Category Archives: Intertextuality

Daniel Block and Christ Centered Interpretation

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Daniel Block has written Part I of his view of Christ-centered preaching on Ed Stetzer’s blog. While I appreciate Dr. Block’s desire to honor the Old Testament authors’ original intent, I do not think his articulation of what that means does justice to the messianic eschatological hope that colors the entire Hebrew Bible. While every text may not prophetically predict something about Jesus, each verse in the OT is part of a larger pattern that narratively, prophetically, typologically, and, sometimes, predictively points to Christ. To try and interpret any passage outside of that canonical context, e.g. without reference to this overarching messianic context, seems to me to ignore the intertextual and contextual matrix in which the OT authors place themselves.

I’ve written about this previously, so instead of repeating my position, here are the relevant posts:

Method (links to series embedded within this one; especially important here are the Christocentric, textual, and canonical posts)

Christocentric Interpretation and Application

The Bible is About Jesus

The Gnashing of Teeth

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I’m reading through the Psalms for my daily devotionals, and today I read Psalm 35 [34 LXX]. In this psalm, the speaker asks the LORD to contend for him and deliver him from his adversaries. Interestingly, in v. 16 when speaking of these enemies, he says “like profane mockers at a feast, they gnash at me with their teeth.”

The Greek verb used in Ps. 35:16 [34:16 LXX] for “gnash” is bruxō, and it is also found in Ps. 37:12 [36:12 LXX]; 112:10 [111:10 LXX]; Job 16:9; and Lam. 2:16. Of the occurrences, the ones in Psalms and Job both speak about adversaries of those under God’s protection, while the occurrence in Lamentations speaks about the adversaries of God himself. Of course, in the Psalter, “the righteous afflicted one” can be seen as a type of the Messiah, and this is especially true of Psalm 35. This particular psalm follows on the heels of Psalm 34:19 – “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” Psalm 37:12 also suddenly shifts to the singular in its mention of the righteous being afflicted by those who gnash their teeth.In other words, it is possible to read at least Psalm 35:16 and 37:12 as speaking about the LORD’s anointed, and then along with Lamentations 2:16 we have three specific instances where this “gnashing of teeth” is done by those who are enemies of the LORD. Even if one does not take the Psalms references as explicitly Messianic, though, we are still dealing with enemies of God’s people, which in the OT makes them enemies of God himself. The phrase in the OT, then, appears to exclusively refer to God’s (or God’s people’s) enemies.

In the NT, the phrase “gnashing of teeth” occurs exclusively in Matthew. bruxō is the verbal equivalent of the noun (brugmos) used in Matthew’s gospel when Jesus describes what will happen to those who are not part of God’s kingdom (8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51). I think this verbal parallel with the OT occurrences tell us a few things:

  1. Hell is a place for the enemies of God. This phrase “gnashing of teeth” indicates rebellion against God in the particular state in which they find themselves. In other words, “gnashing of teeth” isn’t some sort of pain metaphor; it’s an indication of the disposition of the person’s heart in hell. Note that this says something to Rob Bell’s transformational view of punishment in eternity; people in hell are not inclined to turn to God, but in fact continue to rebel against him even in their judgment. They aren’t puppies with their tails between their legs who recognize that they’ve done wrong, but are in continual rebellion.
  2. I think Jesus’ use of the phrase lends greater weight to seeing Psalm 35, 37, and 110 as Messianic. Of course, Psalm 110 is used messianically all over the NT, but this may be further indication that it ought to be read as such. The parallels with Psalms 35 and 37 lend weight to reading them messianically as well.
  3. Finally, I think this tells us something about Jesus’ ministry and message in the Gospels. Jesus knew very clearly what he was saying and to whom he was saying it, and in many (all?) of the occurrences in Matthew he is speaking to Pharisees. This is seen nowhere more clearly than in Matt. 22:13, where he follows up his argument with the Pharisees and Sadducees and their request for a sign with this reference to God’s enemies gnashing their teeth. The implication is that it is they who are God’s enemies for not recognizing him as the Messiah. Another striking use is Matt. 8:12, where Jesus heals a centurion’s (read: GENTILE’S) servant, and then says he will sit at **Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s** (read: ISRAEL’S) table, but many “sons of the kingdom” will be cast into outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth. What is this besides a declaration that those Israelites who do not have faith in Jesus as the Messiah are no longer part of God’s people and even more bluntly are now enemies of God? No wonder the Jewish leaders wanted him killed.

The Bible is About Jesus

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The entire Bible, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, is about Jesus Christ.

Let me give a few reasons why I believe that is the case, as well as a few clarifications about what that means.

First, reasons:

  1. I suppose #1 ought to be the fact that Jesus says on numerous occasions that the Old Testament is about him. Below are a few examples:
    1. John 5:46 – “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.”
    2. Luke 24:27 – “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
    3. Luke 24:44-48 – “Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”
    4. I am not saying here that literally every single verse of Scripture is about Jesus, nor do I think Jesus is, but more on that in the clarifications section.
  2. If the entire OT doesn’t point to Christ, then why should Christians read it? What makes our reading any different from a Jewish reading? This probably should be a guiding question in how we discuss what the Old Testament is about. At the end of the day, if we can stand up on a Sunday morning and preach a sermon from the OT that would sound exactly the same as a message from a motivational speaker, then we need to ask ourselves if it is a truly Christian message. And the fundamental distinction between the Christian message and all other messages is that we believe Jesus is Lord through his righteous life, atoning death, death-shattering resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, and one day through his return and that the work of Christ has application for believers. If Christ’s person and work is not central to our message, and indeed to our Scriptures, what is the difference?
  3. The entire Bible points to Christ because it is the Spirit’s job to testify to the Son so that through the Son we might see the Father. The assertion that the Bible is about Christ is a Trinitarian one, not a Christomonic one. The reason why the Bible is about Christ is because it is through Christ that we know the Father. The Spirit inspires the written Word to reveal the Incarnate Word so that through him we might know the Father.
  4. 2 Tim. 3:14-15 clearly indicates that the Old Testament was able to make Timothy wise unto salvation in Christ. This is but one example in the entire New Testament where the authors of the epistles indicate that the Old Testament is a treasure trove of doctrine (not just Christology proper but also soteriology, hamartiology, etc.), doctrine that ultimately leads to Christ and salvation in him.
  5. A related point to the previous sentence is that theology finds its hub in Christ. Again, this is not to be Christomonic, but simply to note that if we are talking about human beings, our image is summed up in Christ. If we are talking about sin, it is dealt with in Christ. If we are talking about the Spirit, his job is to testify to Christ and apply his work to our hearts. If we are talking about the church, we are his body, bought with his blood. If we are talking about eschatology, from an Old Testament perspective we’re looking for Christ’s first coming and from a New Testament perspective we’re looking for his second coming.

Now for some clarifications:

  1. I am NOT saying that literally every verse in the Old Testament points to Christ. But that is also, in my mind, the incorrect way to phrase the issue. When the OT writers wrote their books, they were not splitting their work up into verses but instead viewed their book as an integrated whole with a unifying message. Further, they viewed their book as integrally related to whatever other parts of the OT were written at the time. They connected their books to previous Scripture and also connected the different parts of their own book(s) together. Both of these types of connections are textual – the authors of Scripture quoted, alluded to, and echoed previous Scripture to connect the message of their book with the message of the entire Bible. This means that even if one particular verse does not have much to say about Christ, it is still connected narratively and textually to the rest of the book and the entire Bible, which IS about Christ.
  2. Some would object and say that there are points at which the human author of a book may not have intended for the passage to be as Christocentric/eschatological as we are reading it. Two things here:
    1. Per the previous point, the writers of Scripture ALWAYS connect the smaller parts to the larger whole, and thus if we pay attention to the literary context of the particular passage, we recognize that context as eschatological and Christocentric.
    2. The ultimate author of Scripture is the Holy Spirit, and he knows exactly why he’s inspiring the human author. Again, his job is to point to Christ, and so we should expect that he does so. Everywhere.
  3. Finally, a Christocentric reading of Scripture does not preclude an emphasis on application. To the contrary, reading the Bible Christocentrically actually gives us proper grounding for application. For it is through knowing, seeing, and savoring Christ that we can properly respond to (apply) the Word of God to our lives. When we divorce application from intent, we’ve missed the intent of the Bible – to transform us into the image of Christ. And it is by seeing Christ that we are transformed into his image (2 Cor. 3:17-18). So for the Bible to be properly applicable it must be Christocentric.

The Cohesion of the Biblical Witness: Inner-Biblical Use of Scripture–Mark Boda

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I’ve been reading through Hearing the Old Testament edited by Bartholomew and Beldman. I thought this quote from Mark Boda was worth passing along.

This hermeneutical agenda for biblical theology, which arises from the self-witness of Scripture, explains the ubiquitous interconnections between the various parts of the canon. The Old Testament canon itself displays inner cohesion through the regular use of quotations, allusions, and echoes of earlier Old Testament passages. This trend, which is observable in the Old Testament, only increases in the New Testament. It is important to take a closer look at this phenomenon of inner-biblical connectivity by looking at the ways the New Testament writers used the Old Testament and the ways Old Testament writers used other parts of the Old Testament. The biblical witness itself lays the foundation hermeneutically for Christian biblical theologians to follow as they seek to read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture.

Mark J. Boda (“Biblical Theology and Old Testament Interpretation” in Hearing the Old Testament, ed. Craig Bartholomew and Dave Beldman, Eerdmans, 2012). 135

NT Studies and Intertextual Interpretation

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I. Howard Marshall published his review of G. K. Beale’s A New Testament Biblical Theology yesterday in Themelios, and was generally positive towards Beale’s work. After giving an extensive summary of the book, Marshall praises Beale for being exegetically mindful, but then brings up three areas “for discussion.” One of these is Beale’s use of intertextuality as a hermeneutical method. Marshall says this concerning Beale’s attempt to demonstrate verbal connections between different biblical passages:

[T]his area includes both Beale’s own interpretation of what OT passages would have meant for the original authors and readers, and also what meaning was seen in them by the NT authors who cite or allude to them. Beale is influenced here by the kind of research stimulated by Richard Hays, which attaches lots of significance to verbal coincidences that may or may not be significant. There may be a tendency to assume that the author of one passage shares the thoughts of another author without actually referring to them.

Marshall here appears cautious at best about using textual similarities between books as an interpretive grid for understanding the author’s point. I don’t intend here to justify Beale’s method; check out his opening chapter in We Are What We Worship, look at Hays’ Echoes of Scripture, or read Sailhamer, Childs, Chapman, Rendtorff, Seitz, or a number of other OT scholars to gain a sense of the legitimacy of the exercise.

My question here is twofold: 1) does it seem to you, as it does to me, that intertextuality as a hermeneutical method is more acceptable in OT studies than in NT studies? And 2) if so, why do you think that is the case?

Article Accepted

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I received news tonight that my article “Arbitrary Allegory, Typical Typology, or Intertextual Interpretation? Paul’s Use of the Pentateuch in Galatians 4:21-31″ was accepted for publication in Biblical Theology Bulletin. It still has to go to the copy editor, and I have no clue on the timeline for publication. But, the hard part is over.

I’ve been looking for a home for this article for a year now, and its been a hard search. This is probably my favorite piece from what I’ve worked on so far (even my dissertation – but who likes their dissertation anyway?), so I’m excited that the LORD has blessed me with the opportunity to publish it.

Here’s the abstract:

“This article begins by surveying the modern history of interpretation of Gal 4:21–31, and in doing so demonstrates that virtually no commentators from the time of Calvin have concluded that Paul accurately conveys the message of the Pentateuch’s narratives to which he alludes in his “allegory.” It then provides an alternate approach to the analysis of Paul’s interpretation of the Pentateuch in this passage, relying on the hermeneutical tool of intertextuality. It demonstrates, through four sets of intertextual connections within the Pentateuch, that the Hagar and Sinai narratives are intricately related and therefore appropriately read by Paul. It concludes that, instead of viewing Paul’s interpretation in Gal 4:21–31 as arbitrary allegory, modern commentators should give Paul a bit more grace in their analysis of his hermeneutic.”

David’s Census

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I just got word that my paper, “Intertextuality Between 1 Chronicles 21:1-17 and Genesis 13 and the Problem of David’s Census,” has been accepted for presentation at this year’s ETS meeting. I’ll be presenting in the Textual Strategies in the Hebrew Bible section at 4:40 on Wednesday.

I’m excited but also nervous – those Hebrew Bible folks are intimidating!

Beale’s Method

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Picture from Amazon.com

I’m currently reading through G. K. Beale’s A New Testament Biblical Theology and it is phenomenal. I’ve always loved Beale’s work, particularly because he is one of the few scholars I know that can weave biblical studies and theology together almost seamlessly. He is, in my opinion, the epitome of a biblical theologian. It’s no surprise to me, then, that I love every page I read out of this book.

One thing, though, that I find the most commonality with in Beale’s work is his consistent method. In both The Temple and the Church’s Mission and We Are What We Worship, Beale demonstrates an ability to both see the big picture of the entire Bible and exegete particular texts in their original context. He thus can study the individual trees without losing sight of the forest. Just as importantly, he can look at the whole forest without forgetting it is made up of individual trees.

Beale articulates this method in the following way in his new book (p. 15):

. . . I categorize my biblical-theological approach to be canonical, genetic-progressive (or organically developmental, as a flower develops from a seed and bud), exegetical, and intertextual. This approach could be summarized as a ‘biblical-theological-oriented exegesis.’

What I’ve seen from Beale in previous works is still here (canonical, exegetical, and intertextual), but the genetic-progressive element, while not new to him, is most explicitly articulated and applied here. This to me is an especially helpful addition, both for constructive use in my own understanding and application of biblical theology and also negatively as a counter to the way “progressive revelation” is sometimes articulated. Often I hear proponents of “progressive revelation” arguing that we can only understand texts like Gen. 3:15 as Adam and Eve (or more properly Israel on the plains of Moab) or other original hearers would have heard them. For Gen. 3:15, then, we cannot teach or preach it with the fullness that we might preach Romans 1-5 in terms of the robustness of the gospel. But what Beale is arguing is that although Gen. 3:15 does not explicitly relate the entire gospel, it is like a seed of a flower that will eventually blossom into, and thus implicitly contains, the entire gospel.

Like the rest of the book, I find that particularly helpful.

Making James and Paul Play Nice

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Since all Bible blogging roads lead back to Near Emmaus, and since Brian LePort seems to continually blog about things that I’m already thinking about (get out of my head Brian!) I’m going to piggyback off of another one of his posts today. Yesterday Brian posted on the question of whether or not James and Paul were involved in a dispute or rivalry. While I’m not going to engage with much of his material here, I do want to argue for some similarities between Paul and James, and namely similarities in their writings to Christian churches and their use of Scripture. Paul’s letter to the Romans and James’ epistle both exhibit a number of parallels, including the following.

First, Ryan Armstrong lists parallels between Rom 5:3-5 and James 1:2-4 (suffering produces endurance, etc.), Rom 6:23 and James 1:15-16 (the wages of sin is death), and Rom 2:13 and James 1:22 (doers of the law).[1] None of these parallels is particularly strong in the Greek; they should probably be categorized more as conceptual similarities rather than as textual connections. They do, however, show that James and Paul were at least thinking similar thoughts on different issues.

A more important and more textual parallel, though, lies between Rom 1:17 and James 2:23. Romans 1:17 is a quotation of Hab 2:4, which in turn is an allusion to Gen 15:6 where Abraham’s faith is credited to him as righteousness. As Richard Hays has shown, because Paul has left out the crucial personal possessive pronoun of Hab 2:4 (“his faith”), Rom 1:17 should be taken as showing Paul’s twofold concern for “God’s own righteousness” being shown in the gospel and for “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.“[2] Paul’s use of Hab 2:4, then, combines it’s original intention in Habakkuk of arguing for God’s covenant faithfulness while also making use of its allusion to Gen 15:6 and the need for all men to come to God through faith for justification. Gen 15:6 is also quoted by James 2:23. Thus both passages make reference to passages in the Old Testament that are intended to show how God operates in terms of salvation. Righteousness comes through faith. In other words, both of these writers use allusions ultimately to the same passage of the OT to help their readers understand what they are saying about justification.

This connection is made stronger by what comes after Romans 1 and what comes before James 2. In Rom 2:1-11, Paul argues that God has no partiality, specifically concerning ethnicity, and in James 2:1-13 God is said to have no partiality, specifically between the rich and the poor. Rom 2:6 says that each will be judged according to his works, and James 2:24 says that man is justified by works as well as faith.[3] More parallels could be shown, but the fact that these, along with the one noted by Armstrong between Rom 2:13 and James 1:22, all surround what are arguably the most important statements in each of the books – Romans 1:17 and James 2:23 – should point the reader to the fact that the two passages, and moreover the two books and thus the two corpuses, are clearly connected.

How we interpret these connections, as Richard Hays has noted in Echoes of Scripture (29-33), is of course the million dollar question. I’m inclined to say that they demonstrate that Paul and James are much closer on the issue of justification and even on their articulation of it than some scholars want to allow.

What about you?

[1] Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 41.

[2] Ryan Armstrong, “Canonical Approaches to New Testament Theology: An Evangelical Evaluation of Childs and Trobisch,” Th.M. thesis., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2007, 104. The last two verses listed are also parallel to Matthew 7:26.

[3] I take ‘justification’ here in the sense that Paul uses ‘judged’ in Romans 2:6.

Where in the NT are Joseph and Joshua?

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A few weeks ago at Near Emmaus, Brian LePort asked an intriguing question: Why didn’t the Apostle Paul cite the Book of Jonah? The question fueled some conversation but I’m not sure there was ever a definitive answer. Although I didn’t weigh in on the discussion, I’ve been turning the question over in my mind for the last two or three weeks, not so much in relation to why Paul doesn’t cite Jonah but more broadly on why the NT doesn’t use a number of books as sources or figures as types. Jonah is at least cited and used in the Gospels, if not by Paul. Other rich OT imagery isn’t even mentioned by the NT.

For instance, Joseph and Joshua, two figures replete with Second Adam and New Moses imagery, are never cited, mentioned, or alluded to in the NT as types of Christ. They are referenced in Heb 11:21-22 and 4:8 respectively, but as moral examples and not as figures who point to or tell us anything about Christ (thanks to David Stark for clarifying my language here). These men give, at least in my opinion, a strong typological picture of Christ. Of course, some scholars would say that to recognize anything as a type in the OT that is not recognized as such in the NT is illegitimate. But, as G. P. Hupenberger points out in his essay “Introductory Notes in Typology” in G.K. Beale’s The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts?,

“Perhaps as a safeguard against interpretive excess, some scholars have suggested that ‘types’ should be limited to those examples which are explicitly identified as such within the New Testament. … While attractive for its restraint, this approach would fail to recognize several…examples for which there is impressive literary evidence of deliberate parallelism” (339).

The literary parallels between Adam and Joseph are particularly striking. Here are several:

  • He is dependent upon God for wisdom and power (Gen 41:16)
  • He discerns between good and evil (41:19)

    1. The word for “thin” is the same word used for “evil” in Hebrew
    2. V. 22 – “good” corn
    3. These should remind us of Gen. 2 and 3 and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
    4. Joseph can discern between them, unlike Adam
  • He is full of the Spirit of God (41:38)
  • He has dominion and authority over the land under the direction of the Pharaoh (41:40, 44)
  • He is given the land (41:41, 43)
  • He is clothed in the image of the Pharaoh (41:42)
  • He is given a bride by the Pharaoh (41:45)
  • He is fruitful and multiplies (41: 50)
  • Ephraim means “root of fruitfulness
  • He is able to provide for those in need (41:53-56)
  • The nations come to Joseph (41:57)

There are also of course the parallels between Joseph’s relationship to his brothers in Gen 37 and Christ’s relationship with Israel in the Gospels, but these are not directly related to Joseph as a New Adam.

We could say the same thing about Joshua and his connection to Moses. And since the New Adam and New Moses images are used in the NT (or at least in parts of it) to explain who Christ is and what he has done, the question can be asked as to why Joshua and Joseph are never used in those explanations. I wonder particularly about Matthew’s use of the New Moses theme and Paul’s contrast of Adam and Christ in Romans 1-8.

For me, though, there is a rather simple explanation to this question. Other than the easy answer of the Spirit’s inspiration of the biblical authors (and I’m not saying we should ignore that answer, just that we need to add to it), we have the functional answer of the fact that the NT authors were writing occasional books and letters to a specific group of individuals within a certain time frame. I propose that they certainly could have included this material in their books, and that it would have fit nicely in certain places. But they didn’t, and for the above two reasons – the Holy Spirit didn’t inspire them to do so and their own theological reflection was constrained by the practical factors of time, occasion, and purpose.

For those of us who want to reflect on the OT in the 21st century, the point, then, is that the NT should not be considered by us as the end of Christian reflection on it. It is of course the final apostolic and Spirit-inspired reflection (i.e. Scriptural) reflection on it, but in my mind the NT authors never intended for their books and letters to be the end of Christian engagement with the OT. What they have given us, beyond the inspired interpretation of the events of Jesus and the early church and their relation to the OT, is a model for Christian theological reflection on the Hebrew Bible. This is what the Church Fathers and Medieval theologians set about to do – to continue the Christian reading of the OT that had been modeled for them by the NT authors – and is what we can and should be about doing in our reading of the OT today.

One final comment: I’m not writing this to critique Brian’s question – his was slightly different than mine. I was using his post more as a starting point than as a focal point.

(NOTE: I owe the Adam/Joseph parallels to my PhD mentor, Dr. David Hogg. He may have found them elsewhere, but the ones I noted are from a course with him.)