Old Testament

EUGEN J. PENTIUC

TWO TESTAMENTS, ONE BIBLE

The Jewish Bible, also known as Tanakh or Hebrew Scriptures, is for the Orthodox Church the first part of the Christian Bible or Holy Scripture. It is called by Christians the Old Testament in a precise theological balance to the affirmation of the New Testament. These terms were first signaled by Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century and were developed into a theory of interpretation using Hellenistic hermeneu­tics where typology was used to read the Old Testament in the light of the New (Kannengiesser 2006). The early church’s struggle with Marcion of Pontus over the Old Testament’s place and role besides the emerging Christian scriptures occupied most of the 2nd century. Marcion (d. 160) rejected the Old Testament as having any authority for Christians. He argued that the God of the Jews was totally different from, and inferior to, the Christian God. His radical view, one that was often echoed by Gnostic teachers, accelerated the broader Christian embrace of the Hebrew Scriptures as a whole, and most scholars agree that the defeat of Marcion greatly helped to fix the church’s canon of received scriptures. Another early danger, supersessionism, dis­cernible in the indictment of the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mt. 21.33–46) and supported by Paul’s teaching that the com­ing of Christ put an end to the custodian role of the Law (Gal. 3.24–5; Rom. 10.4; cf. Heb. 8.13), led to a premature devalua­tion of the Old Testament among some Christian commentators. The idea that the church and its new Scripture (New Testament) superseded the old Israel and its Hebrew Scripture is attested in many early Christian writings. Even so, the church as a whole has been able to keep the two Testaments in a dialectical unity, in the main avoiding factual reductionism and supersessionism as dangers. The centrality of the Christ event in Christian tradition, not least as a key hermeneutical principle, helped in reaching this objective.

THE RECEIVED TEXT

Although there is no clear conciliar state­ment on this topic, the Septuagint (LXX) remains the quasi-official form of the Old

Testament for Eastern Orthodox Christian­ity. The popularity of this Greek text comes from its use by the New Testament writers and the Greek fathers. Accordingly, the Eastern Orthodox Church tends to rely on the Septuagint for its Old Testament teach­ings, and still uses it, at least in its Greek- language services. In recent times the wealth of Qumran findings and modern studies on the Dead Sea Scrolls has suggested the volatility of issues concerning the textual transmission of scripture in both Hebrew and Greek. Given this ethos of scholarly discovery, modern biblical scholars within the Eastern Orthodox tradition are now having to take a closer look at the long- neglected Hebrew text in conjunction with their traditional approach to the Greek LXX. Since the Eastern Orthodox tradition relies on the concept of the phronema or “mind” of the fathers in establishing a sense of interpretation of texts, rather than appealing to a fossilized patristic corpus of authorities (see Stylianopoulos 2006), it follows that Orthodox biblical scholars in this generation also have the noble duty of redeeming those Semitic nuances that may have been missed by those fathers who worked exclusively with the Greek text (see Pentiuc 2005).

CANON

According to the Roman Catholic Church following the Council of Trent (1545–6), the Old Testament contains forty-six canonical books (thirty-nine of the Jewish Bible and the seven “deuterocanonicals” of the Septuagint). Protestants, today, accept the same thirty-nine canonical books as the Jews. While accepting all thirty-nine books of the Jewish canon, the Orthodox have a peculiar view in relation to the Septuagin- tal additions. These are not considered “canonical” or “deuterocanonical” – to use the Roman Catholic terminology – but neither are they listed as “apocrypha” according to the Protestant terminology. On the contrary, since the time of St. Athanasius’ 39th Festal Letter (367) they have been designated as the Anaginoskomena, the books that are “readable” (for the purposes of piety). This intricate and more relaxed view on canonicity aligns Eastern Ortho­doxy closely with the position of pre­rabbinic Judaism, while it also recalls the situation of the historical era when the emerging church first used these Septuagin- tal additions as important proof-text mate­rial for their preaching of the Messiahship of Jesus.

INSPIRATION

The Eastern Orthodox view on the inspira­tion of the Old Testament text is perfectly exemplified in the writings of St. John Chrysostom, who applies the Greek word synkatabasis (“condescension”) (see Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis, PG 53.29A; 34B; 44A). This key term seeks to define God’s ability and willingness to adjust himself to the astheneia or “weakness” (defectibility) of the human author, so that the scripture might be even­tually acknowledged and praised for its akribeia (exactness, precision) being essen­tially God’s word. A modern recast of such a balanced view might creatively employ two biblical paradigms. The first we can suggest as humanity’s creation by God’s breathing into the dust which thereby became a “living breath” (Gen. 2.7), and this under­stood as an analogy of how the human expressions of scripture are continuously infused by God’s Spirit and thereby turned into a “living breath” of God for the church. The second paradigm, the incarnation of the preexistent Logos again accomplished through God’s Spirit (Lk. 1.35), can point to the comprehension of the scripture as a progressive enfleshing of God’s eternal word. These two paradigms keep both communicative directions (from God’ side to humanity and from humanity’s to God) in a creative tension, as is revealed in this elaborate New Testament introductory formula: “What had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet” (Mt. 1.22; 2.15).

BYZANTINE MODES OF INTERPRETATION

There have been many various ways that the Eastern Orthodox have sought through history to assimilate, in a conscious man­ner, the Old Testament as scripture. Classic among them are the Byzantine modes of reception and interpretation which can be briefly summarized as follows. In the first place stand the patristic works (commen­taries, biblical interpretations found in various writings, and catenae or florilegia of verse comments preserved in Greek, Syriac, and Coptic). What makes the patristic expositions of scripture valuable even in a postmodern world dominated by a hermeneutic of suspicion is the church fathers’ persistent search for the skopos, the “goal” of the biblical text, its moral sense allied with a desire to apply an immediate pastoral application for it. Patristic exegesis with its overarching christological orienta­tion and its typological searching moves from plain historical meanings (the literal sense) through allegorical reading, to search out higher moral and mystical senses. In the second place, Orthodoxy approaches the Old Testament through the major route of liturgy (hymnody, lectionaries, and liturgi­cal symbolism as reflected in various Byzantine “rubrics”). The Old Testament texts and themes found so extensively in the Byzantine hymns show a very high degree of exegetical freedom within a dynamic liturgical setting. In the third place, Orthodoxy approaches and interprets the Old Testament through iconography (frescoes, icons, the arts of illumination), a process which sheds additional and sometimes invaluable light on the way the Byzantines read and understood the Old Tes­tament in relation to the New. For example, the iconographic positioning of the ancient biblical episodes and figures in an Eastern Orthodox church can reflect the way in which specific Old Testament symbols were interpreted within the wider context of Byzantine tradition. The ascetical and spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy (Burton- Christie 1993) also determines how the Old Testament is seen within the church (monastic rules, canons, ascetical texts). Both cenobitic and individual forms of monastic spirituality are thoroughly regu­lated by specific scriptural readings, helping the ascetic and lay believer embark on what the fathers call the path of theosis or “deification.” Lastly, it goes without saying that the dogmatic tradition of Orthodoxy is profoundly influenced by the Old Testa­ment. Conciliar resolutions (creeds and decisions of local and ecumenical councils) crafted during the Byzantine period are based primarily on canonical scriptural texts, and the Byzantine modes of reception and interpretation of the Old Testament feature deeply within them (see Pentiuc 2011).

SEE ALSO: Bible; Canon (Liturgical); Christ; Church (Orthodox Ecclesiology); Judaism, Orthodoxy and

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Breck, J. (2001) Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Burton-Christie, D. (1993) The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Hall, C. A. (1998) Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Heine, R. E. (2007) Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church: Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.

Kannengiesser, C. (2006) Handbook of Patristic Exegesis. Boston: Brill.

Magdalino, P. et al. (eds.) (2009) “The Old Testament in Byzantium,” in Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Oikonomos, E. (1992) “The Significance of the Deu- terocanonical Writings in the Orthodox Church,” in S. Meurer (ed.) The Apocrypha in Ecumenical Perspective. UBS Monograph Series 6. Reading, UK: United Bible Societies, pp. 16–32.

Pentiuc, E. J. (2005) Jesus the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Paulist Press.

Pentiuc, E. J. (2011) The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stylianopoulos, T. G. (ed.) (2006) Sacred Text and Interpretation: Perspectives in Orthodox Biblical Studies. Papers in Honor of Professor Savas Agourides. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross

Orthodox Press.

Sundberg, A. C. (1964) “The Old Testament in the Early Church,” Harvard Theological Review 20: 205–26.