Sunday, March 30, 2008

New Testament: Primary or Secondary Scripture?


Is the New Testament a "primary" or "secondary" Scripture, according to William Graham's distinction in his article on Scripture in the Encyclopedia of Religion? I ask because the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament seem nearly always to be interpreting something else. Sometimes it's interpreting passages from the Hebrew Bible, like the verses from Isaiah in Mk 4:12ff, or the Exodus story of the manna, the "bread from heaven" in John 6. Or more often than not, it's interpreting the sayings and biography of Jesus. In that sense, it seems that the sayings of Jesus (and his actions) are an "oral scripture" which the NT painstakingly preserves, interprets, and otherwise "relates to" as Scripture. And it treats the "Old Testament" verses as scripture by quoting them as prooftexts, or prophetic promises that are fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Jesus' sayings and actions become a sort of interpretative key for understanding the "true meaning" of the Old Testament - namely, that it's always referring to Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. So what exactly is Christian Scripture: the Old Testament, the New Testament, or in a sense, the dynamic personality of Jesus Christ himself? Or is it better to say that these are Christian Scriptures only when they're taken together, sort of like the Written and Oral Torahs of rabbinic Judaism? It that's the case, is it correct or even helpful to describe them as primary and secondary scriptures with respect to one other, and if so which is which to which? Finally, if Jesus' dynamic personality can be considered a sort of "Scripture" in terms of the way it functions in a Christian religious worldview, what advantage might that be over scripture as a written text?

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