Friday: Further Thought ~ Deuteronomy in the New Testament

Further Thought:

Just as the Old Testament quotes itself (that is, some of the prophets would quote or refer to, for example, texts from the five books of Moses), the New Testament is filled with direct quotes, references, and allusions to the Old. Psalms, Isaiah, and Deuteronomy were among the most quoted.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

Often, too, the New Testament writers would quote from what is known as the Septuagint (LXX), sometimes called the “Greek Old Testament,” which was the earliest known Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah or the Pentateuch, were translated in the third century B.C., and the rest of the Old Testament about the second century B.C.

One can learn a great deal, too, about how to interpret the Bible by how the inspired writers of the New Testament used the Old. And one of the first lessons we could learn is that, unlike so much Bible scholarship today, the New Testament writers never raised any question about the authenticity or authority of the Old Testament books. Nothing in their writings revealed, for instance, doubt about the historicity of Old Testament stories, from the existence of Adam and Eve, the Fall, the Flood, to the call of Abraham, and so forth. The “scholarship” that questions these things is just human skepticism, and it should have no place in the hearts and minds of Seventh-day Adventists.

Discussion Questions:

Considering all the light that we have been given as Seventh-day Adventists, what should it teach us about the great responsibility upon us to be faithful to the truths that we have been given?
Read again Deuteronomy 18:9-14. What modern manifestations of these “abominations to the Lord” exist today, and how can we make sure that we avoid them?
Why, of all people, should Christians, who understand the universal application of Christ’s death on the cross, never “lift up faces” (see Monday’s study)? How can we recognize in ourselves the tendency to do just that (and don’t we fool ourselves if we deny that there is at least some tendency in us to do just that?). How can the cross, and keeping the cross before us, cure us of this wrong attitude?

<–Thursday

Amen!