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Q.
Do Christians need to read the Old Testament?
While it’s true that the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) are an
account of a people living under the covenant of law, and the Christian scrip-
tures (the New Testament) give witness to the covenant of grace, the distinc-
tions are not directly related in a one-to-one correlation.
To read the New Testament divorced from its connection to the Old is
like coming into a movie at the halfway point. The “story” is not complete if
you leave out any of it. While the Bible is a collection of writings that span two
millennia of oral and written traditions, there is a consistency that’s almost
miraculous; moreover, a central theme of the New Testament is that Jesus is
the “fulfi llment” of the Old.
Apart from the context of the Old Testament—especially in a consumer
culture obsessed with individualism—the meaning of Jesus’ crucifi xion is
reduced to the status of personal opinion. And while everyone is entitled to an
opinion, that doesn’t necessarily serve truth.
Marcia Ford
A.
The Old Testament is much more than a record of events that hap-
pened before the time of Christ. It contains a great deal of informa-
tion about Jewish history, customs, and rituals that help us make
sense of much of the New Testament.
By understanding Jewish culture, we can better understand why some
people readily accepted—or rejected—Christ. And of special signifi cance to
Christians are the many Old Testament prophecies that were fulfi lled in the
person of Jesus.
Most important, perhaps, is that the Old Testament is considered to be the
word of God just as is the New Testament. Jewish rabbis and scholars deemed
the books of what we call the Old Testament worthy to become their scrip-
tures, something we shouldn’t take lightly.
Jesus obviously recognized the value of those scriptures, quoting them
and referring to them throughout his ministry. The work of those Jewish lead-
ers gave the early church fathers a solid foundation for discerning the canon of
the New Testament.
Finally, to dismiss the Old Testament as irrelevant to Christians would
mean eliminating from our common spiritual heritage such content as the
Psalms; the always stirring stories of Abraham, Joseph, Esther, and others; the
book of Proverbs, and so much more—including the Ten Commandments,
which throughout history has served as a set of guiding principles for much of
humanity.