My View

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It’s too bad the label “Old Testament” has become attached to the Scriptures of Israel, which constitute the first section of the Christian Bible. The reason I say this, and I speak as a Christian, is that the adjective “old”—especially when juxtaposed to “new”—usually suggests something that lacks freshness and vitality. In our society, the law of obsolescence insists that we discard the old and turn to the new.

Many people are tempted to look at the Old Testament this way. When I began to teach the Bible back in 1946—lo, forty years ago, it was customary to understand the religious development in the Scriptures in evolutionary terms. An upward line was traced from the naive notions of Moses’ and Joshua’s time, through the ethical teaching of the prophets, to the lofty view of God’s universal love and of human solidarity found in the New Testament. Scholars no longer support that view of unilinear evolution or “growth” regarding the idea of God and moral values in the Bible. Nevertheless, many people still downgrade the Old Testament in one way or another. There are still many Christian churches in which preaching and teaching is based exclusively on the New Testament. Sometimes the Old Testament is regarded as pre-Christian and therefore as literature that has been superseded with the coming of Jesus Christ.

When you stop to think of it, this is a strange, and even un-Christian, attitude. At first, the early Christian community had no sacred scripture of its own. It had only the Scriptures of Israel, later called the Old Testament (Covenant). Almost every time the word “scripture(s)” (graphe, graphai) occurs in the New Testament, it refers to the Bible of Israel (Torah, Prophets and Writings).^a Early Christians lived out of the Old Testament—the very scriptures that many modern Christians ignore or even want to discard.

Through my years of studying and teaching Scripture, one thing has become increasingly clear to me: the Hebrew Bible, often called the Old Testament, makes its own claim as sacred literature. It should not be subordinated to any other body of literature: the New Testament, the Koran or anything else. In the Christian Bible, where it is conjoined with the New, it has a relative independence, like a partner in any good marriage. It deserves to be recognized in its own integrity and heard in its own right. Indeed, the Old Testament adds its own perspectives, which supplement and, at times, even correct one-sided emphases in the New. Above all, the Old Testament speaks directly to the needs and concerns of modern people—often in a fresh and inspiring way.

Let me mention a few of the distinctive elements of the Old Testament. First of all, there is creation faith that arises out of a worshipful awareness of the wonder of our existence and the majesty and order of the cosmos, in which human beings are, as a psalmist put it, “crowned with honor and glory” (Psalm 8:5). Today, the human role in creation has taken on new interest, as a result of our ventures into space, the problems of our relationship to our environment (signified by the word “ecology”), and the marvels that have been accomplished in such fields as medicine, communication and psychology. No community of faith can have a “theology of creation” without turning to the primary witness of the Old Testament. Those who suppose that humans are only “natural” beings, or superior animals, must confront the Genesis creation story, which speaks of humankind as being in “the image of God” and therefore elevated to representatives of God’s cosmic administration on earth (Genesis 1:26–27). And those who suppose that humans are autonomous beings, having the power to rape and destroy God’s earthly estate, should listen to Psalm 104—a beautiful poem that has affinities with the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhnaton’s “Hymn to the Sun.” In the psalmist’s prayerful testimony, humans and animals participate equally in what St. Francis of Assisi would have called the great democracy of God’s creatures.

Related to this creation theology is the Old Testament’s taste for the goodness of life on this “green planet,” during the hastening brevity of mortal life. No people has suffered more deeply and sensitively than Israel, “the people of God,” who have given us these scriptures. Their sense of sorrow, reflected in the Psalms (one third of which are “laments”), precludes any “Polyanna” optimism. This history of suffering touches the experience of modern people who protest undeserved suffering or exploitation by powerful “pharaohs” of the present day. Yet, in the midst of suffering, the Old Testament 007celebrates the goodness of life, which is endorsed by the cosmic Artist’s approving words “very good” at the time of creation (Genesis 1:31) and which is underscored by the message of God’s concern—or as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it—God’s pathos or sensitive involvement in the human situation. Those who take the Old Testament seriously will rejoice even in the midst of affliction and will relish with all the senses the goodness of God-given life. In this connection, it is noteworthy that, according to the Old Testament, sexual pleasure is not taboo but, in a proper and healthy I-thou relationship, belongs to the goodness of God’s creation (see the Song of Songs). Today, many people, liberated from narrow “Christian” or repressive “Hellenistic” views, have rediscovered the Old Testament.

Another dimension of the Old Testament that I would like to emphasize may be called “expostulation with God.” By this I mean the courage of faith to raise questions, to protest, even to doubt. Strangely, the New Testament, with one or two exceptions, does not engage in expostulation with God, though this dimension of faith is later represented by Augustine, Luther, John Donne, and others. The Old Testament “heroes” of faith, however, dare to expostulate, to argue vehemently, with God. This is true of Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and, above all, Job—that great expostulator. If one turns only to the New Testament, there is no motive for argument; instead, one lives in the submission of faith. But the faith expressed in the Old Testament is not submissive or passive: It has an element of talking back, as poignantly illustrated by Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof.” I suspect that many people today, whatever community of faith they may belong to and even if they may belong to and even if they are merely “seekers,” can identify with this faith, which like Jacob, wrestles with the stranger/angel all night until the breaking of the day (Genesis 32:22–32).

Finally, the Old Testament summons people to a religious vocation in the midst of the political struggle for justice and peace. It tells a story of how God chooses to be involved in this social struggle, beginning especially with the deliverance of slaves from oppression (Exodus 3:7–8); it challenges us to get off the sidelines and get into the struggle. To be sure, excesses of political power stand under divine condemnation (read about the “fall” of a tyrant in Isaiah 14:12–20). Moreover, people are warned that unless they change their lifestyle, the consequences may be disastrous, as envisioned in Jeremiah’s poem about the return of chaos (Jeremiah 4:23–26). However, the Old Testament speaks to the realm in which we live: the political, social economic realm. Indeed, nations have their place in God’s economy and ultimately, according to the well-known prophetic vision, will be invited to scrap their armaments and contribute their rich diversity to the welfare and peace of the whole of humankind (Isaiah 2:2–4). Above all, to be in covenant with God is not to retreat into private islands of peace or small communities of love but, as stated in a summary of the prophetic message, to respond to God’s requirement to “do justice, to love mercy, and walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8).

Nothing that I have said is intended to downplay the importance of other sacred literature with which the Old Testament is linked: the New Testament in the Christian community or the Talmud in the Jewish community. I am convinced, however, that the Old Testament has its own word to speak to church, synagogue and to the world. When people listen, they will discover—even in our modern society where things quickly become obsolete—that there is a newness in the Old.

It’s too bad the label “Old Testament” has become attached to the Scriptures of Israel, which constitute the first section of the Christian Bible. The reason I say this, and I speak as a Christian, is that the adjective “old”—especially when juxtaposed to “new”—usually suggests something that lacks freshness and vitality. In our society, the law of obsolescence insists that we discard the old and turn to the new. Many people are tempted to look at the Old Testament this way. When I began to teach the Bible back in 1946—lo, forty years ago, it was customary to understand […]