughout much of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Greek became the major language of education, philosophy, and literature. By the first century, everything that existed was a complicated mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Hellenistic influences. Therefore…
we are reading ancient Hebrew writings through centuries of cultural, institutional, and theological development.
We forget how much distance exists between the world in which these Scriptures were written and the world in which we read them which should make us slower to assume or repeat.
Paul writes:
“All Scripture is breathed out by Elohim and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for setting straight, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of Elohim might be fitted, equipped for every good work.”
We should remember and take note of the context in which Paul was writing. As mentioned before, the “New Testament”, as we know it today, had not yet been assembled into the collection sitting on our shelves.
When Paul spoke to Timothy about the Scriptures, he was speaking from Hebrew to Hebrew—the Scriptures Timothy had known and been taught from “from childhood” (2 Timothy 3:15).
Paul was not telling Timothy that the Scriptures he had grown up learning were now obsolete because the Messiah had come. Quite the opposite— he was affirming their usefulness for teaching, correction, instruction, and righteousness.
The later Christian recognition of “New Testament” writings as authoritative is a historical development, but we should not read that later development backward into Paul's statement as though Paul were referring to a completed New Testament canon.
We should therefore be cautious; pause before casually separating Scripture into:
the stuff that mattered then
and
the stuff that matters now.
One of the things I find most fascinating when reading the “New Testament” is how often the writers assume that their audience already knows the Scriptures that came before.
The Messiah did not appear in a vacuum. His life and ministry were presented within a story that had already been unfolding for centuries. We cannot fully understand the Messiah while deliberately disconnecting Him from the Scriptures that explain the world He entered.
We cannot understand covenant without Genesis and the Torah.
We cannot understand the coming Kingdom without understanding Israel's history.
We cannot understand many of the Messiah's teachings without understanding the Law and the Prophets.
And we simply cannot understand why the “New Testament” writers repeatedly say, “as it is written,” if you have already decided that what was written before is somehow no longer relevant.
There is nothing inherently wrong with calling the Hebrew Scriptures the “Old Testament.” It is a longstanding Christian designation. The problem comes when old becomes synonymous with obsolete.
Later should not give us permission to erase the earlier. This is why I believe we have to be careful with phrases we have inherited. A sentence can sound innocent while carrying an entire theology behind it.
“That's Old Testament.”
Where did we learn to say that? Did Scripture itself teach us to think that way—or did we?
I am not a biblical expert. I am simply someone who reached a point where I could no longer be satisfied with believing something because I kept hearing it over and over.
I wanted to know what the Book actually said.
Not what any denomination taught.
If I truly believe that the Most High is the source of truth, then I should not be afraid to test everything I have been taught against His Word.
We have inherited centuries of traditions, translations, cultural assumptions and theological systems. Some of them may be faithful. Some may not be. But how will we know if we never open the Book for ourselves?
We cannot outsource our relationship with the Most High to a pulpit and we cannot assume that something is biblical simply because everyone around us says it is.
At some point, we have to pick up the Book.
Read it.
Study it.
Ask questions.
Learn its language.
Learn its culture.
Understand its context.
And most importantly, ask the Most High to guide us by His Spirit as we seek to understand what He has actually said.
