Thursday, March 22, 2018

A conundrum

Despite the need to value the literary and religio-historical value of the Old Testament texts and to be conscious of Jewish theology, which draws on the scriptures of ancient Israel, as a possible and authentic way of reading the texts, corresponding aberrations over the course of the history of the Church and the history of interpretation show that eschewing Christian and Christ-oriented interpretation is not only theologically inappropriate but also regularly led to a devaluation of the Old Testament and, by extension, often to a devaluation or even persecution of Judaism as well. Conversely, a Christian and Christ-oriented interpretation of the Old Testament is not in itself immune to taking on an anti-Jewish tendency, particularly if it sets up a sharp antithesis between Jesus Christ, understood as the definitive revelation of God, and the divine revelations to Abraham and Moses, regarded as provisional and obsolete.—The Development of God in the Old Testament, page 60

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