IS THE NEW TESTAMENT BETTER THAN THE OLD?

 IS THE NEW TESTAMENT BETTER THAN THE OLD?

by Zwandien Bobai

This is a question for Bible and theological students. Lay readers of the Bible may not wrestle with such questions. In the history of Bible interpretation in the Church, the New Testament has always received premium. Many members including pastors hardly would deliver a single homily from the Old Testament claiming that it has some difficulties or mysteries that are hard to explain. But they are still carrying the same in their Bible!

As early as the second century, the Church struggled with heresy spearheaded by Marcion (see von Harnack, 1920) who was greatly influenced by Gnostic teaching on dualism. Marcion separated the two Testaments. The New was never to be understood in terms of Judaism (Old Testament) in which there were many offensive things. To him, the Old Testament God is another inferior being, the vindictive God of the law that is completely opposed to the gracious God of the New Testament (Bright, 1975). The Old Testament had the tendencies of being considered unimportant and rejected in the Church but such tendencies were roundly rejected as heresy in the formative centuries of the Church.

Marcionic tendencies continued especially outside the church and Catholic Christianity. It showed up sometimes in the Middle Ages as some sects though. The Reformers came and emphasised the place of the Old Testament, too. It is noteworthy that the Reformers came and emphasised the need to retain the plain meaning of the Old Testament against the then quest to find mystical meaning by means of allegorical readings. The Age of Enlightenment (18 & 19th centuries) didn't help the Old Testament. According to Bright (1975:63), "Scholars, finding themselves increasingly uneasy with christological or typological interpretation of the Old Testament then so popular in the churches, were driven to the conviction that the plain meaning is the literal, philological-historical meaning expressed in the text, and they felt obliged to insist that the Old Testament is to be read in that literal meaning. But to read the Old Testament in its literal meaning is to see it in its strangeness; and to see it in its strangeness is to raise again the question of Marcion." From this point of view, it became obvious that Marcion's moral and ethical questions against the Old Testament are valid. For instance, how would one apply the divine instructions to kill other people in the church?

Although the church did not accept that the OT could be done away with like Marcion desired, such desires were always echoed that the OT was not in the same level as the New. The poet, Goethe was known with such sentiment. And that was the case with theologians, Schleiermacher, Schelling, Feuerbach and the nineteenth century antisemitism of Paul de Lagarde (Bright, 1975).

The trend of devaluing the OT continued all through history. People have always believed that there is something alien in the OT that Christians must be careful about. For example, Adolf von Harnack, the historian of dogma was sympathetic of Marcion and his views of the OT. He succinctly opined: "To have cast aside the Old Testament in the second century was an error which the church rightly rejected; to have retained it in the sixteenth century was a fate which the Reformation was not yet able to avoid; but still to keep it after the nineteenth century as a canonical document within Protestantism results from a religious and ecclesiastical paralysis" (von Harnack, 1920, 1960: 221-222). He didn't say clearly that it should be repudiated but he didn't argue the other way round! 

As if von Harnack's submission was not enough, Friedrich Delitzsch subjected the OT to serious abuse. This was shortly after von Harnack's work appeared in the early 1920s. His father was an eminent scholar of the OT. Delitzsch (1921: 53-53) argued thus: "I might summarize. . . by saying that the Old Testament is full of all kinds of deceptions: a veritable hodge-podge of erroneous, incredible, undependable figures, including those of Biblical chronology; a veritable maze of false portrayals, misleading reworkings, revisions and transpositions, together with anachronisms; a never-ending jumble of contradictory details and entire narratives, unhistorical inventions, legends and folktales, in short a book full of intentional and unintentional deceptions, in part self-deceptions, a very dangerous book, in the use of which the greatest care is necessary." This assertion needs no elaboration. Simply put, Delitzsch does not believe in the OT as Scripture.

During German Nazi's regime, attacks on the OT were prominent. In the time in between the two World Wars, Marcionism had affinities. One of those was Rudolf Bultmann. "He denies that the Old Testament can be a revelation for the Christian in a direct sense, as it was--and still is--for Israel" (Bright, 1975:70). His is a reduction of the Old Testament to just a document relevant merely and only to the Jews.

Till today, the trend is the continued devaluation of the Old Testament. But how long would this continue? Bright (1975:75-76) does acknowledge that such feelings exist in almost everyone in the church but that is a false thing to believe and do. According to him, "Lest I be misunderstood, let me say that were I obliged to choose whether students should be required to master the Old Testament or the New, I should without hesitation opt for the New. But the choice is a false one. I am confronted with no such choice-any  more, I should say, than on sallying forth in the morning I am obliged to choose between wearing my trousers or any shirt: the decently dressed man requires both. Just so, the well-prepared minister must know both Testaments."

The condition is worse in theological institutions in Africa today. For instance, in some seminaries, on one hand, students are mandated to take courses in Greek beyond the Grammar Level. They take in addition, Syntax and Exegesis courses. On the other hand, students only take courses in Hebrew and stop at Grammar Level. This could be because of the value placed on the New Testament rather than on the Old. The two languages, Hebrew and Greek were the major languages used in writing the Christian Scripture. Why should students be prepared for ministry in one and not the other?

When it comes to the number of Biblical and Theological courses offered in seminaries today, especially in Nigeria, the New Testament is given premium. The curricula of some Evangelical theological schools in Nigeria could obviously portray such biases. This means that Marcionism is still alive and well in all Christian traditions today.

So long as the Christian Scripture remains one and the same, containing both Testaments, it is foolhardy to take one as greater than the other. The God of the Old is the same with the one of the New.