Scripture Interprets Scripture. This Book Shows How by CARMEN JOY IMES for Christianity Today
Pastors and scholars can now explore cross-references throughout the Old Testament.
Zondervan Academic recently released a new biblical reference tool that is sure to end up in pastors’ personal libraries.
The book is titled Old Testament Use of Old Testament: A Book-by-Book Guide by Gary Edward Schnittjer. Weighing in at over four pounds, with over a thousand pages, it promises to be the definitive work on the Scripture’s use of Scripture for years to come.
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Preaching on the New Testament without a firm grasp on the Old Testament bears some resemblance to a child’s retelling of her parents’ romance story—which can blend multiple events or conversations into one and confuse identities or timelines.
The truth is, a whole lot happened in history before Matthew or Paul showed up on the scene in the first century—but that fact can sometimes be missed when reading a standard Bible.
Some Bibles include footnotes for verses in the New Testament that refer to Old Testament passages—but they do not show how a particular phrase or theme evolved within and across the Old Testament itself. Simply identifying the Old Testament background of a New Testament text often collapses the trajectory of its development into a single reference point.
To tell the story of Scripture well, we must trace an idea’s full development before it showed up in the New Testament. Because by the time the authors of the New Testament appeal to an Old Testament text, it has often already had its own history of interpretive reuse within the OT.
While several reference tools explore how New Testament authors quote or allude to Old Testament texts, this work presents how Old Testament authors quote other Old Testament texts.
