Bible Difficulties (68 page)

The New Testament and the Old Testament

Why is it that many of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are not
literal?

Many careful Bible students have noticed this phenomenon. Often this is accounted for by the fact that a completely literal translation from the Hebrew does not make clear sense in Greek; therefore some minor adjustments must be made for the sake of good communication. But in a few instances the rewording amounts to a sort of loose paraphrase. This is particularly true of quotations from the Septuagint (the translation into Greek of the entire Old Testament by Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, during the third and second centuries B.C.). Generally, the Septuagint is faithful to the Hebrew wording in the Old Testament, but in some instances there are noticeable deviations in the mode of expressing the thought, even though there may be no essential difference in the thought itself.

Some scholars have concluded from such deviations that the New Testament authors did not hold to the theory of verbal inspiration; otherwise they would have gone back to the Hebrew text and done a meticulously exact translation of their own as they rendered that text into Greek. It has even been argued that the occasional use of an inexact Septuagint rendering in a New Testament quotation demonstrates a rejection of inerrancy on the part of the apostolic authors themselves. Their inclusion of Septuagint quotations containing elements of inexactitude seems to indicate a cavalier attitude toward the whole matter of inerrancy. On the basis of inference from the phenomena of Scripture itself, it is therefore argued that the Bible makes no claim to inerrancy.

To this line of reasoning we make the following reply. The very reason for using the Septuagint was rooted in the missionary outreach of the evangelists and apostles of the early church. The Septuagint had already found its way into every city of the Roman Empire to which the Jews of the Dispersion had gone. This was virtually the only form of the Old Testament the Jewish believers outside Palestine had, and it was certainly the only form available to Gentile converts to the Jewish faith or to Christianity. The apostles were propagating a gospel that presented Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the messianic promises of the Old Testament. Their audiences throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean world were told to consult the Old Testament to verify the truth of the apostolic claims, that Jesus in His person and work had fulfilled the promises of God.

Had the New Testament authors quoted these promises in any form other than the wording of the Septuagint, they would have engendered uncertainty and doubt in the minds of their hearers. For as they checked their Old Testament, the readers would have noticed the discrepancies at once--minor though they may have been--and would with one voice have objected, "But that isn't the way I read it in my Bible!" The apostles and their Jewish coworkers from Palestine may have been well equipped to do their own original translation from the Hebrew original. But they would have been ill-advised to substitute their own more literal rendering for that form of the Old Testament that was 310

already in the hands of their public. They really had little choice but to keep largely to the Septuagint in all their quotations of the Old Testament.

On the other hand, the special Hebrew-Christian audience to which the evangelist Matthew addressed himself--and even more notably the recipients of the Epistle to the Hebrews--did not require such a constant adherence to the Septuagint as was necessary for a Gentile readership. Hence Matthew and Hebrews often quote from the Old Testament in a non-Septuagintal form, normally in a form somewhat closer to the wording of the Hebrew original.

It should also be observed that in a few cases, at least, the Greek renderings (whether Septuagintal or not) of the Old Testament point to a variant reading in the original form of the text that is better than the one that has come down to us in the standard Hebrew Bible. It should be carefully noted that none of this yields any evidence whatever of carelessness or disregard on the part of the apostles in respect to the exact wording of the original Hebrew. Far from it! In some instances Christ Himself based His teaching on a careful exegesis of the exact reading in the Torah. For example, He pointed out in Matthew 22:32 the implications of Exodus 3:6 ("I
am
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob") on the basis of the present tense implied by the verbless clause in Hebrew. He declared that God would not have spoken of Himself as the God of mere corpses moldering in the grave ("God is not the God of the dead but of the living").

Therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must have been alive and well in the life beyond when God addressed Moses at the burning bush, four or five centuries later. Similarly Christ's discussion with the Pharisees concerning the identity of the one referred to as

"my Lord" in Psalm 110:1 really turned on the exact terms used in that clause or sentence. He therefore asked them, "If David then calls Him `Lord,' how is He his son?"

(Matt. 22:45, NASB). In other words, the Messiah must not only be David's lineal descendant, but He must also be his divine Lord (
kyrios
)!

Returning, then, to the apostolic use of the Septuagint, we find that this line of reasoning (that inexact quotations imply a low view of the Bible) is really without foundation. All of us employ translations of the Bible in our teaching and preaching, even those of us who are thoroughly conversant with the Greek and Hebrew originals. But our use of any translation in English, French, or any other modern language by no means implies that we have abandoned a belief in scriptural inerrancy, even though some errors of translation appear in every modern version. We use these standard translations to teach our readers in terms they can verify from the Bibles they have. But most of us are careful to point out to them that the only final authority as to the meaning of Scripture is the wording of the original languages themselves. There is no infallible translation. But this involves no surrender of the conviction that the original manuscripts of Scripture were free from all error. We must therefore conclude that the New Testament use of the Septuagint implies nothing against verbal inspiration or scriptural inerrancy.

Doesn't the Old Testament present a different kind of God than the New
Testament?

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It is commonly thought by those who have not studied the Bible very carefully that the Old Testament presents a God who is full of vengeance and wrath as He enforces the standards of righteousness, whereas the New Testament reveals Him to be full of compassion and love, always seeking to forgive and restore guilty sinners. In point of fact, however, the Hebrew Scriptures (partly because they make up three-fourths of the Bible) contain far more verses on the mercy and lovingkindness of God than the New Testament does. Deuteronomy lays the greatest emphasis on the faithful, unquenchable love of God for His people. Deuteronomy 7:8 says, "But because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which he swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt" (NASB). Psalm 103:13 reads, "As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him" (NASB). Verse 17 says,

"But the loving-kindness of the LORD is from everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children" (NASB). Jeremiah 31:3 has the same message:

"THE LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: Ì have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness'" (NIV). Psalm 136 affirms no less than twenty-six times that "His [Yahweh's] love endures forever."

In The New Testament there is a tremendous display of the love of God. In fact, the supreme display is in the sacrifice of His only Son on the cross of Calvary; and no one ever spoke more movingly about the love of God the Father than did His Son in the Sermon on the Mount, in John 3:16, and throughout the Gospels. Perhaps no sublimer words can be found than Romans 8:31-38, which describes the unfailing and unquenchable love of God for His children.

But at the same time it should also be observed that the New Testament teaches the wrath of God just as forcefully as the Old Testament does. John 3:36 says, "But he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on Him" (NASB).

Romans 1:18 states, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness"

(NASB). Again, in Romans 2:5-6 we read, "But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds"

(NASB). And consider 2 Thessalonians 1:6-9:

"For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power" (NASB).

This theme recurs right through to the end of the New Testament, as in Revelation 6:15-17: "And the kings of the earth and the great men...hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, `Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of 312

the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come; and who is able to stand?'" (NASB).

No passage in the Old Testament can compare with the fearsome description of God's judicial wrath found in Revelation 14:9-11. Truly our just and holy God is "a consuming fire"--in both Testaments, the Old and the New (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29).

The portrait of God is altogether consistent throughout the sixty-six books of the Bible.

God's wrath is the reverse side of His love. As the upholder of the moral law--and He would be an unholy, Satan-like God if He failed to uphold it--God must pass judgment and execute sentence on every unrepentant sinner, whether demon or man. The sacrifice of His Son on the cross was the supreme exhibition of God's indignation against sin, for in the hour of final agony even Jesus had to cry out with anguish of soul, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" And yet the Cross was also the supreme revelation of His unfathomable love, for it was the God-man who suffered there for us, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.

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The Synoptic Gospels

Why are there differences among the synoptic Gospels?

Of the three Synoptists, only Matthew was one of the twelve disciples. Mark seems to have been an assistant to Peter, at least according to church tradition; but he probably accompanied the Twelve much of the time during Jesus' later ministry. At least the special mention (found only in Mark) of a certain young man who fled away naked from the scene of the arrest at Gethsemane quite possibly refers to him, even though he does not give his name. Luke became associated with Paul on his first journey to Macedonia (Acts 16:10), and later became intimate with the Jerusalem apostles and Jesus' mother, as he devoted himself to a careful biography of Jesus' life. Apparently Luke was not a Jew (unlike the other NT authors), if we may judge from Colossians 4:11, 14. Evidently he had enjoyed a fine education in literary Greek, even though much of his narration was couched in simple Hebrew style (contrast Luke 1:1-4 and the remainder of that chapter).

John, of course, was one of the inner circle of the original Twelve; and he composed his gospel after the Synoptics had been published. Much of his material consisted of private discourses spoken to believers who were more mature in their understanding and faith.

As we compare the accounts given by each of the three Synoptists, we find a special set of emphases or circle of interest that characterizes each of them and exerts a controlling influence on their selection of material--both as to what they include and as to what they leave out. Even in the manner of arranging their material, there are differences appropriate to their own special perspective. They have about fifty-three units in common among themselves. Matthew has forty-two units unique to him, Mark has only seven, and Luke has fifty-nine (there are ninety-two in John) according to Westcott's tabulation.

About one-half of Mark is found in Matthew, but only one-fourth of Luke. As we investigate cases of divergence between the three Synoptics, it may be helpful to recognize their special emphases and concerns as they relate to us the life of our Lord.

Matthew lays special emphasis on Christ as the Messiah and King who fulfills the promises and predictions of the Hebrew Scriptures. He seems to have a Jewish constituency in view as he brings in numerous quotations from the Old Testament, many of which are not from the Septuagint (as the other Evangelists' quotations tend to be), but which show a greater faithfulness to the Masoretic text (the standard form of the Hebrew that has come down to us today). This indicates that his audience is not dependent on a Greek translation; and this serves as a confirmation that the original form of his gospel was "in Hebrew" (this statement is found not only in Papias [A.D.130] in his "Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord" [cited by Eusebius] but also in Irenaeus, Origen, and Jerome).

By "Hebrew" Papias probably meant the Jewish dialect of Aramaic. Apparently only afterwards was Matthew's gospel translated into Greek, the form in which it has come down to us. Matthew makes more frequent reference to the law of Moses than the others do, and he uses the pious Jewish locution "kingdom of heaven" as a substitute for "the kingdom of God" in the oral teaching of Jesus. (This tendency to refer to God by the locution "Heaven" is also apparent in the Mishnaic Jewish tradition of the rabbis, but not 314