Many of you will know that I’m a NT major, so I have spent more time with the NT than the OT, however, one cannot understand either alone. The NT is filled with allusions from and built upon the foundation of the OT, and conversely, studying the OT alone will get you where the 1st century Jews got, namely: missing Jesus. The OT is a different kind of literature than the NT. It was written primarily in Hebrew. Then about 300 years before Jesus’ ministry there was a consented effort to accurately translate the Hebrew OT into Greek. This translation (or better, “these translations”) are known as the Septuagint (LXX). It’s from these Greek translations that the NT most often quotes from. You can read my post from Tuesday on the formation of the NT canon.
Ancient Hebrews, in a lot of ways, were very different than most people today. They were part of an oral culture. There would have been very few written copies of the Bible (what we call the OT) in the beginning. Many Hebrews had huge sections from the OT memorized by heart (there were no chapters or verse indicators for quick reference). Many knew huge sections word-for-word. Yep, word for word. We can’t imagine this today, but it was their way of life.
As God spoke to His people, many times He did so through
