Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament by Christopher Wright - Book Report/Review Example

Blank Page for Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………...… 3 Brief Summary ………………………………………………………………………………………..… 4 Critical Interactions with the Book …………………………………………………………………….... 6 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8 Work Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 9 Introduction Christopher J.H. Wright’s text “Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament” is an overview of Biblical doctrine that reflects the idea of Jesus of Nazareth actually can be seen and referred to within the Old Testament just as easily as the New. Wright takes the story deep within the life of Jesus and demonstrates a presence of the man hardly seen before by current theological and evangelical discussions of today. This concise review will help establish Wright’s conclusions to his idea and discuss the text as a whole. Through summary and critique of the work and its themes and ideas, it should be possible to fully understand Wright’s intentions and meaning while simultaneously dissecting the theological principles within. Wright is an American clergyman and Old Testament scholar. Born in 1947, he spent most of his early childhood in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as his parents, missionaries serving in World War II, were stationed in Brazil. He was raised Presbyterian and received education from Cambridge university in the 1960’s. Wright originally worked as a high school teacher until later he was able to serve as an associate pastor for the Parish Church of St. Peter & St. Paul, Tonbridge in Kent, England and became ordained in the anglican Church of England in 1977. In 1983 he and his family moved to India for missionary service where he taught seminary level school. Today he continues to work as an author, contributing many works focusing attention to the Old Testament specifically. He choses to write theological works that focus on interactions with God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and it’s incorporation with the Old Testament. His works are deep and rich of content discussing and analysing the Old Testament’s many intriguing articles and ideas, while reinterpreting the text to better understand the theology of Christianity as a whole, and how the reader, assumedly Christian, can better themselves within their gospel and take on a new meaning to the teachings of Christ as seen through the lens and the scope of the Old Testament and the Jewish faith. Brief Summary The book is a rich and spiritual theological discussion, wrapped in the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills (Exodus 31:3). Wright’s book decides to split up the story of Jesus as he prepares to incorporate him into the Old Testament into five separate but crucial parts: Jesus’s story, the promises he declares, the ones he fulfills, His identity, and lastly, His mission and values. Wright crafts his text fully and focuses mainly in the book of Matthew. He examines the importance of the heritage and genealogy of Jesus. He ties the story of Jesus with new and different approaches to the Old Testament, explaining his foundations even within the passages of Genesis and the historical context of Abraham, David, and then even back to Jesus. Matthew tells these stories well enough, but Wright decides to take it a step further and examine real historical information, looking even at how Jesus interacted with historical Israel and the inter-testamental period (Wright 1995, 20-24). As the book continues, he reviews the promises of Jesus as they are declared in the Old Testament, combing through the various covenants, or promises, that were made all the way up to the New Covenant that is a promise of the new testament. Wright relates the covenants of the Old Testament to the idea of a tributary of a river, the flows all eventually leading into the mainstream. He argues that the Old Testament “declared the promise which Jesus fulfilled” (102) and that the writers of the eventual New Testament of the Bible had actually based their current writings to the ultimate source; Jesus’s ministry in relation to original Hebrew scriptures in the Old testament. The third section of the book is the identification of Jesus as the son. Wright examines the relationship of the New Testament and Jesus comparing and contrasting it to that of the patriarchal relationship Israel has to God (119). The comparison is drawn out as the father and the son relation, comparing the attitudes of God and His expectations. He views the Israelites as his chosen people- thus Wright concludes that this is perfect allegory to the personal level of God to Jesus (122). As he continues, he brings up the main sections of the story that describe the missions of Jesus, the expectations of the Jews and their participation within His ministry, and how His mission can be heavily related to the concept and ideas of the Old Testament. Using the book of Isaiah, Wright pegs Jesus, the Servant, with that of the Israelites and the restoration of Israel from captivity (159, 162). Wright points out that the promise and message of God was to go first to the Jews, then continue to the Gentiles as Paul had stated in Romans. He concludes that the mission of the church is that of a servant, regarding the historically accepted abuse of servants in the past that it is long due to overcome (180). The fifth, and subsequently the final, section of Wright’s book examines the very scriptures themselves; in depth and nothing barred. He looks at the values Jesus was able to construct, that concluding that he formed them during His earthly ministry. Wright implies that Jesus relied on the Old Testament, the Law of God and all, to become the messiah he was destined to. He analyzes many different examples of this thought, from being tested in the wilderness by Lucifer, to His many parables while teaching. Wright systematically interprets the teachings of Jesus and God and infers a universal constant. The message of salvation is that of the obedience of God- telling it first to the Jewish nation, and then the Gentiles. He correlates Jesus’ words in the New Testament to the likes of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. He concludes his text with a brief presence of final understanding. He took examples from various Psalms throughout the Old Testament that reference Yahweh as king, sitting on the throne, and how God and his rules align to the way of life here on earth for all humans, even in the current existence we now know (243). Critical Interactions with the Book Wright took a very complex and extraneous idea and topic, one very rarely discussed in modern evangelical New Testament centric church, and provided a historical and complete biblical view of the life of Jesus. He was able to tie together the two chunks of text and weave a more coherent story than what was already present and make it convincing and engaging. Modern day churches tend to ignore the ideas that Wright was able to conceptualize into a fully fledged and extensively detailed picture of Jesus as he can be interpreted in the Old Testament. Wright provides the building blocks of the Old Testament’s text to construct a less than complicated idea with plenty of background sources to back up the idea. He provides a resource written by “someone to teach [...] the elementary truths of God’s word all over again” (Hebrews 5:12). “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (Peters 2:23). “You need milk, not solid food!” (Hebrews 5:12) Starting with the genealogy of Jesus established a perfect framing device to make the connections that were important in concluding the the life of Christ could be extracted from the stories of the Old Testament. Perhaps considered boring and old-fashioned to a reader of the Bible as of today, understanding that lineage of a web is important connectivity to those original passages. Wright calls upon those Christians who would ignore these connections due to boredom or uninterest as, what he calls, “Caroling Christians.” (8) The term describes the that modern Christians going to Sunday service with a dim light to the deep theology written within the passages of the Bible. Wright shows these types of Christians and indirectly gives charge to those who teach the religion and pastors of the Church that they should be responsible for connecting Jesus to the Old Testament themselves, and keeping their many followers and fellow religious Church goers from becoming the ill-fated and unfortunate “Caroling Christians” that he desperately advises against. Wright is an excellent historian in Biblical theology and factual information and marries the two into an excellent blend of teachings and proof of his claims. His examination of the inter-testamental periods gave light to those of Jewish faith and how importantly they relied on the scriptures and teachings (23), and later how Jesus relied on his teachings from the Old Testament and relaying the important concept that many overlook entirely: Jesus never once read the New Testament. Wright makes an effort to explain that his visions of modern day Christianity and Christians in general is considerably ignorant to the works of the Old Testament in its teaching and sermons in regards to actualizing their own faith. Many scholars have argued that Wright could have gotten even further in his depth of analysis, but his book is a still a solid means to drawing the conclusion, regardless. Jesus wouldn’t have had the New Testament to see His story fold out before him as it is today, and as Wright examined and explained, He only had the Old Testament to use as a basis for all things. Wright continues into the discussions of the heavy handed sections of his book and challenges many ideas of his audience to try and understand and accept complexities and absurdities of the text of the Old Testament. He asks to regard the differences between guaranteed promise and the corresponding fulfillment with the predictions that were made (68). The discussion is extended into that of the covenants as international treaties, and is apart of the imperative understanding of the Old Testament and its relation to Jesus as Wright challenges teachers and pastors to examine the concepts and ideas on their own time and at their own pace, fully grasping the greater details and the massive benefits that it can provide for them, their teachings, and for their own students (78-80). Scholarly reviews of Wrights books have been completed and address the ability of Wright to be able to explain the complicated and sometimes seeming as needlessly complex ideas of the Old Testament and its relationship to the New and Jesus, and makes it an easy to understand relationship between Israel, God, and His Son, Jesus. What sets Wright’s ultimate approach apart from others is simply his scholarly method and historical context, while still including systematic theology and a thorough backlog of knowledge and prose. It’s his works on the Old Testament that can actually bridge the gap between the two texts and complete the Bible as a more whole work; Jesus and the New Testament can actually be seen as the Old Testament being a preface to its teachings. Conclusion Wright’s work presents the modern day Christians and their church with an opportunity. Bring the Old Testament into the greater story of the gospels and sermons while teaching the story of Jesus through it. Jesus would have only had the Old Testament as the Word of God to confide in as truth and that’s an idea that’s forgotten in the mainstream churches of today. Although he tends to reiterate himself often, Wright’s argument is clear and concise, and produces a rationale and educated inference about the text of the Bible and provides the correlation between Jesus of the New testament to the God of the Old Testament. Reading Wright’s works, aside of course from this text, would present one with a wealth of knowledge and foresight into the theological spirituality and educated and understanding faith. Works Cited Wright, Christopher J.H., Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVaristy Press, 1995. Read More