Sacred Tradition in the New Testament

Tracing Old Testament Themes in the Gospels and Epistles

Porter, Stanley E.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781493401888
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Leading biblical scholar Stanley Porter critiques the state of research regarding the New Testament's use of the Old Testament and sacred traditions. He provides needed orientation for readers interested in New Testament references to themes such as "son of man" and "suffering servant" as well as the faith of Abraham and the Passover. Porter explains that examining scriptural traditions is fundamental to understanding central ideas in the New Testament regarding Jesus. He sheds light on major themes in New Testament Christology and soteriology, offering fresh, constructive proposals.

Part 1
Background, Method, and Terminology

These two opening chapters set the framework upon which the rest of this book builds, although the subsequent chapters go significantly beyond the focus of these two chapters. The two initial chapters of this first part frame the discussion of how sacred tradition is discussed in relation to the NT by engaging some of the most important and central discussions over the last thirty or so years. The topic of how the OT is appropriated within the NT—usually discussed by focusing on individual instances of invocation of the OT in the NT—has resulted in a wide variety of approaches to the topic.1 Even though in recent discussion a regularizing of the vocabulary can be seen, a relatively wide range of terminological disputes remain, to the point that much of this language and the methods associated with it have resulted in confusion and enduring interpretive problems. Along the way, there have been various attempts to bring clarity to the task and terminology of how one determines when the NT writers were using a passage from the OT; these two chapters discuss some of the most significant examples of such work. On the basis of previous writing that I have done on this topic, I engage such work in an effort to further clarify some of the issues involved, point toward a shared vocabulary for interpretation, and provide a possible way forward in the continuing discussion, at least as I exemplify this in the chapters that follow. Along the way, I try to find a common terminological language that can be used for such discussion.

In many different and noteworthy ways, the chapters that make up the bulk of this book are a continuation of this previous discussion. I therefore thought it important to draw on my earlier work—with appropriate revisions and updates—at the beginning of this volume, as a means of setting the appropriate context for my subsequent essays. The two chapters in part 1 borrow heavily from three articles that I have written on the topic, while updating the dialogue and interacting with more recent discussions and material. I hope that by my revisiting these discussions, the arguments in parts 2–4 of this work will be given an adequate background and allow us to engage more fully in how the NT writers make use of sacred tradition.

1. I have been part of this discussion in a number of places, as indicated by my more noteworthy attempts: Porter, “Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament” (1997); Porter, “Further Comments on the Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament” (2006); and Porter, “Allusions and Echoes” (2008).

1
Background to Discussion of Sacred Tradition

A major concern of much recent biblical research is how the Scriptures—in particular, the Hebrew Bible for Jews and the OT for Christians (I will use the latter)—as sacred traditions are interpreted and applied in later interpretive traditions, sacred and otherwise. By “traditions,” as I will make clearer in the next chapter, I mean wordings or larger patterns of thought recorded in writings venerated by various peoples and appropriated and reappropriated by later writers in their own interpretations and applications of these in new contexts and situations. The language used to describe this complex interplay of texts and new contexts is often clumsy and far from useful. To refer to the “use of the OT in the NT” leaves open the possibility that the NT simply uses the OT to support what it wishes to do and then rejects what is left. No doubt as a result, the term intertextuality has been widely adopted in biblical studies to describe this textual interrelationship (I will analyze the use of this and related language below). In this book and especially in this chapter, I am concerned with NT interpretation—more specifically, with how Jesus is depicted in the NT in the light of texts, in particular sacred texts, that were utilized or even written in the Greco-Roman world, especially the OT (whether in Greek or Hebrew), but also the Qumran writings (i.e., Dead Sea Scrolls) and some Hellenistic texts. In this volume, I examine how NT writers depict Jesus, but also some other key characters in the OT, in the light of and in relationship to various earlier sacred traditions, including the OT and other texts. One area typically not addressed in these sorts of discussions is how the epistolary writers (esp. Paul) depict Jesus as well as other OT characters. This volume, while focusing mostly on the character of Jesus, is interested in the role sacred tradition plays in the development of each NT writer’s line of thought.

This topic, the use of sacred tradition, is important for several reasons. First, sacred traditions of various types—ranging from mere hints to wordings to large-scale patterns—are invoked and interpreted on numerous occasions in the NT. It is difficult to arrive at an exact number of references to them because of the difficulty of defining what constitutes such a reference, whether it is called an allusion or a paraphrase or something else (on some of this difficult terminology, see below and esp. chap. 2), and what is simply religiocultural influence. Nevertheless, my own estimate is that there are roughly 380 instances of the OT being directly quoted in the NT, with many additional allusions.1 However, as we shall see further in this volume, the OT is not the only body of literature that has bearing on the NT, in terms of either establishing or supporting the writers’ own beliefs or possibly defining themselves in relation to other, related religious groups of the time. Thus, from a strictly historical-critical standpoint, it is important to understand something of the use of the OT and related sacred traditions, because they constitute important literary and theological sources for the writers of the NT.

A second reason such a topic is worth considering is that in a number of NT passages, Jesus is defined by means of scriptural and other significant religious traditions, and the definitions in some ways seem odd to us today (e.g., Messiah, Son of God, etc.). This oddity has been characterized in various ways. For example, sometimes the claims being made for Jesus appear to be absurd or at least unusual, or we have been led to believe that they are even unparalleled in other sacred texts. In relation to the religious milieu of the first century, something needs to be said regarding how the NT writers arrived at these interpretations of the life and death of Jesus, to say nothing of how Jesus may have conceived of himself in that same religiocultural context.

A third reason for considering the use of sacred tradition is the topic’s perceived ability to unite, under a single rubric, an investigation of the whole of the Christian Bible, including both Old and New Testaments. At least since the time of the intriguing figure Marcion (140 CE), Christianity has maintained a tenuous relationship between its two testaments. Marcion was condemned as a heretic for his rejection of the OT (plus much of the NT). Although the church officially rejected his position, the OT has since then generally lost out in relation to the NT. With attention to the OT comes attention to the Jewish background of the NT. Judaism of the NT era is a thoroughly hellenized Judaism,2 one of many religious cults of the Greco-Roman world. To appreciate the Jewish distinctives, one must look to the context of the OT rather than the NT.

A final reason for the importance of examining sacred tradition is the fairly recent incorporation of extrabiblical interpretive methodology, especially modern literary criticism, into biblical studies—something thought to be important in this eclectic methodological age. Similarly, the method discussed here might also have application to the investigation of nonbiblical Greek texts, an area in which there has also been a few investigations.3 Other matters of significance could be cited as well. Formative for how Christianity has interpreted the OT in the light of Jesus’s life and teaching has been the interpretation already enshrined in the NT. I raise several issues regarding how sacred traditions, especial...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: Background, Method, and Terminology
• Part 2: Jesus and Sacred Tradition
• Part 3: The Gospels and Sacred Tradition
• Part 4: The Epistles and Sacred Tradition
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Modern Authors Index
• Ancient Sources Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover