[Bible] Episode 334: Rony Kozman - The Weird Ways the NT Interprets the OT

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On today's episode, we're talking about weird ways the New Testament interprets the Old Testament with Ronnie Cozman. Ronnie Cozman is an assistant professor at Samford University and has done his own share of podcasting as a co-host of the Two Testaments Podcast. I have to say, Jared, this topic is very near and dear to my heart investigating this deeply for the first time in my doctoral work changed everything in terms of how I look at the Bible. For me, it's a fascinating job. It's eye-opening for sure the deeper you dive in. Let's get into it. I think often when Matthew talks about this was said in order to fulfill what the prophet said. It's often in the sense of the story of Israel is kind of filling up the meaning, the symbolism, the significance of Israel's story in his life. It's this kind of creative engagement with Israel's scriptures to show the brimming, full meaning of Israel's scriptures and the life of Jesus and the church. 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It's great to have you. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. We're going to do some deep dive into something really interesting that I think a lot of people maybe haven't thought about that much. And that is how does the New Testament interpret the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament? What can we learn from that in terms of how we read our Bible? So when most people today talk about interpreting the Bible, what do they mean? So let's start with a baseline of today. What do people mean by interpreting the Bible? Yeah, I think people can mean all kinds of different. So some people don't mean anything by interpreting or reading the Bible, right? That's rude. That is rude, Ronnie. I mean, no, some people will say, I don't want to hear your interpretation, right? I just want to hear what the Bible has to say. You know, let's let the Bible speak for itself. That's a very common, I think, way of thinking about the Bible is that the Bible discloses its meaning to us kind of in an automatic way. And all you have to do is read it and it'll be self evident what it says, right? And so sometimes that idea can come out as like the Bible will judge all the interpretation, if that makes sense, as though there's no interpretation of the Bible that you're using to adjudicate other interpretation. So that's one. Some people, you know, when they're talking about interpreting the Bible, and I don't know about, you know, your own kind of like church context or upbringing or backgrounds. But when I was kind of in other church communities that I've been in, is you sometimes go around a circle, you read a passage, and then, you know, people talk about what the Bible means to me, right? So that's kind of the other, maybe really common. So there's at least an understanding there that we're actually trying to interpret the Bible, but we might have all kinds of different ways of reading and interpreting the Bible. And it becomes a very personalized kind of, you know, what it means for my life or something like that. Would they say, I mean, the people you just described the second category, would you think they'd be saying we're just trying to interpret the Bible? Are they saying we're just trying to understand it? What it's actually saying? Yeah, I don't know. I think probably you get a mix of both. I think some people think they're just like they might fit that first category also. But I think there will be other people who will think they are interpreting and they might go back and forth and, you know, sometimes they're agreeing or disagreeing. But often it has to do with this personal connection, right? That the Bible is kind of saying something directly to me or something like that. So maybe I don't know maybe that's not really they don't it's possible they don't think of it as an interpretation, but it's kind of God saying something specifically to me in my situation or something like that. Well, let's let's talk about this third where I think you're going to go is this third option for what we mean by interpreting. Yeah, so this this third way right is what people call the historical grammatical approach right or sometimes you hear people say historical grammatical exegesis we got some big words there right. So we're going to interpret the text and it's kind of historical context according to kind of the grammatical rules right that the author is using and playing by. And then exegesis right which means like interpreting we're getting the meaning out of the text right when we follow these kind of historical rules and I think like the. You know the main idea here is that well there aren't usually I'm obviously I'm going to stereotype a little bit but there aren't usually multiple meanings right typically this approach says there's one single historical grammatical meaning and that meaning is the meaning intended by. The author there's kind of an original authorial meaning or intent it's the meaning that like is governed by the rules or grammars of the text and it's ancient cultural context and it's the one meaning that the audience would have understood. So if someone were to like say you know go back to like an older podcast that we had and Pete has a certain phrase that he uses and we said what did he mean by that you're going to like look at the context clues around what did he say right before that what did you say right after that what was going on at the time if it's like a political statement or so what was happening in the political moment of that time and we're going to use all of those context clues to say this is probably what he meant and that's kind of that. grammatical historical authorial intent, authorial intent way of talking about what something means is that fair as an analogy yeah yeah that's for sure and I look I think that I think in the academy to this is kind of the approach that rains really I'm sure you we have you know people who are interested in history of the interpretation of the text and how the text has been used but if I'm going to submit a journal article to the journal of biblical literature or to the journal for the study of the New Testament. You know it's probably the meat and bones of that article is going to be operating in this kind of way of reading the text. I mean there's one analogy like Jared just said about me in the present time and interpretation. Are there barriers to this historical grammatical way of looking at things when we're dealing with such deeply ancient texts that we simply cannot put ourselves into that way. Yeah yeah I mean I think there are all kinds of cultural barriers for sure we are not ancient Israelites were not ancient near eastern people were not ancient kind of you know. Ancient people from the Greek or Roman world but I think what this approach is is doing is it's trying to get there right it's trying to get rid of our contemporary assumptions are western kind of contemporary values and all that. Are you know the ways we load a particular term like righteousness or whatever that is we want to kind of disrupt that and replace it with kind of the ancient assumptions and ways of thinking so that's really what this approach is getting at right we want to compare Genesis. one with other ancient Near Eastern creation text, like the Babylonian or Egyptian text. We wanna think about what a word means in its ancient context, how that author like to use that word, or how a grammatical phrase and how the word relate to one another and the meaning that you get from paying attention to that. So I think that's kind of the rules by which this way of interpretation goes. And I have sympathies. I have major sympathies to this way of reading the text, 'cause as much as we can, I want to try to understand kind of, let's say, Paul on his terms as much as I can, because I don't, I suppose I do think that there is something beyond simply power and desire when we reject, not that those things don't come into play, but that there is something there that we're trying to grasp a hold of. I think there is something that commends itself about this reading for sure. - Yeah, and what we wanted to bring you on to talk about is actually, that's kind of the water we swim in. It is kind of how we think about interpreting texts and the Bible. - But then when we apply that to the New Testament, we come out with some interesting things. - And it doesn't, the Bible itself in the New Testament doesn't seem to always play by those rules. So let's dive right in and talk about some of these examples that maybe are head scratchers if we're thinking, well, the right way to interpret a text is with all these rules and grammatical historical and context and theorial intent. And that seems to be the right way to read a text. And then we say, but what's the New Testament doing? So could you bring out some of those examples and show us how they're interpreting texts? - Yeah, and I should say also that in order to do this and show the weird ways in which the New Testament authors don't operate by this kind of historical grammatical approach, I'm going to have to use a historical grammatical approach. - Exactly, yeah. Well, maybe as you do this, you can flush that out a little because that's a really interesting, sort of conundrum there, but I agree with you. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, okay, so maybe one example might be to think about how Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew, reads the story of Jesus in light of the story of the Exodus. And he'll kind of go back and forth between how God rescued Israel out of Egypt and the different figures and events and elements of that story correspond to different elements in Jesus' like telling the story of Jesus. So we've got like Herod in the opening chapters of Matthew who's killing the baby, the babies, and he's like Pharaoh who's killing the babies and the book of Exodus. We've got Jesus is a Moses-like baby who escapes from the Pharaoh-like murder. We've got Jesus is a, not only a Moses-like figure who escapes, he's also like presented like he's Israel right at the people, right? And that he's described in the opening chapters as God's son, right? Matthew's going to quote from Hosea chapter 11 out of Egypt I called my son and apply that to Jesus. So Jesus is going to then go into, he comes, we can talk a little bit about this. What does it mean that he comes out of Egypt in the opening chapters of Matthew? I think that's kind of weird too, what he does there. But he's going to also pass, he's going to come through the water and the baptism as many New Testament scholars have pointed out. Kind of like Jesus, kind of like Israel comes through the Red Sea. And then he's going to go into the wilderness like Israel does. He's going to be tested in the wilderness, like Israel is tested in the wilderness. And then he's going to come to the mountain where we get the sermon on the mount, which is presenting Jesus as a Moses-like figure who gives this interpretation of the law of Moses. So what Matthew's doing is he's taking the story of the Exodus and I think of Matthew as kind of like a painter and he's got his palate and he's got these Old Testament figures, events, and stories and language and he's using these as the colors that he's using to kind of paint the story of Jesus. Richard Hayes who's done phenomenal work on this stuff, but Richard Hayes calls this figural exegesis where you are reading to events or to passages or to stories in light of one another and you kind of go back and forth. So you go to the Exodus, you go to the story of Jesus and you go back and forth and they both kind of mutually illuminate one another. Now one of the things I think that's really interesting about this is is like how many, well how many Moses' are there in the book of Matthew? Like, you know, we might think we go to Exodus and we could see, oh, so Jesus is the Moses figure. But Joseph, Jesus' father in the opening chapters is also likened to Moses when the angel comes and tells him, "Hey, the people who are after your life are now dead, you can now return back to Egypt." So there's no problem for Matthew to have a kind of multiplicity of meanings, if that makes sense. You can also think about this like how many exodus are there in the New Testament. Matthew, we definitely have out of Egypt, I called my son, as Jesus is entering into Egypt, which is weird, why does he say it when he's going into Egypt and not when he's coming out of Egypt? So the placement of that fulfillment quotation is odd. But it could be that Matthew is thinking of, well, he's just painted herod as a feralike figure. And so it may very well be that Matthew is operating in a really kind of rhetorically charged the kind of critique of Herod depicting the land of Judea or Israel as far bad as Egypt. And so Jesus has to come out of that Egypt and has to go to the geographic Egypt to get out of that other Egypt. And then he's going to come out of that Egypt also. So maybe we have, I don't know, maybe we have multiple exodus is there. And then we also have, of course, the exodus, the last supper, Jesus is kind of during the Passover, the gospel authors like to present Jesus's death or departure, like the transfiguration and Luke will say as the future exodus in Jesus's death or departure from the earth and resurrection, kind of thing. So I think that the multiple meanings, right, multiple reference that the New Testament authors will identify in the Old Testament passage, I think is fascinating. As many of you know, we're a blended family with eight kids. That's a lot of cheer practice, a lot of volleyball practice and jobs to account for. 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And the best part, with 22 lodges across the country, you're always just a short drive away from adventure. So bring your pack together and a lodge near you, book your stay at GreatWolf.com and strengthen the pack. (upbeat music) - Well, maybe can we focus on that specifically that Jose 11 out of Egypt I've called my son because I would have grown up in a tradition that was pretty intent on, Jesus is predicted in the Old Testament and these are, every time it says it was written, that's a fulfillment in some ways that Jesus is, That was predicted in the order. Yeah, exactly that when we're talking about what the authors meant an authorial intent They would say no, Hosea had a vision of Jesus when he's writing Hosea 11 and it came true When Jesus came out of Egypt and what I hear you saying is That doesn't seem to be according to these rules of a historical radical you know grammatical approach It seems that Hosea 11 is not talking about Jesus It seems pretty obvious. I mean, I don't want to spoil it, but pretty obvious that is talking about Israel Yeah, in a retro, you know in retro respect and so That can you just kind of unpack based on what we said at the beginning and why this passage Doesn't fit what we would expect it to to fit Sure so and because like you said we often read old the Old Testament as though it's giving these like specific predictive prophecies about the coming of Jesus and say oh you see the New Testament authors there Just reading these predictions and finding them fulfilled and in Jesus. I think sometimes you do get that right? So I think like with you know the one example is When here it is going to find the where the birth of the Messiah is going to be and then he goes to the The scribes and the scribes. I think they what they pull from Malachi Is it is it from Micah or from Malachi? Yeah, one of the M's. That's right. That's not now I'm confused. Yeah, one of the one of the M prophets Yeah, yeah, that specifies it's going to be from Bethlehem, right So that's one way that Matthew does see this kind of I think you know a future prediction of where the Messiah will be born But the Hosea 111, you know, I think often when Matthew talks about This was said in order to fulfill what the prophet said It's often in the sense of the story of Israel is kind of filling up the meaning the symbolism like the The significance of Israel's story in his life. Mm-hmm. I think that's even in fact more often How the new how then the New Testament authors will use and read the Old Testament It's this kind of creative engagement with Israel's scriptures to show The foot the the brimming full meaning of Israel's scriptures and the life of Jesus and the church or something like that Well, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. I just want to sort of summarize a little bit here It would be fair to say that the New Testament like Matthew just take Matthew Matthew is not tremendously interested in a grammatical historical reading of the text He's doing something different more creative, you know, some might quote midrash or something like that But he's he's bearing very creative um He's not really in line with this notion of grammatical historical interpretation to get at the meaning of texts and there's There seems to be a rather significant tension then between what Matthew is doing and What they've been taught by pastors or by teachers about what good biblical really a legacy of the reformation about what really good interpretation is And that seems to cause some tensions, I think and it's it's hard for people to wrap their heads around that Yeah, I think yeah, yeah, I think that it definitely causes problems for for that because we often want to say that If you get the right historical grammatical reading of the Old Testament passage Then you're going to see exactly what the apostles are doing, right? Yes, I think that kind of the default assumption and so my kind of my kind of Sense is that actually I think the New Testament authors are very creative in how they read Old Testament passage And that's what ancient authors often did they were creative Readers of these texts However, let me push back a little bit Which is to say I do wonder if Matthew sometimes I want to say yeah the ancient author Matthew or Paul is not doing historical grammatical exegesis But then they do actually pick up on something in the text Yeah, they're latching on to That gives them some kind of like reason by which they go in the way they do So it's not like entirely like Totally unmoored. There's something in the text that they grab on that other Jewish authors do do as well, right? So if you go to Jose 11 What you'll see and again, I don't know if Matthew's doing this. I'm kind of trying to reconstruct what some of the Hermanutical kind of moves might be again I'm totally happy with him just doing a kind of creative thing because that's what ancient interpreters did But if in Jose 11 you have this out of Egypt I called my son in 11 verse one And then he the movement in chapter 11 becomes and then they will return to Egypt Right, so they came out of Egypt then they will return back to Egypt And then if you keep reading down in Jose 11 you then get a kind of new Exodus of the people coming out of Egypt again So it might be that Matthew is discerning some kind of literary pattern in Jose a chapter 11 Um again, maybe I'm getting maybe I'm getting too creative in my reading of Matthew But there is some that kind of pattern there in Jose 11 and it might be that he then sees this kind of double Exodus playing out in Jesus' life as well. He comes out of Egypt from you know from Pharaoh and he gives Pharaoh goes into Egypt and then he comes out of Uh out of Egypt literally like an ogeographic son. Well, I mean the way I've heard it expressed is It's not so much when you think of the Old Testament Hebrew Bible New Testament. It's not This thing in the Old Testament is what we see in the New Testament more like it's like that Right, so you see they're drawing these analogies But wouldn't isn't that that very process Something beyond a grammatical historical approach to the text You're looking for patterns for example, like why would we look for patterns And by the way, I think Matthew has tons of patterns. I think it's fantastic It's great reading, you know, it's he's he's very creative theologian But we have these patterns, but these patterns are Exactly the point, you know, these are not patterns that ancient authors might have Been thinking about but you know later writers do motivated by Jesus as they are And um And the result is I think beautiful literature frankly. It's really good. It's just I just I keep feeling that tension though and and teaching college students You know who erases certain way of thinking about the Bible and sure sure um and and how to I get we'll get into this later maybe but just how to Make peace with that I think right for some at least, you know, right. I agree with you I think that we need to let students Let's see That they read that that the apostles do read scripture in a way that's different than how we are trying to read it in a historical grammatical way I think that's right But then at the same time sensitizing them to the kinds of patterns that ancient authors were kind of looking for As well and finding or discovering and putting together, you know in ways that we might not So in this case right why can uh What I might want to ask why would Matthew identified Jesus as Israel right we're going from an individual right to a kind of corporate identity Right, and so Matthew's able to slide very easily between that Maybe it has to do with this kind of ancient notion that the Messiah or the king in one sense embodies or represents the people Right so so that's possible But Matthew can slide no problem also between Jesus is a Moses-like figure Right as kind of the leader the interpreter of the Torah and Jesus as the people of Israel and like you like we said he can reconfigure Those identifications as well, right so when he when Jesus is in the wilderness in Matthew right just like Israel is in the wilderness and disobeys well now Matthew's going to configure Jesus as the obedient son right That's repeatedly right the question if you are the son of God right and then you get these tests So so Matthew is not simply following exactly right the in terms of the correspondences between the Exodus And what he sees in the life of Jesus he can also kind of recast and reconfigure for his own theological purposes It isn't that I mean I'm playing of You know a little bit of a fire here maybe but um If we did that sort of thing today Mm-hmm we do all the time people just don't know it But if we did that sort of thing today people might accuse us of Issa Jesus Reading into the text and yeah, so let me put that to you I mean just in your opinion how do you handle that issue to what extent is Matthew not exaggerating anything But Issa cheating starting with his answer which is Jesus and going back and reading the tradition in a fresh way Which is almost a definition of Issa Jesus, which is bad. It's wrong That's the worst thing you can do if you're an American evangelical is Issa Jesus and Maybe we see that sort of thing in the Bible Sure, sure. No, I think that's right, and I think this is, you know, Haze's insight, too, in his, you know, he's written a lot on this kind of thing, but his, the title, I think the title of one of his books is reading backwards, right? So this idea that, you know, the apostles, they have this, like, conviction, this encounter with Jesus or with the resurrected Christ, and then they're now going to go back, right, in light of the Christ event to read Israel's scriptures, anew, kind of like what you see on the Emmaus road, right, at the end of Luke. Jesus is now going to show them all the things in the law of the prophets, right, and, and how they kind of relate to him, or they're about him. So I think there is this, you could think of the Apostle Paul too, as this kind of example, right, who is an educated Pharisee, right? He has a particular mode of interpreting the scriptural text, according to particular Jewish traditions, and then he's going to, even with all those ways of interpreting text, he doesn't write prior to his encounter with Christ. He's not like reading Israel's scriptures and be like, "Oh yeah, yeah, you guys are right. Jesus must be the Messiah." Well, yeah, can you, can you, let's take an example from Paul? I don't know which one you want to talk about, but I immediately comes, I think, Galatians with the seed, and the kind of the collective noun versus the. It does seem very much like Paul is sometimes taking his experience with the risen Christ and then re-interpreting and trying to figure out how does this all fit in light of this experience that I've had. Yeah, it's definitely retrospective reading, right, that Paul is now engaged in, right? He now reads, you know, his ancestral scriptures and texts in light of his encounter with Christ. Well, yeah, I think Galatians is a great example with, you know, the seed language, right, that the seed is singular and so therefore it must be Christ, but then he can also talk about the Christ believers as also being seed and so far as they participate in Christ. So that's interesting, but actually, you know, one thing I want, one that I really find really interesting, is the Colossian hymn and how that interprets Genesis 1, which is, I think, really creative, right? So if we can go there, that would be, that might be an interesting place. So when we're reading Genesis 1, like historically, grammatically, right, we want to, we go, like, in the beginning, right, we got this phrase, we've got in, you know, humans made in the image of God, right? So we've got these, like, big phrases and so we might, again, with in the beginning, you know, you have, like, scholars even are puzzling over what is this, like, grammatical construction, right? And does it mean in the absolute beginning and, you know, most grammarians today, I think, would say, no, it doesn't mean that it probably means something more like in the beginning of God, of when God was creating the heavens and the earth and then you get a parenthetical remark, the earth was formless and void and darkness was hovering over the deep or, you know, another kind of grammatical possibility is something like in a beginning, God, you know, in a beginning, when God ordered the world and then you get a parenthetical and that could open the possibility of multiple beginnings or multiple ratios. Okay, so that's kind of like, you know, historical grammatical, trying to nerd out on this, like, the syntax of this, of this first, like, phrase, yeah. Well, or we also have, you know, the language, humans made in the image of God, right? So you talk to, even lots of Old Testament scholars, right? You talk to them, right, who are doing great work, trying to situate the Old Testament, it's an, an, an, in this ancient recent context. And what does it mean that humans are made in the image of God? Uh, well, humans are the images of God, right? Is the language that many people will say? Humans are the image of God, and well, what is an image, right? In the ancient world, uh, in the ancient Eryst, well, an image, maybe it's an idol, right? So God has made humans as his idols, who he's placed in his cosmic temple, or an image is a king, right? Royal figures are described as images of the deity. So this is a democratization of, of this concept, right? In the Hebrew Bible, that all humans are these royal figures. Um, so something like that, those are a couple of options. But when you get to Colossians, I think you get this really kind of fantastic, bizarre, weird, strange way of interpreting Genesis 1. So you get, right, this explosive hem, right? He is the image of the invisible God, right? The first born overall creation. You get this language, he is the beginning, right? Uh, he is the, you know, the head of the body, right? He is the creator of all authorities and rulers and powers, right? So we can all this kind of like really big language. And you know what the, what this hem does is it's a reflection on the, the opening language of Genesis. But it's kind of like the, the hem almost, you know, the whoever authored the hem went to a lexicon and looked up the phrase in the beginning. And maybe you started with the preposition in. Okay, what the heck does in mean in Greek? You know, and you go to the lexicon and you're like, oh, in if I go to my b-dag, in can mean in inside, in can mean with, in can mean like the side, in can sometimes mean like on or in can sometimes mean like towards or four. You got all these meanings of the preposition in. And then you've got the phrase like archae in Greek beginning, right? And so you open the lexicon again and you go there and you say, oh, well, archae can mean beginning, it can mean first, it can mean head, it can mean ruler, right, or powers. And so now if I'm operating in my historical grammatical mode, I got to pick one of them. Right? I can't have all of them. What kind of like historical grammatical reading is that? But I think the hymn actually says, well, you know, he is the the beginning, right? Christ is that archae in Genesis 1, 1 through whom all things were made. So it instrumentalizes Christ as the means through which God creates the world. He was, you know, in other like in John 1, right? You have the same thing in the beginning was the word was the logus. So he's there in the beginning. He all things are made through him. You see that plan, the preposition through him and for him. He is the head of the body. There's playing on that great word for beginning. You know, first born all those things are I think things that are explosive ways of basically saying all these different meanings find their truest kind of, you know, fulfillment or fullness in Christ. So is that historical grammatical probably not? But it's really interesting for fascinating. Yeah. Well, you know, the when we're talking like this, I think it's important for our listeners and viewers to understand something that we're not dissing the Bible. You know, we're trying to understand how it's functioning and what it's doing. And one of these things, you've alluded to it already is the context of the New Testament and the Jewish and Greco-Roman context and what it meant to interpret texts at that time. And I've always found it a pleasant irony that a grammatical, historical understanding, not just of the text but of the hermeneutic of the New Testament writers putting that in its context changes a lot and how we think about things. So could you riff on that a little bit? The, the, the second temple Jewish hermeneutical interpretive context and how that might influence the New Testament writers? Sure, sure. Like, can I, let me come back to one thing. Okay, if I may. Sure. Which is that, you know, when we were talking about the historical grammatical meaning of what it means to meet in the image of God, right? You're, if you're like a Hebrew Bible person, humans are the image of God. Well, for Paul, and the point I can really want to draw out here is no Christ is the image of God, right? Humans are kind of, they may bear the stamp of the image of God, but they are not the image of God, right? Paul is going to say later in Colossians that humans are renewed and knowledge according to the image, right? So the image is then this brings us to the, to the Jewish background too, right? Is that for Filo? He, when he is talking about the language of beginning or image, he actually can say those two things are the same thing. So the archae is the icon is the image and all that is the logos or the wisdom of God. And so this hymn in Colossians 1 is actually a kind of, we can think of it as a Christianized version of a Jewish reflection on wisdom or logos kind of theology, but it's going to find its fulfillment in Christ, right? He is the logos or the wisdom who is the firstborn, Bilo describes wisdom as the first born to, a phylo describes wisdom as that which kind of reconciles all things, right? So what's fascinating is that the New Testament authors, like you said, they are participating in a kind of Jewish hermeneutical matrix. So they have very similar assumptions. They bring together similar passages from scripture when they make interpretations. They do very similar, make very similar interpretive moves, but then of course, just as Jewish authors disagree with themselves in the first century, right? Proves find the right flooring for the job and lows newly redesigned flooring showroom. Shopper expanded a sorghum of trusted brands and get up to 35 percent off style selections, stain master and stain master pet protect special order carpet. And while you're here, say $100 and at the wall, 20 volt max six amp hour two pack of batteries, now just $179. Get more of what you need faster and save more of our accounts from the ground up. Our best lineup is here at Loves, Valtteri 26 wasp last selection. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dies. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dies. Paul as a Jew in light of his encounter with Christ, he can also disagree and turn right his tradition in a particular way also in service of the gospel that he's that he proclaimed, right? What we just what you just described with Colossians is fascinating to me. It's just it's absolutely fascinating to watch these minds think through the implications of their tradition for their context, which is a Jesus context and they're thinking through it. And then on top, the layer on top of that, the way in which they reflect is part of the Jewish context itself. So there's not a lot that they're making up out of from scratch. They're replying a mindset almost and that really complicates matters I think for you know for every day innocent readers of the Bible have been told just get the meaning from the text and that's all you have to do. Did we probably it seems like as a field like biblical scholarship grew a lot in their knowledge of this stuff with the Dead Sea Scrolls where it's like there isn't a lot to go on in terms of what this context is and so in some ways if it's we're like well the grammatical historical is the way we do it then we're trying to kind of shoot or in that I think that gets harder when we now have these like loads upon loads of manuscripts from around that time and you start kind of reading more of like oh these look similar they're doing similar kinds of things to what our New Testament is doing right like they're like you said there's a hermeneutical context meaning there is a way of reading text that are for a particular period and that's it seems like the New Testament fits right in mm-hmm and I think that could be unsettling for people who are used to this way of thinking even though we notice these peculiarities we're apt to say well the New Testament authors are inspired so they can do that they they all can make this argument about seed being collective and now seed is actually you know an individual and that's how we know because well it's got this insight is like inspired and all that and so I think it's unsettling for people to actually it's like oh no actually there's other texts that kind of pull similar moves if there's anything that's not inspired it's his hermeneutical approach to text in a sense you know I mean that's that's a bit of an overstating but meaning like yeah in terms of like sort of having no context kind of a reading from nowhere it's like no we we see in these new second temple period texts that this is kind of how reading texts work at least yeah religious texts of important yeah yeah no that's right I mean I think that you know part of what this pushes back against as well is that the New Testament authors are not encountering scriptural text kind of denovo as though they're encountering it for the first time and as though it's purely naked so to speak yeah right so when they read Genesis or any other text they're reading it through the lens of a kind of like you use the language of encyclopedia right they kind of have like a cultural encyclopedia right of tradition right they have a way of understanding Adam they have a way of understanding right Exodus traditions and so it's that's not that's not to say that like ancient you know Jewish or ancient Jewish or Christian authors couldn't distinguish scriptural text from tradition right like we have like examples where where like you know authors do this right where they like you have Peshareem right where you get like the scriptural text and then you get its interpretation so it's not that ancient authors had no way of just like way to distinguish scriptural texts from interpretive traditions but when they're thinking about Adam or Israel they're just thinking through an interpretive tradition right and so when they think about Adam and associating him with glory right we don't really see glory in Genesis 1 right we don't see that language but there's a whole tradition of glory right surrounding Adam or something like that we do that now where if I can't help it but when I picture Adam and Eve I picture like very white middle age like not middle age like age I mean from the middle ages because there's a tradition I've inherited like I've seen so many paintings of Adam and Eve in a particular way that whenever I'm reading the text that's the image that pops into my head because that's what I've inherited in terms of how I see that well before we run out of time here I think it's important to kind of try to put some of the pieces back in the box here so what does it mean for us today as we're reading our Bible that we notice the New Testament authors aren't interpreting their Bible the same way that maybe we're interpreting ours what what does that mean for us and what do we do with it as we read our Bible is moving forward besides getting getting therapy what do we do about that or or include that if you want to yeah right why are you taking that off first wrong with that geez sure yeah look I think also what the New Testament authors are doing I'm not suggesting it's the only way to read the Old Testament right so I think we can and should read the Old Testament in its ancient Near Eastern context I'm very happy to to have multiple meanings or ways of reading scripture multiple layers of meaning but I do think that the the what the New Testament authors do is they do invite us into a way of reading scripture and again I'm gonna invoke his name again because I think he's been so influential in kind of this area of scholarship like Richard Hayes will talk about a gospel shape to kind of hermeneutic right is that we you know especially like for Christians or for the Church is that in addition to hearing let's say what Genesis has to say for us right on its terms is also thinking about additional meanings because that I mean as a Christian I think the text is scripture right so it's there's a there's an inspiration right and that means that God can intend meanings beyond a single meaning so you know theologically speaking I'm very happy to have multiple multiple meanings as like later church fathers will do this right they'll have multiple senses of scripture and so I think the apostles are kind of they invite us into learning to read scripture in this way also right in light of the resurrection of Jesus yeah I mean I that's that's a good way to end this and I think that's a good thing for people to remember as well and I'm hoping that if anything our listeners will appreciate the beautiful historical complexity of this text and it just can't be boiled down to a bumper sticker of how to handle it it the the text deserves more of our adult attention than that yeah maybe also that like you know you could think that pat you know like people who are like in the job of teaching text especially in like in like a you know formative context like for for Christian faith or for other you know traditions is that creativity is not a bad thing yeah that's a good that's a good takeaway for sure right and and the Bible itself demonstrates that creativity and maybe we can engage that text in a creative way too for our contact yeah yeah absolutely well thanks Ronnie for coming on and cheering with us so every time we do an episode like this one we hear from our listeners believe it or not we read every one of those messages and something we've noticed is that so many of you were saying the same things and asking the same questions which is honestly what the society is for we are realizing that more and more people are asking the same questions and wanting to have the same conversation so come join the community and the conversation unlike the podcast it's not just Pete and Jared talking at you or a class, although you'll find those there too, it's people like you talking to each other about the stuff that we 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