Should Christian interpreters attempt to mimic the exegetical method of the NT authors and their use of the OT? To put it another way, is the NT authors’ use of the OT a valid method of interpretation?

G. K. Beale responds:

If the contemporary church cannot interpret and do theology as the apostles did, how can it feel corporately at one with them in the theological enterprise? If a radical hiatus exists between the interpretive method of the NT and our method today, then the study of the relationship of the OT and the NT from the apostolic perspective is something to which the church has little access. Furthermore, if Jesus and the apostles were impoverished in their exegetical and theological method, and if only divine inspiration salvaged their conclusions, then the intellectual and apologetic foundation of our faith is seriously eroded. What kind of intellectual or apologetic foundation of our faith is this? Moisés Silva is likely correct in stating, ‘If we refuse to pattern our exegesis after that of the apostles, we are in practice denying the authoritative character of their scriptural interpretation – and to do so is to strike at the very heart of the Christian faith’ (Handbook on the NT Use of the OT, 26).

In the nerd kingdom that’s what we like to call laying the smack down. BOOM.