The Elder Testament

Canon, Theology, Trinity

Christopher R. Seitz

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781481308298, 9781481308281
• eBook ISBN: 9781481308304
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The Elder Testament serves as a theological introduction to the canonical unity of the Scriptures of Israel. Christopher Seitz demonstrates that, while an emphasis on theology and canonical form often sidesteps critical methodology, the canon itself provides essential theological commentary on textual and historical reconstruction.

Part One reflects on the Old Testament as literature inquiring about its implied reader. Seitz introduces the phrase "Elder Testament" to establish a wider conceptual lens for what is commonly called the "Old Testament" or the "Hebrew Bible," so that the canon might be read to its fullest capacity.

Part Two provides an overview of the canon proper, from Torah to Prophets to Writings. Seitz here employs modern criticism to highlight the theological character of the Bible in its peculiar canonical shape. But he argues that the canon cannot be reduced to simply vicissitudes of history, politics, or economics. Instead, the integrated form of this Elder Testament speaks of metahistorical disclosures of the divine, correlating the theological identity of God across time and beyond.

Part Three examines Proverbs 8, Genesis 1, and Psalms 2 and 110--texts that are notable for their prominence in early Christian exegesis. The Elder Testament measures the ontological pressure exerted by these texts, which led directly to the earliest expressions of Trinitarian reading in the Christian church, long before the appearance of a formally analogous Scripture, bearing the now-familiar name "New Testament."

Canon to Theology to Trinity. This trilogy, as Seitz concludes, is not strictly a historical sequence. Rather, this trilogy is ontologically calibrated through time by the One God who is the selfsame subject matter of both the Elder and New Testaments. The canon makes the traditional theological work of the church possible without forcing a choice between a minimalist criticism or a detached, often moribund systematic theology. The canon achieves "the concord and harmony of the law and the prophets in the covenant delivered at the coming of the Lord" of which Clement of Alexandria so eloquently spoke.

Part One

Orientation

The goal of part 1 is to establish the proper bearings for exploring the contents and approach to follow in the main part of this book. Here we seek to enter the necessary compass headings for the reader. We hope also in consequence that the character of the title and subtitle will become clear.

The opening chapters will therefore introduce and clarify terms of reference. Chapter 1 will explain why the language of “Elder Testament” is being employed in our study as a wider conceptual lens over the more typical “Old Testament” or “Hebrew Bible.” Chapter 2 addresses the use of the term “canon/canonical approach” as this has taken form in the recent period. The term has at ground a concern with theology and hermeneutics, as we will see from the example of Irenaeus we provide in the course of our evaluation. Unfortunately, the word “canon,” as many will confront it in the modern period, is now primarily associated with questions of literary stabilization: the number of books, the sequence, institutional closure, and the sociological forces behind all this. We wish to free the word to operate in a different and more original context and so to highlight the theological concerns animating reflection on One Bible in Two Testaments.

Following these two brief studies, we can turn to the literal sense of the Elder Testament and how it may be said, from out of its specific historical situated-ness, to give rise properly to extended sense-making. We take up one prominent example of biblical theology from the recent period that has sought to give scope for appraisal of the subject matter to which the literal sense pointed as a legitimate part of the exegetical task of the Christian church.

In the final chapter of this section we look at a related concern. The examples of Christian interpretation from the early church, as these arise in non-Jewish circles, everywhere give evidence of commentators embarking enthusiastically on exploration of a book now available to them for the first time. The privileged character of the witness, as personal talk to a chosen people, is accepted as critical to how the witness does its theological work. Yet in the light of a dominical warrant to take up and read afresh, the chosen ones enter the world of Elder Testament as honored invitees, and reading with the grain see the theological portrayal of this One God as pressuring forth an extended sense deeply imbedded in how the Elder Testament speaks of God. Our concern is with keeping clear the conditions on which modern readers approach the Elder Testament, especially against a generalizing hermeneutic that said “read the book like any other book,” without thinking very carefully about the special hermeneutics every book demands of us.

1

Elder Testament

Introducing the Scriptures of Israel

As noted in passing above, in the recent period new terms of reference have been proposed to replace the terminology “Old Testament.” This has happened for a variety of sometimes complementary reasons: because the term “old” has been thought, in the English language, to be pejorative in character; in order to respect the existence of these scriptures within Israel prior to the church’s use of and renaming of them; or to dampen these scriptures’ traditional claim on and use within a specific ecclesial context.

I have in other places defended the traditional terminology. Here I want to broaden the scope of the inquiry by looking at a different cultural context in which the pairing l’Ancien Testament and le Nouveau Testament are the terms of reference. I will propose that in our present English language context where the word “old” suffers from consumerist connotations, “Old Testament” quite likely means something like “Elder Testament.” This is not an argument for changing the terminology, but for widening our conceptual lens on what the term “old” likely meant when in Christian circles the emergence of a second scriptural witness caused a change in how the scriptures of Israel were referred to, as part one of a Bible with a second, “New” testament.

It is reasonable to open a section on orientation with the basic question of proper terms of reference, that is, what to call this literature that forms the large first part of the Christian Bible. In the present era, especially in North America, the terms of use have been under discussion, and several alternatives to “Old Testament” have been proposed. I want to consider the issue from the standpoint of the French language to get perspective on challenges presented by the English language in the present cultural context of modernity. It is hoped that recourse to a different cultural context will help to gain perspective on what are arguably serious losses in how the word “old” once made its force felt when the scriptures of Israel became the Christian “Old Testament.”

In the French language there are three different lexical possibilities for the English equivalents “old,” “aged,” and “former”: vieux/vieille, ancien/ancienne, and âgé/âgée. The first set can have a pejorative overtone in French, as in “worn-out,” “bygone,” or “outmoded.” One does not call one’s parents “old” but instead one uses the word “âgée.” An “old car” (une voiture vieille) is not a nice new one, and it isn’t a valuable antique car either. Vénérable is not a possible synonym of vieux.

The second set, ancien/ancienne, has some subtlety in its usage in French that lacks an exact English equivalent. The word changes its meaning slightly depending on whether it comes before or after the noun it modifies. An ancien advocat is a “former lawyer.” Les meubles anciens refers to “old furniture” or antiques. The latter phrase can have a slightly negative overtone in some cases, but this depends on the context. Vénérable is a possible synonym of ancien. In the biblical context, the plural les anciens is in English “elders” with the nuance of “wise,” les sages.

Placed before the noun, the word dernier can function as the coordinate of ancien, as in the English pairing “former/latter.” Placed after the noun, dernier reproduces the English adjective “last”; so dimanche dernier is “last Sunday.” Le dernier candidat is also possible, however, as in “the last candidate.”

The pairing that corresponds to Old Testament/New Testament in French does not use the sets vieux/vieille or âgé/âgée but ancien/ancienne. Though the adjective precedes the noun for the term “the Old Testament,” or l’Ancien Testament, one does not have a corresponding le dernier Testament but rather le Nouveau Testament. One would not therefore translate in English “the Former Testament” and “the Latter Testament.” “The New Testament” is the obvious translation of le Nouveau Testament. But the first literature is not le Testament vieux or le Vieux Testament. In the pairing l’Ancien and le Nouveau, as the French language refers to the two parts of Christian scripture, absent is the nuance of “outmoded,” “bygone,” or “not new” for the first literature. One might therefore for the first literature render into English “Elder Testament” for “Old Testament” to avoid the English language problem suggested by “Old” and “New”—which, in the modern period at least, leans toward a movement from “outmoded” to “better,” “up to date,” or “improved.” If one wanted to capture the nuance preserved by the pairing l’Ancien Testament and le Nouveau Testament in French, “Elder Testament” or “Older Testament” or “Original Testament” would serve the purpose better.

One is referring here to the problem of a modern English-language nuance and not one that is of necessity resident in the word “old.” In antiquity the scriptures the church first possessed were only in time referred to as “Old” due to the emergence of a second literature. At that point in time, “Old” meant venerable, original, and time-tested.1 The early church fathers routinely appealed to the antiquity of these writings as a warrant for diminishing the hold on culture that the philosophical literature of the age had. Clement of Alexandria writes page after page in the Stromata about the time-tested and prioritized character of the scriptural legacy inherited by the church; if the philosophical writings got anything right, they unknowingly had borrowed it from Moses.2 We will discuss below the way in which especially non-Jewish interpreters judged their access to this Old Testament a great privilege and, consistent with the dominical excursus on the road to Emmaus, assumed it was a treasure chest awaiting disclosure of all manner of embedded riches. By contrast, the danger with the word “new” in “New Testament” was the possible nuance “novel” and “untested” measured against the original and ancient witness, and so specifically Christian claims had to argue for the balanced truthfulness and integrity of Old and New both.

I have written in defense of the traditional terms of reference used in English, as against substitutes, such as Hebrew Bible, First Testament, and so forth.3 The former term has even led to the practice within certain circles of referring to the second witness as “The Christian Bible”—even Marcion realized to make this work one would have to take away 85 percent of the New Testament due to its dense reliance on the first witness to establish its claims about God and Jesus Christ. The term “Second Testament” seems like a demotion or an openness to “Third Testament.” It is crucial for the Christian church, in my view, to have the same nominal term balancing both witnesses (“Testament”) so that the covenantal continuity is center stage. The challenge, then, in the English language context of modernity, with its fascination with things “new,” is how to avoid the pejorative overtones of “old” (fine for Scots whiskey and golf courses, but otherwise difficult). That the French language terms of reference have succeeded in large measure where English has not may be a simple accident of language possibilities across cultures, or it may have to do with different evaluations of what history continues to say and exhibit, in the Old World context of Europe and a France that highly values its patrimoine.

What this French language example shows, however, is that other possibilities exist for handling the character of continuity and of change the two terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” bespeak. If “Old Testament” as a term suffers from misconstrual due to modern cultural realities in a New World setting, perhaps the best thing to do is offer a conceptual alternative less prone to misunderstanding. So the title of the present study, which will go on to explore the important character of the scriptures of Israel in other ways, may best open onto the discussion by using a fresh conceptual term—not to replace “Old Testament” and “New Testament” but rather to stimulate reflection on just how this Elder Testament is scripture of the Christian church.

There is another set of reasons why the term “Elder Testament” may properly resonate. One has been mentioned already. When one hears reference to les anciens in church in a French context, the phrase is almost universally positive. “The Elders” are revered leaders who serve in important roles due to their “life experience”—as we refer to it in modernity. In Israel and in the church birthed from it, the elders maintain memory, uphold norms whose veracity has withstood the test of time, and take responsibility for justice and proper stewardship of the past for the present generation. They are les sages, the wise. The Elder Testament is this kind of Old Testament. Its oldness is a fact that inheres within its own extended scope. It took time to be what it is in distillation and in aging over centuries. It says what it says, and then that finds a new point of reference in God’s disposing through time. This typological or figural reality is confirmed in the Second Witness, with its language of fulfillment and accordance, but this patterning and associating impulse is deeply at work within the First Witness and helps explain its growth and scope as such.4

In addition, the Bible frequently explores the range implied by elder and younger in various ways across both testaments. The prodigal and the older son. Jacob and Esau. The young David and the young Joseph who nevertheless rise above older brothers. And most fundamentally, as Romans 9–11 has it, the original natural tree Israel and the transplanted church. Jacob tricks the elder Esau out of his firstborn birthright, but he must come to terms with that supplanting all the same and its costs of wounding and renaming (Gen 32:13–33:20). Or David supplanting the chosen Saul but learning at some risk to himself that the first king’s office must be honored and respected, as well as the man Saul himself, indeed in his brokenness (1 Sam 16–31). Or a church that in its boastfulness would overthrow the very plan of God in bringing those far off to a nearness that is the domain of an elder relationship and an elder planting of love and commitment (Rom 11:1-36). And the cry of the Father, “Son, you are always with me and all that I have is yours, yet it was fitting” (Luke 15:11-32).5

So perhaps the word “Elder” has a certain fittingness for describing the character of the relationship between Old Testament and New Testament beyond seeking a more accurately nuanced term for the first witness given the yearnings of modernity. It is of course Jesus Christ who in himself is the elder and the younger, the old and the new, the Israel and the gentile graft; he is the covenant of an elder Passover celebration becoming the new covenant meal for the whole world at one and the same moment in time, crucified under Pontius Pilate and before the foundations of the world. The one who shared the “oldest possible life” with God and who said as well, “Behold I make all things new.”

2

Canonical Interpretation of the Elder Scriptures

As applied to matters of introduction and interpretation of the scriptures Old and New, the term “canonical” has had a bumpy ride. In North America particularly, the adjective and its noun form pushed one rather immediately into the realm of lists of books, their scope and sequence; into questions of closure and stabilization and the social and religious forces said to be critical of the emergence of a canon. Debates arose over whether one might helpfully distinguish “scripture” from canon, whether it is possible to speak of an “open canon,” and how or if the two scriptures Old and New might be compared in the same domain concerned with canonical lists and institutional closure. With this context of discussion dominating, it would be very difficult to use the term for a different, hermeneutically primary purpose. At issue is how the term canonical might properly exist in the context of exegesis and hermeneutics, and only derivatively move us into material questions of the scriptures’ literary stabilization.

In this chapter I will seek to ground use of the term in the earliest context of its circulation, that is, arising from reflection on how the scriptures’ many-faceted pieces properly fit together, and how the One God of the scriptures’ first witness is the same One Lord God of the church’s confession. The canon of truth or of faith is what was appealed to in both instances, and it remains in that sense that we wish to use the term canonical with reference to our approach to the Christian Old Testament. That is, at stake here is the grounding of the term canonical, such as we will be using it in the present book, in the properly hermeneutical and theological context of its initial use.1

In the context of the New Testament (or the literature that will in time be referred to with that term), and in respect of the people who inhabit its pages, there is a single scripture. Modern debates about its scope and the character of its stabilization at the time leave untouched the fact that there is still only one sacred testimony, called variously “the Law and the Prophets,” “it is written,” “the oracles of God entrusted to the Jews” (Rom 3:2), “the scriptures” (Acts 17:2; Rom 15:4, et passim), “Moses and the prophets and the psalms” (Luke 24:44), “whatever was written in former days” (Rom 15:4), “all scripture” (2 Tim 3:16), nor “sacred writings” (2 Tim 3:15). The earliest possible reference to the developing writings of the second witness being referred to with the n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One. Orientation
• Part Two. Entering the Elder Testament
• Part Three. Theological Readings in the Elder Testament
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Author Index