The Act 3 Biblical Forum presents “Reading the Old Testament as Jesus Did” with Dr. Peter Enns, October 30-31, 2009, at the Holiday Inn, Carol Stream, IL.

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The Review of Biblical Literature has posted a review by Stephen Moyise of Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. This Zondervan volume was edited by Kenneth Berding and Jonathan Lunde, and featured Walter Kaiser, Darrell Bock, and me, each defending a different position on the often curious way that New Testament writers used Old Testament passages, ways that seem to have little to do with their (apparent) original meaning or context.

Much of Moyise’s review is focused on Kaiser, namely Moyise’s judgment that Kaiser is intent to impose doctrinally driven explanations onto phenomena that are not amenable to such explanations. For example, referring to Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1, Moyise says, “In one sense, the debate is about hermeneutics, but one wonders if, more fundamentally, it is about one’s view of God. Kaiser’s God would not inspire Hosea to speak about the exodus and then inspire Matthew to find new meaning in the same words. Enns thinks this is precisely what the God who became incarnate in Jesus would do.”

Download the complete review here.

A few days ago I received the following email from an agnostic reader of this website. The email is copied here in its entirety, with the permission of the sender. The question is direct, profound, and has been a nagging companion of Christianity since its beginning.

Since the Hebrew Bible (that you call OT) was written by Jews for Jews, and that obviously a large number of Jews did not follow Christianity and its appropriation of the Hebrew Bible, why should we trust a Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible instead of a Jewish interpretation?

I take this question with utmost seriousness, as I think all Christians should. It gets at the heart of several perennial issues in Christian theology, perhaps most importantly the NT’s use of the OT, which shows us the NT authors at work in articulating their understanding of the “connection” between the gospel and Israel’s Scripture. As I see it, this is really the heart of the matter. So, to rephrase the question, “Why should the first Christians’ claims about the OT (and how the gospel connects with it) have any merit in view of the fact that Christianity did not really take hold with Jews living at the time?” To put it yet another way, “Why should the Christian appropriation of the Hebrew Bible have any persuasive power, given that a larger number of Jews—whose Bible it was—rejected it?”

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