The New Testament authors quote, allude to, and interpret the Old Testament in a great variety of ways — and sometimes in ways that seem illegitimate to modern readers. But the apostles’ use of the Old Testament becomes clearer as we grasp the distinct practices and postures they brought to the Scriptures. Such practices and postures reveal not only how the apostles understood the Old Testament, but also how it shaped and saturated everything they wrote. In the end, the apostles not only thought about and interpreted the Old Testament; they also thought with and through the Old Testament and were interpreted by it.

You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit. —1 Thessalonians 1:6

Paul famously declares, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Again, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). For Paul, Scripture is an inestimable gift for our life and good. But as Peter acknowledges, it is possible to “distort . . . the Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16 NASB), to hear but not hear, to study the words but miss the Word, resulting in destruction. Mere hearing/reading of Scripture is not advantageous. Fitting, faithful hearing/reading of Scripture is what we are after. And I believe we can find no better help in this pursuit than in the models provided by the biblical writers themselves. “Be imitators of me,” Paul exhorts (1 Corinthians 4:16; 11:1). Might we include imitation of reading habits and sensibilities in the call?

With this possibility in view, I want to ask after the mystery and manners of apostolic reading of Scripture. In what ways did the New Testament (NT) writers wield the sword of the Spirit? How did they read and respond to their Bible? Of course, for the apostles in the texts cited above, the “Scripture” firstly in view is what Christians normally call the Old Testament (OT). Thus, a subset of our larger concern is a much-attended-to matter known as “the NT use of the OT.” For reasons that will become apparent below, I want to move beyond the category of use. But we can begin with it.

New Testament ‘Use’ of the Old Testament

The challenge that arises here is that NT writers use the OT in incredibly varied ways. One of the most obvious ways is to flag some fulfillment of a direct OT prophecy, frequently signaled with a formula like “This was to fulfill the word of X” (Matthew and John have a penchant for this). Closely related are NT claims, explicit and implicit, of indirect prophecy or types being fulfilled. Typological (figural) reading is on high display among the NT writers, who viewed OT events/narratives (e.g., exodus, exile), institutions (e.g., marriage, Levitical offerings), and persons (e.g., barren patriarchal wives, the Davidic king), for example, as divinely ordained “shadows” (Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 10:1) cast backwards from, or realities bearing the imprint of, the person of Christ and his worshiping, missional body of the last days.¹

Shifting the focus, a NT author may use an OT passage as something of a literary template. It is arguable, for example, that Revelation 4–5 is modeled on the vision of Daniel 7,² and that Isaiah 52:7–53:12 forms the literary-theological substructure of John 12.³ More broadly, Romans 6–8 may be said to mimic the movement of the Pentateuchal narrative of Israel being delivered from slavery through baptism in the sea (Romans 6), to receiving the law at Sinai (Romans 7), to being led by the Spirit through suffering in the wilderness en route to the Promised Land (Romans 8).⁴ Still more sweepingly, Matthew’s Gospel arguably copies the framing of the whole Hebrew Bible (in contrast to English ordering; see Matthew 23:35), which begins with the “book of the genealogy” in Genesis 2:4 (LXX; see also 5:1; cf. Matthew 1:1) and concludes with the decree of Cyrus in 2 Chronicles 36:23 (cf. Matthew 28:18–20).⁵

Differently, NT writers may use OT texts as illustrations of general principles (Deuteronomy 25:4 in 1 Corinthians 9:9–10⁶). They may cite or allude to the OT ironically, inverting the point of a statement in view of the new work of God in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:55⁷). They may appeal to an OT text less with the intention of giving its “one right interpretation” and more by way of proof-texting a doctrinal point (Jude 5–7), or providing moral exemplars (1 Peter 3:5–6), or strengthening a practical exhortation (Hebrews 13:5–6).

The use of the OT in the NT is clearly wide and varied, and this just scratches the surface. G.K. Beale provides a catalogue of just the “primary” interpretive uses of the OT in the NT (i.e., not intended to be exhaustive), and still the list balloons to a dozen.⁸ This is to say nothing of the diversity of formal uses of the OT in the NT (e.g., quotation, allusion, echo), the contested definitions of these categories, or criteria for detecting them.⁹

To further complicate matters, uses overlap. First Peter begins with a focus on the new exodus in Christ (redemption through the blood of a lamb [1:18–19] and the sequel of a new temple/kingdom of priests [2:4–10]), but after 2:11 the concern is almost entirely the church’s present experience as aliens suffering in exile. Peter uses Israel’s OT plotline (from exodus to exile) as a structural paradigm. At the same time, exodus and exile find typological fulfillment in the work of Christ and the life of the church. Moreover, an ironic reversal of an OT theme has taken place: remarkably, our exile is not punitive as Israel’s was, but is rather for the sake of mission to the nations among which we sojourn, because our exodus is far greater than Israel’s was, delivering not from Pharaoh but from sin, death, and wrath.

We must also admit that sometimes the NT uses the OT in seemingly wrong ways. In Acts 4:24–30, the earliest church uses Psalm 2:1–2 as a liturgical form for corporate prayer. They appear to rip what was originally an enthronement psalm for Israel’s king out of historical-cultural context and connect it directly to contemporary events. And they lump “the peoples of Israel” opposed to Christ and his church in with the raging “Gentiles” of Psalm 2. This seems like anything but a straightforward reading/use of the psalm. Or consider James’s quotation of Amos 9:11–12 in Acts 15:16–18. Whereas Amos speaks of restored Israel possessing the remnant of Edom, James indicates a time when the remnant of humankind may seek the Lord. At first blush, the messages of James and Amos seem opposite, or at least very different. “To me, it almost seems like a mistake,” a member of my church once said to me. Did James just get it wrong, forgetting the original wording? Was something lost in the translation from the Hebrew to the Greek? Was James playing fast and loose with the prophet’s words (knowing that no one in his first-century audience was likely to have a calfskin personal study Bible on hand to fact-check)?

What can account for the wildly varied, complex, sometimes troubling nature of the NT use of the OT? What follows are a handful of concerns, sensibilities, and principles discernible in the most common uses of the OT by the NT writers, which, I hope, will provide some foundations for making sense of the varied specific instances of the NT use of the OT. At the same time, these more general considerations will also underline the ways in which the relation of OT and NT extends beyond authorial use.

Reading in Context and in Chunks

To begin, I am persuaded, with many others, that NT writers generally are aware of and draw on the context of the OT texts to which they make direct or indirect reference. The apostles are not in the habit of opportunistically capitalizing on superficial similarity of wording; crucial to their quotations and allusions is how the OT texts work in their original contexts.

Intriguingly, for as many OT quotations as there are in the NT, rarely are they of the same OT verses (important exceptions include Psalm 110:1; Isaiah 6:9–10; 40:3). But many OT quotations and allusions are drawn from the same OT contexts — sections like Deuteronomy 6–8; 28–30; Joel 2–3; Isaiah 6–11; 40–55; Zechariah 9–14; Psalms 2; 8; 110. Early Christians apparently had shared familiarity with such sections. In the 1950s, C.H. Dodd observed this phenomenon, arguing that it likely wasn’t the result of committee or coincidence but of Jesus’s influence on apostolic Scripture reading (Luke 24:25–27, 44–45).¹⁰ In any case, at least when NT writers refer to such OT sections, we may reasonably assume that their knowledge of the context bears on their reference.

We can also demonstrate contextual, non-atomistic reading habits with specific examples. In James 5:17–18, James claims that Elijah prayed fervently for the Lord to withhold and then send rain. Now, the text of 1 Kings 17–18 never explicitly says that Elijah prayed for drought or rain. Prior to the drought, Elijah declares the Lord’s intention to withhold rain in 17:1, and at the conclusion of the drought, we find the ambiguous statement in 18:42 that Elijah “bowed himself down on the earth.” This is slim pickings for a theology of prayer. Does James take some questionable liberties? When we look beyond these isolated verses, reading the Elijah narratives as a larger literary section, we find Elijah praying all the time: for the widow’s son to be raised to new life (17:20–21), as a means of conquering the prophets of Baal (18:36–37), in voicing lament and protest to God (19:4, 10, 14). James’s inference that Elijah prayed fervently for drought and rain seems sensible and appropriate on the assumption that he read and heard the Scripture not just as individual verses here and there, not just as so-called pericopes, but especially in large chunks and sections.¹¹ I think all the NT writers did the same, and before them Jesus.¹²

This means that study of OT texts in their original contexts will typically illuminate how the NT writers use them. Indeed, such an awareness can help explain surprising adaptations to quoted material and seemingly strange interpretive moves that the NT writers make.

Overarching Plotlines and Streams of Tradition

Sometimes differences between NT quotations of OT texts and the original forms (e.g., Amos 9 in Acts 15) can be somewhat accounted for by the fact that early Christians often quoted from translations (Greek, Aramaic, etc).¹³ John 12:38 quotes Isaiah 53:1, but the initial “Lord” doesn’t appear in the original Hebrew. John quotes directly from the Greek translation, where “Lord” appears.¹⁴ Other times, NT writers mix and match between versions. Isaiah 6:10 in John 12:40 likely makes use of Hebrew and Greek versions, at least.¹⁵ Utilization of a translation is likely part (but only part) of what’s going on in Acts 15:16–18 — James capitalizes on the Old Greek translation to make his point.

This implies that NT writers engaged individual OT texts not in a vacuum (as if that were ever possible) but as mediated in streams of interpretive tradition, since every translation also necessarily interprets. Of course, traditions of interpretation come to expression not only in translations but also in other texts. When the NT refers to an OT text, we do well to consider how that OT text has been understood and developed elsewhere.

I believe the most important place to look in this respect is elsewhere in Scripture.¹⁶ Mark 1:2–3 is a fairly well-known example.¹⁷ When Mark quotes what is “written in Isaiah,” why does he first relay a conflation of Malachi 3:1 and Exodus 23:20? It’s because he understands, and wants readers to understand, Isaiah 40:3 (which is finally quoted in Mark 1:3) as it is developed by, or otherwise meaningfully related to, the words of Malachi and Exodus. That is, Mark 1:2–3 understands Isaiah 40:3 as part of a stream of biblical narrative and interpretation starting in Exodus and moving through the OT canon.

In a sense, this is the above point about reading in context broadened to the level of canonical context, location, and trajectory. In Acts 15:16–18, this point may be signaled, in that James expressly cites not Amos but “the prophets” (Acts 15:15). Perhaps James’s “quotation” sums up not simply Amos 9 but the collective testimony of “the prophets” about the future fate of the nations and the nature of the temple (see, e.g., Jeremiah 12:15–16; Isaiah 45:20–21 LXX; Zechariah 8:22).

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