The New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes: Seven Old Testament Themes Perfectly Fulfilled in Jesus Christ

By F. F. Bruce

To understand the Old Testament themes that were fulfilled in Jesus, we need to understand Old Testament thought. F.F. Bruce reveals the context of the New Testament writers’ understanding of the Old Testament by focusing on seven Old Testament themes—the rule of God over all creation, the salvation of God, the victory of God, the people of God, the son of David, the servant messiah, and the shepherd king. “These and other themes,” he says, “are fulfilled in Jesus.”

This short book is jam packed with insight. It serves as a valuable guide to the complexities of messianic prophecy and opens the enormity of Old Testament proclamation about the Messiah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 1, 1968
• ISBN: 9781912149018

F. F. Bruce

F. F. Bruce (1910-1990) was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester. Trained as a classicist, Bruce authored more than 50 books on the New Testament and served as the editor for the New International Commentary on the New Testament from 1962 until his death in 1990.

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PUBLISHER’S INTRODUCTION

After His resurrection, Jesus met Cleopas and another disciple on the Road to Emmaus and explained to them everything the Old Testament said about Himself. To understand the Old Testament themes that were fulfilled in Jesus, we need to understand Old Testament thought.

F.F. Bruce reveals the context of the New Testament writers’ understanding of the Old Testament by focusing on seven Old Testament themes. These and other themes, he says, are fulfilled in Jesus.

• The rule of God over all creation is fulfilled in Christ’s kingship.

• The salvation of God, which is demonstrated in the Exodus, is fulfilled in Christ’s death and resurrection.

• The victory of God, which is promised over Israel’s enemies and the return from exile, is fulfilled in Christ’s victory over sin and death.

• The people of God, established by His covenant with Israel, is fulfilled in Christ’s calling twelve disciples to be the beginning of a New Israel.

• The son of David and the promises God gave to David’s kingship is fulfilled in Christ’s kingship.

• The servant messiah, especially as found in Isaiah 40-55, is fulfilled in Christ, who came to not to be served, but to serve.

• The shepherd king, especially as found in Zechariah, is fulfilled in Christ who presented himself as the Shepherd of Israel.

With an almost poetical voice, Bruce says, In Jesus the promise is confirmed, the covenant is renewed, the prophecies are fulfilled, the law is vindicated, salvation is brought near, sacred history has reached its climax, the perfect sacrifice has been offered and accepted, the great priest over the household of God has taken his seat at God’s right hand, the Prophet like Moses has been raised up, the Son of David reigns, the kingdom of God has been inaugurated, the Son of Man has received dominion from the Ancient of Days, the Servant of the Lord…has accomplished the divine purpose, has seen light after the travail of his soul and is now exalted and extolled and made very high.

As he explains in the Preface, F.F. Bruce developed the themes of this book for the Payton Lectures at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, although not all the themes were presented in the lectures.

A short book, but jam packed with goodness, says one reviewer. Bruce’s work guides us through the complexities of messianic prophecy, says Daniel Wright of Concordia University. It serves as a condensed and valuable guide to the enormity of Old Testament proclamation about the Messiah.

These are the sort of lectures that help you grasp the grand contours of the Biblical canon. You’ll come away from this book with a bigger appreciation for God’s sovereign plan. -- Stephen Barkley, pastor, Bracebridge, Ontario

* * * * *

This ebook edition of The New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes is published under the Kingsley Books imprint of F.F. Bruce Copyright International. It was originally published under the title, This is That: The New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes.

When Robert Hicks, a British book publisher, realized that many of the works of F.F.Bruce were not readily available, he wanted to correct that situation. Of the nearly 60 books and hundreds of magazine articles written by the Dean of Evangelical Scholarship, Robert felt many of those not in print could be presented in a visually appealing way for the modern reader.

After receiving the support of F.F. Bruce’s daughter, Sheila Lukabyo, Robert enlisted the help of Larry Stone, an American publisher. Together they contacted nearly twenty of F.F. Bruce’s publishers. Some of Bruce’s books are being reformatted into printed booklets suitable for evangelism and Bible study in universities and in church groups. Many of Bruce’s printed books as well as collections of articles never before appearing in book form are being made available as reasonably-priced ebooks that can be easily distributed around the world.

The purpose of F.F. Bruce Copyright International is to encourage an understanding of Professor Bruce’s teaching on the Scripture, to encourage his spirit of humility in approaching the Bible, and encourage academic scholarship among today’s evangelical students and leaders.

For the latest information on the availability of ebooks and printed books by F.F. Bruce and his friends, see www.ffbruce.com.

PREFACE

This is that which was spoken by the prophet.

WHEN I WAS HONOURED with an invitation to deliver the Payton Lectures for 1968 in Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, President D.A. Hubbard informed me that the topic suggested by the Faculty was The Relationship of the Old Testament to the New and encouraged me to develop this topic along the lines of my own approach. This I have endeavoured to do, by selecting a few Old Testament themes which are taken over in the New Testament as vehicles for expressing, in a diversity of ways, the Christian paradox that the crucified Jesus is universal Lord.

Only part of the following material was actually delivered during the four lecture periods, but the lecturing style has been preserved throughout.

It is at once a duty and a delight to place on record my gratitude to the President, the Dean, the Faculty and the student body of Fuller Theological Seminary, whose kindness has made my visit to Pasadena a very pleasant memory, and not least to my old friends Geoffrey and Isobel Bromiley who entertained me in their home for the week of the lectures. The work of preparing the lectures for publication has been greatly lightened for me by the efficient and willing assistance of my secretary, Miss Margaret Hogg.

July 1968                           F. F. B

CHAPTER I

ORGANIZING OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

To him all the prophets bear witness.

THE PAYTON LECTURES, it is prescribed, must fall within these areas: the uniqueness or confirmation of the historic Christian faith, the confutation of non-Christian or sub-Christian views, or the foundation of Biblical doctrines. The last of these categories, it seems to me, is the one under which my particular subject can most properly fall. It was in this very area of study that the doyen of British New Testament scholars, Professor C. H. Dodd, in another series of lectures delivered in the United States, found the sub-structure of Christian theology. ¹ It would be a fruitless enterprise indeed to traverse the ground covered by Professor Dodd, in hope of finding something which he overlooked, but the following treatment of the relation between the Testaments proceeds along different lines from his.

1. OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

One of my colleagues in the University of Manchester a few years ago, discussing the question Is there an Old Testament Theology? made the statement that

the use of the Old Testament in the New is the concern of the New Testament scholar, and not of the Old Testament scholar; the latter should not go to the New Testament except in isolated instances for the purpose of textual criticism and should never for a moment forget that, so far as he is concerned, it is the original meaning of the text that matters, and not the use which was later made of it in the New Testament.²

There is a valid point there, although it could be argued that the history of Old Testament interpretation is a proper field of study for the Old Testament scholar; but as a New Testament student I gladly avail myself of the permission thus granted me to read the Old Testament in the light of the New. There is something more to be said: if we begin to atomize the Christian scriptures we cannot treat even the Old Testament by itself as a unity or Old Testament theology as a single subject of study. The Old Testament is interpreted in the New, it is true, but the Old Testament is also interpreted in the Old. There is, for example, a relation between the use made of the Exodus motif to depict the return from the Babylonian exile and the use made of the same motif to depict the New Testament message of salvation.³ Historic Christianity recognizes in the New Testament the goal or telos of the Old, and we do not need to go all the way with Aristotle to agree with him that anything is better understood in the light of its telos.

One of the most recent examples of this recognition is provided by Chapter IV of the Constitution on Divine Revelation adopted by Vatican Council II. Chapter IV is entitled Concerning the Old Testament, and I take leave to quote three of its paragraphs which are of particular relevance:

14. In carefully planning and preparing the salvation of the whole human race, the God of supreme love, by a special dispensation, chose for Himself a people to whom He might entrust His promises. First He entered into a covenant with Abraham (cf. Gen. 15:18) and, through Moses, with the people of Israel (cf. Ex. 24:8). To this people which He had acquired for Himself, He so manifested Himself through words and deeds as the one true and living God that Israel came to know by experience the ways of God with men, and with God Himself speaking to them through the mouth of the prophets, Israel daily gained a deeper and clearer understanding of His ways and made them more widely known among the nations (cf. Ps. 21:28-29; 95:1-3; Is. 2:1-4; Jer. 3:17). The plan of salvation, foretold by the sacred authors, recounted and explained by them, is found as the true word of God in the books of the Old Testament: these books, therefore, written under divine inspiration, remain permanently valuable. For whatever things have been written have been written for our instruction, that through the patience and the consolation afforded by the Scriptures we may have hope (Rom. 15:4).

15. The principal purpose to which the plan of the Old Covenant was directed was to prepare for the coming both of Christ, the universal Redeemer, and of the messianic kingdom, to announce this coming by prophecy (cf. Lk. 24:44; Jn. 5:39; 1 Pet. 1:10), and to indicate its meaning through various types (cf. 1 Cor. 10:11). Now the books of the Old Testament, in accordance with the state of mankind before the time of salvation established by Christ, reveal to all men the knowledge of God and of man and the ways in which God, just and merciful, deals with men. These books, though they also contain some things which are incomplete and temporary, nevertheless show us true divine pedagogy. These same books, then, give expression to a lively sense of God, contain a store of sublime teachings about God, sound wisdom about human life, and a wonderful treasury of prayers, and in them the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way. Christians should receive them with reverence.

16. God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New. For, though Christ established the New Covenant in His blood (cf. Lk. 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25), still the bocks of the Old Testament with all their parts, caught up into the proclamation of the gospel, acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament (cf. Mt. 5:17; Lk. 24:27; Rom. 16:25-26; 2 Cor. 3:14-16) and in turn shed light on it and explain it.⁴

These paragraphs express eloquently the traditional Christian assessment of the Old Testament. Those who do not see the relation between the Testaments in these terms will at least concede that the New Testament presents a sequel to the Old—a sequel if not the sequel—and a story is often better appreciated in the light of its sequel.

In recent years some of the most distinguished contributions to Old Testament theology have been made from the perspective of a full biblical theology (taking both Testaments into account) by scholars who draw a clear distinction between the history of Old Testament religion (or Israel’s religion) and the theology of the Old Testament. This is true not only of scholars like Wilhelm Vischer⁵ and G. A. F. Knight⁶ who, in the judgement of many of their colleagues, go too far in reading the New Testament back into the Old, but also of Edmond Jacob,⁷ Ludwig Köhler,⁸ T. C. Vriezen,⁹ Walter Eichrodt¹⁰ and Gerhard von Rad.¹¹

When I mention some scholars who go too far in reading the New Testament back into the Old, I think of Professor Vischer’s tendency (for all his acceptance of historical criticism) to revert to patristic precedent as when he finds in the bread and wine which Melchizedek brought for Abraham a pointer to the sacrament of the new covenant,¹² affirms that the undivulged name of the supernatural wrestler at the ford of Jabbok was Jesus Christ,¹³ discerns the cross of Christ in Haman’s gallows¹⁴ or sees Christian doctrine expounded in Ecclesiastes.¹⁵ I think too of the parallel drawn by Principal Knight between the history of Israel and the history of Jesus, with special reference to the five moments of birth, marriage, death, resurrection and exaltation.¹⁶ The Old Testament pattern is squeezed into the shape of the gospel story when the fall of the Judaean monarchy and consequent deportation to Babylon are said to have been in fact, the ‘crucifixion’ by God himself of his own beloved Son;¹⁷ the Old Testament pattern is imposed on the gospel story in a way that does not fit when the moment of marriage (which, in the former pattern, is quite properly found in the lawgiving and covenant ceremony at Sinai) is, in the latter setting, related to the proclamation of the Sermon on the Mount.¹⁸ This is not to say that the tracing of patterns is illegitimate, but that it should not be pressed beyond the plain sense of the biblical narrative and language. It is better to think of recurring patterns of divine action and human response, along the lines indicated, for example, by H. H. Rowley¹⁹ — all the more so because such recurring patterns were recognized by the biblical authors themselves, in both Testaments.

A break with the older organization of Old Testament theology under the heads of the doctrine of God, the doctrine of man and the doctrine of salvation (still followed in varying degrees by E. Jacob and L. Köhler), has been made in the magisterial works of W. Eichrodt and G. von Rad. Professor Eichrodt organizes the treatment of the first part of his work (God and the People) around the covenant principle;²⁰ Professor von Rad finds the basis of Old Testament theology in the history of salvation—more precisely, in the proclamation of the mighty works of God in the Israelite cult. (This presents a sharp contrast with Köhler’s exposition, in which the cult is included in the section on the doctrine of man, as though it represented man’s effort to save himself.)²¹

A difficulty in Professor von Rad’s presentation is the gulf existing, as he sees the situation, between the mighty acts of God celebrated in the cult and the actual facts of Israel’s early history.²² A similar gulf exists, in the mind of some New Testament theologians, between the primitive Christian kerygma (or kerygtnata) and the actual facts of the life of Jesus, in so far as they can be ascertained behind the kerygma. Some of Professor von Rad’s pupils have made an attempt to bridge both these gulfs—in the New Testament and Old Testament alike—by showing how history and kerygma mutually imply each other. In the Old Testament area Rolf Rendtorff has made particularly important contributions in this respect, insisting, on the one hand, that the events of Israel’s actual history, as they can be reconstructed by critical evaluation of the evidence, are integral to Old Testament theology and, on the other hand, that Israel’s interpretation of the events, proclaimed in the cult and otherwise, is part of her history. We must accept both the results of historical research and Israel’s confessional recital and explore more thoroughly the relation between them.²³

Even when we try to follow the example of Professor von Rad or Professor Eichrodt, it is difficult to find one single principle around which a coherent and comprehensive Old Testament theology, doing justice to all the chief forms of Old Testament literature and teaching, can be constructed. (The same could be said about New Testament theology: when attempts are made to systematize the teaching of the New Testament, the result has often been that Paulinism has provided the

Reviews for The New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes

[Chibueze Ughanze · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great work by a great scholar, timely and full of insight