Back References from the NT to the Hebrew Scriptures

About two years ago a friend sent me a question about the narrative in Luke 24:13 – 49.  In the narrative two followers of Yeshua were walking back to Emmaus on the first day following Shabbat, and they encountered the risen Messiah without recognizing him.  This hike took the better part of the day, and all the way their chance companion told them all the things concerning Messiah in the Law (i.e., the Torah) and the prophets.  Nowhere in the NT is this content explicitly set out, so the question posed to me was, 'What are all these things?'  My knee-jerk response was, 'Read the New Testament text, and it will tell you what all these thing are.'  This proved more difficult than I expected.  After two years I have accumulated more than 34 single-spaced pages of backward reference on a verse-by-verse basis of the Greek text to the Hebrew MT, and this just scratches the surface.   The specific contents of the backward reference list is far too great to present in a format like this blog, so I will merely insert a numerical summary.

Summary of References to the תנ''כ in the Greek Text

All authors of the NT except possibly Luke were Jews, so their use of the Hebrew text in their writings provides a clear indication of what they considered to be normative for faith and practice.  (The traditional view of Luke is that he was a gentile – probably a Greek physician; a more recent minority view is that he was a Jewish priest who had adopted a Greek name much like Shaul used the Greek name Paul.)  The following table provides a numerical list of total references from the Greek text back to the Hebrew text of the תנ''כ.  Sources for accumulation of these data were the following:

·         The Greek New Testament published by the United Bible Society.  This source was used for both the verse count and direct citations from the Hebrew bible (תנ''כ). 

·    The Return of the Kosher Pig by Rabbi Itzhak Shapira.  This source provided Jewish interpretations that predated the rise of Talmudic Judaism.

·         Concordances and lexicons for the Hebrew and Greek texts.  These sources have enabled me to make back references based on thematic content rather than just verbal identity.

The second column on the right lists the total number of verses per book in the Greek text of the UBS New Testament.  The next column lists the number of verses for which I have identified a specific back reference from the UBS text or some other source.  The last column on the left lists the total number of verses in the Hebrew text included in those back references.  The numbers in this column are significantly greater that of the NT verses with direct references for several reasons:

·         Identical or very similar verbiage occurs in more than one location of the Hebrew text, so any one NT citation may have five or more back references.

·         The authors of the NT text tended to join the content of two or more passages from the Hebrew text to express the message they were trying to convey.

·         The authors might cite a single verse or part of a verse expecting their hearers to be familiar with the entire context of the passage.  For example, in John 10:34 Yeshua quoted part of a verse from Ps 82:6, but he expected his hearers to remember the entire psalm in order to grasp his point.  (See one of my previous posts.)

·         I have only just begun to assemble a list of passages from the Hebrew bible that are duplicated in substance without any direct verbal citation.  For example, Exodus chapters 21 – 23 (torah portion משפאים – judgments) contain objective examples on how to live out the Ten Words (the ten commandments) in the context of the Israelite culture c. 1300 BCE.  There are 14 specific citations from these chapters in the Gospels, but their substance is present throughout the NT text.  As a specific example, Ex 23:4-9 deals with the case that a man finds the animal of an enemy wondering loose.  The command is that the man must care for the animal and return it to the enemy at the first opportunity.  This is explication for You shall not bear false witness, You shall not covet, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.   If all such parallels to NT content were included in my tabulation, the numbers in the left hand column might be doubled or trebled.  

  

No. of תנ''כ Verses Included by Reference	No. of NT Verses with Direct References	Total Verses	Book
886	244	1066	Matthew
213	85	677	Mark
647	213	1146	Luke
279	105	878	John
516	153	1006	Acts
217	124	433	Romans
188	72	436	1 Corinthians
56	32	256	2 Corinthians
28	19	149	Galatians
50	28	155	Ephesians
16	10	103	Philippians
12	7	95	Colossians
18	11	89	1 Thessalonians
17	9	47	2 Thessalonians
22	15	113	1 Timothy
10	6	83	2 Timothy
7	2	46	Titus
0	0	23	Philemon
530	152	303	Hebrews
202	68	108	James
167	37	105	1 Peter
42	12	61	2 Peter
15	10	105	1 John
1	1	13	2 John
1	1	15	3 John
54	8	24	Jude
807	269	405	Revelation
5001	1693	7940	Totals

Items Not Included

·      As previously mentioned, there is a vast body of material in the תנ''כ that is thematically connected to specific passages in the NT without being specifically quoted.  At this point I have recorded perhaps 20 or 30 of such links, but I am sure that there exist many hundreds more to be found.

·         O Υιος του ανςθρωπου – Yeshua uses various forms of this expression as his title for himself 35 times in Matthew, 19 times in Mark, 20 times in Luke, and 11 times in John.  Various indefinite forms of this expression occur in the תנ''כ (בר אנש ref Dan 7:13,14; בן אדם Ps 80:17; and numerous others).  These all have the meaning human (singular or plural forms), and many modern English translations renter the expression in that way. The definite form (בן האדם) does occur in Enoch 48:2 but never in the תנ''כ.  Yeshua calls himself ‘the son of man’ = the human as opposed to a human.  The implication of this reference is that Yeshua is exemplification of what human was supposed to be.

·         Ecc 1:9 מה שהיה הוא שיהיה ומה שנעשה הוא שיעשה  - What was is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done – Rabbinic thought:  What Moses did is what Messiah will do in but a greater way.  This is the conceptual basis for all typology.  I have not included any types in my back reference list, but this alone constitutes a huge body of linkages between the תנ''כ and the NT.

Comments

At this point I have not attempted to distinguish between narrative/descriptive and didactic portions of the NT text.  However, based on the above simple summary 21% of the verses in the NT are directly linked to one or more passages in the Hebrew bible, and the back reference context corresponds to 63% of the NT content.  If narrative and descriptive texts were excluded from consideration, the percentage of coverage could easily increase to 80% to 90% of the total NT didactic material.  The obvious implication is that the writers of the NT considered the Hebrew scriptures not only valid and binding but obligatory for those who professed faith in Yeshua. 

One of the most common attitudes among Christian today is that the Law has been superseded by the Gospel, and second to this is the idea that the Church has replaced Israel as the people of God.  Christians in general are not too clear on what they mean by Law, but the term νομος as it occurs in the Greek NT is a reference to either the Torah alone or to the entire body of Hebrew scriptures, depending on context.  It does not refer to the Talmud or the rabbinic halacha.  A body of traditional interpretations did already exist in the first century, but the written corpus as it now exists developed over a period of around 600 years following the destruction of the temple.  The term η γραφη in the NT is a reference to the Hebrew sacred writings, not to the NT text, which never existed in any collected form during the apostles' lives.  Based on the example of the apostles as tabulated above, some Christians should rethink their biases relative to the Hebrew Scriptures, Jews, and Israel.

In part the Christian position is derived from Hebrews chapters 8 - 10.  Here the author argues that the death of Yeshua has inaugurated a new and better Testament, and the old Testament is near to passing away.  (See a previous post concerning the use of Testament versus Covenant in Hebrews and the NT writings generally.)  The argument in this portion of Hebrews is based on Jeremiah 31:31 - 34, and this passage identifies the content of the New Covenant.

Behold, days are coming, declares YHWH, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares YHWH.  But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares YHWH.  I will put my Torah (תורתי) within them, and on their heart I will write it; then I will be their God and they will be my people.  Then each man will no longer teach his neighbor or his brother saying, 'Know YHWH,' for all of them will know me from the least to the greatest, declares YHWH, because I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will no longer remember.

There are numerous points that could be discussed from this oracle, but the following are key:

·     YHWH initiates the covenant unilaterally, not humans.  Additionally, there is no conditional stipulation imposed on the people of Israel.  YHWH will do it because he has chosen to do it, period.

·         The covenant is made with Judah and Israel, not the nations.

·     The covenant consists of writing the Torah on the hearts of the people.  This is the source reference for 2 Cor 3:3.

·         The result of this covenant is that everybody will know YHWH (not just one person like Moses), and their sin will be forgiven eternally.

Now, if the substance of the New Covenant consists of the Torah being written on human hearts, then the Torah has not been superseded.  Subsequent verses in Jeremiah (e.g., 31:35-37, 32:36-44, etc.) indicate that his covenant promises to Abraham are without repentance, so Israel will remain the nation apart through which all the nations of the earth will be blessed despite themselves.  And the words despite themselves applies to both the Jews and the nations.