What did the First Christians believe about the Old Testament? I might as well have asked what they believed about the Bible because, as the faith developed, the Old Testament was all the written word they had. Jesus himself laid the groundwork for a uniquely Christian understanding of the Scriptures.

Consider, for example, one fundamental difference between Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees believed that God gave the law to Moses in two forms: oral and written. That is, that Moses got the written law (including the Ten Commandments) and then he got the Oral Law to go with it. This Oral Law was passed on to Joshua who received it and passed it on to the next generation, who in turn, received it and passed it on. Thus they believed that what they received from the earlier generation of Rabbis was what God told Moses on Sinai. The record of the oral law today is found in the Talmud.

The Sadducees believed no such thing. They believed that the written law was the only law that carried divine authority. I think Moses comes down on that side of the issue, because he said plainly that he wrote down everything God told him. You may wonder where this expression, Oral Law came from, for it is not found in the New Testament, nor the Old, for that matter. The New Testament writers knew about it, of course, but declined to refer to it in those terms. Rather, they called it the traditions of the elders. Let's look at several instances where these traditions were challenged.

When you think about it, it is a logical question. Why didn’t Jesus write his own book? For that matter, why didn’t an angel hand the prophets a golden plate with prophecies written by the hand of God himself? (The Ten Commandments, after all, were written with the finger of God on tables of stone—God can write.)

There is no reason why Jesus could not have written his story, so we are left to ponder why he did not. There is a reason, and it turns out to be of profound importance in dealing with that collection of books we call the New Testament.

In the first place, biblical law places great importance on witnesses. Just as in our constitution, no man could be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. And that due process included witnesses to the cause of action against a man. No man could be deprived of his life for murder without at least two witnesses to the crime. Then there is a very practical reason why Jesus did not write his own book, and he stated it in his own words. We’ll find them in John, chapter 5.

It is of some interest that the New Testament church soldiered on for some 20 years before anyone wrote down anything that has remained for us to look at. (The fact that transitory papyrus was often used as a writing medium certainly didn’t help.)

So, looking at your Bible, what is your best guess as to which of the New Testament books was written first? Matthew, perhaps? (It is the first one listed, after all.) No. As odd as it seems, the first of all the New Testament documents that we have is Paul’s letter to the Galatians, written 20 years after Christ’s resurrection.

It is hard to explain exactly why this was so. One reason may have been the early Christians’ expectation of the imminent return of Christ. (I think we can safely conclude that none of them imagined that they would be read 2,000 years into the future.) And so the first Gospel to be written wouldn’t appear for another 10 years after Paul’s letters to the Galatians and the Thessalonians. You can place all four of the Gospels between AD 60 and 70. And if we look at what was occurring during this period, we may begin to understand why they were finally written down.

When you sit down to read the New Testament, you encounter a strange cast of characters. I say strange—but only strange to us. The New Testament writers didn’t bother to explain, because all these characters were well known to their initial audience.

If I may digress, it is important to keep in mind that the New Testament was written with contemporary readers in mind. They were either writing letters or recording their testimony for people they knew, to a people they understood, and in a language they could all use to communicate.

There is no reason to think that the men who wrote those books were thinking about readers in another language—2,000 years later. This poses a difficulty, but it is hardly insurmountable. It just requires a little attention. For example, your have these folks called Pharisees who seem to play such a large role in opposition to Jesus. Who are these people, and what did they stand for? What about the Sadducees? To really understand the events of the New Testament, you need to understand the religious and political environment in which they took place.

Imagine that you are in a room, all by yourself. No one else is there. No one else is supposed to be there. You are in the process of carrying out a rather simple task, but one that requires you to pay attention to what you are doing. All you have to do is carefully replenish the incense burning on a small altar.

Then, with no fanfare, no warning, no noise, there is suddenly a man standing there just to the right of that small altar. One minute he isn’t there, and the next minute he is. All of us know what it is like to have someone creep up one us when we didn’t know they were there. It can make you nearly jump out of your skin.

That is precisely where a man named Zechariah found himself one day. He was a priest. He was in the temple alone. No one else should have been anywhere near, but suddenly there was a man standing there. The book says he was startled and gripped with fear. I would certainly think so. And what is especially remarkable about this particular event is that nothing like this had happened in the past 400 years.

I forget where I first saw the book title, How to Read the Bible, but I recall a certain, what shall we say, amusement. I thought, Find a comfortable chair, open the book and read. I think there may be a dozen books in print with that title, but a short review by the features editor of First Things was very useful in understanding what at least one of the authors was driving at. The article was titled The Bible Inside and Out by R.R. Reno.

Professor Reno noted that To this day, modern biblical scholars ignore all interpreters of the Bible except other modern biblical scholars. I had noticed that, but had never put my finger on it. What caught his interest was the book by James L. Kugel How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now.

In the world of modern biblical study, Kugel rose to rarified heights, becoming Starr Professor of Hebrew at Harvard (a position he recently left to live and teach in Jerusalem). But he never really worked as a normal biblical critic in the modern mode. Early on he cultivated an expertise in the old readers of the Bible, the interpreters who were so crucial in the origins of Judaism and Christianity.

Immersed in the work of early interpreters, Kugel noticed a strange feature of modern biblical study. The critics today seem to have a great appetite for any new piece of evidence or striking theoretical insight that promises a fresh approach to the Bible.

One could say quite literally that no stone has been left unturned. Except one: To this day, modern biblical scholars ignore all interpreters of the Bible except other modern biblical scholars.

[…] James Kugel identifies four assumptions that all ancient readers implicitly adopted, none of which find welcome in the modern approach.

I want to pull out and examine these four assumptions, because they really do relate to how one reads the Bible.

God forbid we, as a nation, should ever stop caring about the children and about the poor, but real care should lead us to call a failure what it is—a failure. I’ve listened with fascination to the debate and I’ve heard the calls for compassion being handed down from politicians. Now, as a Christian, I believe in compassion—but there’s something wrong with the picture I see out there. Compassion is a singularly human emotion. The problem with the government showing compassion is that the government is not human; the state is not human. Oh, I know the goverment is composed of human beings, but the government itself is a system, and systems don’t feel anything, much less compassion. And when politicians start talking to us about compassion and love, what they are really talking about is political power. Don’t ever forget it. And when political power pretends it is something else, it’s starting to become dangerous.

No word from the Bible conjures up more dread than the word Antichrist. It is kind of unfortunate, because the word is not used in the Bible in the sense that we use the word. It is John who introduces the word in his first New Testament letter.

Little children, it is the last time: and as you have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; by which we know that it is the last time.

But John’s usage does not speak to a singular, world-ruling Antichrist. (Which is what most people mean when they use the term.)

Now, Paul does speak of such a one in 2 Thessalonians 3. He doesn’t call him Antichrist, but he puts a finger on one powerful person who is a harbinger of the last days. The passage calls him the son of destruction, using the root that forms one of the names of the Devil: Apollyon—the destroyer. And if Daniel is any guide, this man will be a son of the Devil and a destroyer, indeed. Let’s begin in Daniel, chapter 11.