"HERMENEUTICS:

HOW DID JESUS AND THE APOSTLES USE THE OLD TESTAMENT

part two

Home Kent has commented:

• Christ's direct uses of the Old Testament employed the references in their literal sense. None were typological. All treated the Old Testament text in its obvious gramamatical and historical meaning. Here is certainly to be found a significant pattern and a caution for all interpreters of Scripture" (Bibliotheca Sacra, 121-481 (Jan. 1964)

John Feinberg said:

• There is no such thing as the NT pattern of OT usage." but rather that "there are varieties of NT uses of the OT"

The difference between human interpretation and divine inspiration separates the modern-day exegete from the NT writers in such a way that the former is not able to employ the methods of the latter. In other words, the NT writers were under inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Today the modern interdpreter is not.

• John Walton writes:

"We cannot speak of reproducing the methods of the NT authors, for the subjectivity of their methods is not allowed to those of us who interpretation does not enjoy the affirmation of inspiration."
In my opinion, when Jesus used the quote in Matthew 4 from Deut 6 the quote was not about Himself. But about Satan temptation to the people in the wilderness. Jesus did not spiritualize the passage. So you would have to interpret Deut. 6 in order to understand what Jesus meant in Matthew 4
I take the Old Testament as literal. In other words when the OT speaks of a 1000 year Kingdom, I believe 1000 years means 1000 years. Here is what John MacArthur says,
"Is the OT Amillennial? Now a note here please. It is not legitimate to interpret the OT as secondary to the NT as primary. That's not legitimate. Otherwise the OT was literally darkness, not light. If you say that the OT cannot be rightly interpreted apart from the NT, then you have denied the perspiculity of the OT, and as Walt Kaiser put it:

• "Now you have a canon within a canon". The question must be answered: Does the Old Testament itself propound an Amillennial View? (that is no Kingdom). You cannot remove the OT from having a true interpretation on its own and make OT promises relate to the Church, which is by Paul's own statement, a mystery and irreleveant to the readers. But the idea that the NT is the starting point for understanding the OT is exactly where Amillennialism comes from, reading it back into the OT; and, of course, you damage the perspicuity or the clarity of the sensibility of the OT in and of itself; and it leads, I think, to an even more grand kind of spiritualizing that goes beyound just prophetic texts and gives license to spiritulize all kinds of things and read NT Christianity and NT Christian principles back into those texts in the OT where they do not belong."

Here is what MacArthur is saying: He believes that it is actually a future saved generation of Jews and the millennium that they dominate and the restored temple and worship God which is the true and final historical fulfillment of the OT.
In my opinion the OT leads to the Church in the NT.
Robert L. Thomas on the NT use of the OT says this:

• "When interpreting the OT and NT, each in light of the single. grammatical-historical meaning of the passage, two kinds of NT use of the OT surface, one in which the NT writer observes the grammatical-historical sense of the OT passage and the other in which the NT writes goes beyond the grammatical-historical sense in his use of the OT passage."

Footnote:
John F. MacArthur, Jr. (born June 14, 1939 in Los Angeles, California) is an American Reformed evangelical writer and minister, most noted for his radio program entitled Grace to You. MacArthur is a fifth-generation pastor, a popular author and conference speaker, and has served as pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California since 1969, and as President of The Master's College (and the related Master's Seminary) in Santa Clarita, California.
Homer Kent has now retired after serving at Grace Theological Seminary, Winona Lake, IN for fifty years as professor of Greek and New Testament (1949-99).
Robert L. Thomas: has served on the board of directors for the Orinoco River Mission and for the Bible Church Mission. Throughout his years of ministry, he has been active in his local church, in Bible conference ministries, and in pulpit supply. In 1959 he became the first full-time seminary faculty member at Talbot Theological Seminary. He served at Talbot as chairman of the department of New Testament Language and Literature until 1987 when he joined the faculty at The Master's Seminary.
John Feinberg: (b. 1946) - progressive dispensationalist professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinitiy School.
Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. (born 1933) is an American evangelical Old Testament scholar, writer, popular public speaker, and educator. Kaiser is the Colman M. Mockler distinguished Professor of Old Testament and former President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, retired June 30, 2006. He was succeeded by James Emery White.
John Walton: Ph.D. 1981 Hebrew and Cognate Studies, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, Ohio. Dissertation: The Tower of Babel M.A. 1975 Biblical Studies: Old Testament; Wheaton Graduate School A.B. 1974 Economics/Accounting, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA
^