Which Came First? The Old Testament or the New Testament?

One of the first things I had to do when I started asking hard questions and heading down the Torah-Observant road was to shift my perspective. I was brought up and taught to look at the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament. We could glance back to the Old to see where the prophesies were fulfilled, see the lineage of Jesus, check the history and maybe even pull out a proverb or psalm to live by, but the Old Testament was just that - old. I viewed the New Testament as the Scripture for today. I turned to the New Testament for my spiritual food, to meet Jesus and seek guidance on how to live out my faith.

Then one day it dawned on me. Why don’t we study the Old Testament - I mean really study it in depth? Not to just gain a moral tidbit from a nice story in the same way we look at, say...Aesop’s fables.  You should ask yourself the following questions.  Aren’t the OT writings the very same writings that the Jewish people in Jesus day used to identify Him as the Messiah? Why do you believe the Messiah was who He said He was? Did the Old Testament really testify of who He was? What do the New Testament writers have to say about the Old Testament Scriptures? I asked myself these questions and found some surprising answers. For example, a huge portion of the New Testament quotes the Old Testament. All you have to do is do a quick search of the word “written” to see that the New Testament writers used the Old Testament to reveal God’s Truth (http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/translationResults.cfm?Criteria=written&t=NASB&page=6). And why wouldn’t they? After all, the Old Testament did come first; it is the foundation that all else was built on.

So why do we rely so heavily on the New Testament in the church today? Why not read the foundation before trying to understand a text that was written as commentary and explanation of the foundation? That would be like reading the cliff notes without reading the book, although I have been guilty of this very thing in the past. Yet, I have much more respect for God’s Word and we all know that when we only read the cliff notes we sometimes miss some really important points!

So that being said, I want to challenge my fellow Christians to go back and read the OT books beginning with the first 5 books of the Bible (known as the Torah). Until we have done this we have no business interpreting the New Testament. We need the lenses of the Old Testament to understand the New Testament teachings. I think this is why there are so many erroneous and differing interpretations amongst the body of believers. If we would just learn our foundation we would understand the New Testament so much more fully.

When I began to do this I finally realized that on the surface there appear to be things written in the NT that seem to contradict what is taught in the Old Testament. This is no light issue; a contradiction to the Old Testament could call into question the entire New Testament and even call into question the truth of Messiah! There should absolutely be no contradiction. Ignoring even the slightest contradiction would be like eating chocolate chip cookies while holding a peanut butter cookie recipe and claiming that the cookies were made with the recipe. It is just not so. The Jewish Messiah could not be Jesus if the New Testament taught anything in contradiction to the Old.

So again I ask: why do we blindly accept the writings of the New Testament as Scripture without testing them? Is it because of tradition? I submit to you that we need to readjust our perspective. If our Messiah is truly who He said He was then He needs to have taught and exemplified exactly what was taught in the Torah. And therefore the Torah is superior to the New Testament in that it needs to be our measuring stick which we test the Scriptures by. Think I’m crazy? What Scriptures do you think the following texts are speaking of in light of the fact that the New Testament did not exist at the time these books were written?

2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;”

Acts 17:11 “Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.”

I am sure you are now asking your self the following questions. So are you saying that the New Testament is not Scripture? That Jesus is not the Messiah? Absolutely not. But I am saying that the New Testament has been corrupted by interpretation of men who decided the Torah was obsolete. This is something that the Torah testifies could not be. But when you begin to approach the New Testament through the eyes of the Torah being binding and unchangeable a different picture of our Messiah and the way we are to live our lives appears. You now begin to see the pages of the New Testament in new light, or should I say old light? When you read statements that seem to say that the Torah has been modified or changed red flags go up and you immediately study deeper. You seek for the true meaning of the text by studying who is speaking, who is being spoke to and what the words meant in the original language instead of in the interpretation put forth by the English translators. What you find is that Jesus was a Torah-Observant Jew who kept every point of the Torah. He did this not so that we could forsake it but because man has, since the beginning of time, failed at keeping it.

It amazes me today that so many Christians walk around wearing WWJD (What would Jesus do) bracelets. Do you really strive to do what Jesus did? Is He truly the example that you should follow? If so, why is the majority of Christianity disregarding so much of what He did? He followed Torah, why don’t you!?

Matthew 5:17-19 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Shalom!