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closeOn faith: Stringing pearls: How the New Testament uses the Old
Brent Emery
guest columnist
There are two facts that many Christian (Western) readers of the Apostolic Scripture (New Testament) often forget when they read the Bible.
First, the entire Bible (with one possible exception) was written by people of Jewish ethnicity. Secondly, “the Bible” of those who wrote the Apostolic Scripture was the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).
When the Apostolic Scripture makes a reference to “the Scriptures,” the only Scriptures they refer to are the Hebrew Scripture, as this was the only historical Scriptures available.
To be sure, they had several translations of the Hebrew Scripture available to them, just like we do today (we actually have hundreds).
The first translation of the Hebrew Scripture is the Septuagint, which is generally abbreviated as LXX, since legend has it that 70 scholars worked on the translation.
The LXX is a translation of the Hebrew Scripture into Greek and was known to the writers of the Apostolic Scripture. The second translation/edition of the Hebrew Scriptures was what we know today as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both the LXX and the Dead Sea Scrolls were written about 200 BC/E, or just more than 200 years before the time of Yeshua (Jesus).
If you and I are going to really understand the Apostolic Scripture, we must always be thinking in terms of the Hebrew Scripture.
One of the Hebraic features we often see in the Apostolic Scripture is what I call “textual fusing,” or what the rabbis of the past called “stringing pearls.” The stringing of pearls occurs when a Gospel writer takes two or more verses from the Hebrew Scripture and “fuses” them, or “strings” them, to make a new verse.
When the writer does this, he expects his audience to know that this has happened without telling them overtly what he has done. This fusing of texts is designed to show various texts, which may initially seem unrelated, are in fact meant to be viewed as dealing with the same idea.
This “stringing pearls” takes phrases from different sections of Hebrew Scripture and fuses them to make a point that might otherwise have been missed without seeing these phrases united.
The first text we will look at is Luke 19:1-10.
Luke is notorious for quoting the Hebrew Scripture without alerting his reader, and the pericope in front of us in no exception.
Luke 19 opens with Yeshua coming to Jericho, where He encounters a man named Zachaeus. Zachaeus is a tax collector working for the Roman government, even though he is a Jew.
It doesn’t take much imagination to realize tax collectors were hated by fellow Jews, since they traditionally extorted more money than Rome required. Rome didn’t mind this extortion, as long as they got their percentage.
In the common understanding of the day, tax collectors were traitors and thieves — something no self-respecting Jew should ever aspire to become (or anyone else, for that matter).
Yeshua calls for Zachaeus to come down from his perch with the added bonus of having Yeshua as his dinner guest. Zachaeus’ response to Yeshua’s presence has him repenting of his sin and desirous of repaying all that he has stolen.
Luke ends the pericope with verse 10, where he writes, “for the Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost.”
In writing this last verse, Luke has “fused” two verses from different sections of the Hebrew Scripture. The first phrase, “Son of Man,” comes from Daniel 7:13, while the second phrase, “seek and save the lost,” comes from Ezekiel 34:12, 16.
In the Daniel text of chapter 7, we see a vision where thrones (plural) are set in heaven and two individuals sit upon those thrones. The first individual is the “Ancient of Days” and the second is the “Son of Man.”
For Yeshua, this text was part of His self identity/understanding, since He knew himself to be the Messianic “Son of Man.”
In the Ezekiel text, we are told a day is coming when YHVH (the NAME, par excellance) will one day come and deal with the false shepherds (kings/priests) who were taking advantage of the sheep and abusing them for their own gain. In that day, Ezekiel says YHVH will “seek and save the lost” sheep who wander about with no shepherd.
Luke fuses the text of Daniel 7 with the text of Ezekiel 34 to let us know the unmistakable identity of Yeshua as the incarnation of YHVH, since He is doing exactly what He said He would do when He came.
Zachaeus was a lost sheep who had been wandering about with no one to bring him back in the fold. Yeshua went to gather this lost sheep, just as He had promised He would do.
But He could only do what He did because of who He is!
The second text we will look at is Luke 9:35. In this text, a voice from heaven says “this is my Son, He is my chosen, listen to Him,” with regard to Yeshua.
Once again, Luke does not give his reader any idea where in the Hebrew Scripture he is pulling from to fuse three different texts.
The first phrase, “This is My Son,” is from Psalm 2:7. The second phrase, “He is my chosen,” is from Isaiah 42:1, and the last phrase, “listen to Him,” is from Deuteronomy 18:15.
Space will not allow us to explore each of these texts, but suffice it to say each of these texts is Messianic, meaning each of these texts looked forward to the One who is to come.
I digress for just a moment.
In Luke 24:44, we find a tripartite division of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Torah (first five books), the Prophets and the Psalms (writings). In modern times, we have the word “Tanak,” which is an anocronym for the Torah (T), the Neviim/Prophets (N) and the Ketuvim (K).
Now back to Luke, with this division of the Hebrew Scripture in mind.
Did you notice Luke’s quote of the voice from heaven had a reference from each of the three main divisions of the Hebrew Scripture? The first reference is from the Writings (Psalms), the second from the Prophets (Isaiah) and the final phrase from the Torah (Deuteronomy).
In Luke’s very subtle way, he records for us the witness from heaven that declares that, in Yeshua, we have the incarnation of the entire Hebrew Scripture. This is confirmed in the opening chapter of John, where he tells us the “Word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us.”
If our understanding of the text in Luke is correct, then we must realize the Hebrew Scripture cannot be abrogated, set aside or relinquished to the dust bin of irrelevancy.
Just as Yeshua is eternal and cannot be destroyed, so, too, the Hebrew Scriptures, which He incarnates, cannot be abolished and are eternal.
Yeshua and the Hebrew Scripture are inseparable, which means they cannot be divided without damage to both (they are two sides of the same coin).
You can’t have Yeshua without having the Scriptures He incarnates.
The reference of ‘G-d’
Some readers have contacted The Peninsula Gateway curious about Brent Emery’s reference to God in his On Faith column.
The following is an explanation from www.jewfaq.org:
“Judaism does not prohibit writing the Name of God per se; it prohibits only erasing or defacing a Name of God. However, observant Jews avoid writing any Name of God casually because of the risk that the written Name might later be defaced, obliterated or destroyed accidentally or by one who does not know better ... Normally, we avoid writing the Name by substituting letters or syllables, for example, writing ‘G-d’ instead of ‘God.’ ”