According to the Scriptures

Every time we say the creed, we repeat that our faith is “in accordance with the scriptures”. When we do so, we are echoing St Paul’s words to the Corinthians. Those words were themselves already a tradition passed on by the apostles when Paul received them perhaps three years after the first Easter. “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” (1 Cor 15:3-4) The scriptures Paul and the creed are talking about are the ones we now call the Old Testament, and this session is all about how the New Testament writers used the books we now call the Old Testament.

The late New Testament scholar Martin Hengel is reputed to have said: “If all you know is the New Testament, you do not know the New Testament”.  In this session we’ll put Hengel’s claim to the test, and do so specifically in terms of how far the NT writers expected their audience to know the Old Testament, and how they appeal to Israel’s Scriptures when trying to understand Jesus and his ministry. How do we see Jesus himself appealing to Scripture, and what parts of the OT are particularly significant in this regard?

Dr Dave Allen is Academic Dean and New Testament Tutor at the Queen’s Foundation, and is the author of several books on the way the New Testament writers use the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible. 

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