Abstract
John Goldingay writes in this book of the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament within the Christian Bible. Noting that the authors of the New Testament made use of texts from the Old Testament as they sought to understand Jesus, Goldingay seeks to present an understanding of how we (I assume Goldingay intends the ‘we’ to be ‘Christian readers of the Bible’) can, ‘learn to read the OT by reading backwards from the Gospels, and—at the same time—we learn how to read the Gospels by reading forwards from the OT’ (p. 1). Thus, the sub-title ‘How the New Testament Helps Us Understand the Old Testament’ tells only one side of the story of Goldingay’s book.
Goldingay structures his book around an observation he makes upon the first five chapters of Matthew’s Gospel and its use of the Old Testament. Goldingay notes that Matthew’s Gospel makes use of the Old Testament to illuminate the story, the promise, the ideas, the relationship, and the life to which Jesus bears witness, but to which the Old Testament first bore witness. Goldingay notes that, ‘Matthew was not consciously aiming to achieve this end’ (p. 2), however, the fivefold scheme does provide a useful structure to this book. Each of chapters 2 to 6 takes up one of these elements and examines how various parts of the New Testament engage with them in relation to the previously given testimony of the Old Testament. The insights in these chapters are often valuable, it is especially helpful to see the fruits of many years of research and writing brought together in this project.
Each chapter ends with ‘Questions for Discussion’, suggesting that this book may be intended for use in church discussion groups. To this end the use of footnotes is limited, only 55 in the whole book, and in place of a bibliography there is a list of volumes For ‘Further Reading’, 26 volumes listed. However, some of the suggested further reading is of an academic nature and would not immediately be familiar to a church member with no experience in academic biblical studies. Goldingay’s use of the phrase ‘First Testament’ to refer to the ‘Old Testament’ would sound unusual to most church members, even if familiar to those who know Goldingay’s three volume Old Testament Theology. The book then may serve for undergraduate students as a very helpful introduction to current scholarly thinking on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments but would need supplemented by other more detailed discussions.