Early Christian Biblical Interpretation

Biblical interpretation was an important activity for Jews, including Jesus and his disciples, during the Second Temple period and beyond. This activity is predicated on the belief that the deeper meaning of the biblical text remains to be revealed through study and interpretation. The texts in this section, most of which were subsequently canonized in the New Testament, employ a midrashic hermeneutic in their appeal to Hebrew scripture to support various claims. That is to say, the interpretive logic employed in these texts shares much in common with Second Temple and later rabbinic modes of interpreting scripture (see MIDRASH).

In Matthew 12, Jesus refers to an episode in 1 Samuel 21 to justify his disciples’ Sabbath violation. Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 belongs to a Second Temple period (and later) genre known today as rewritten Bible, wherein selected biblical narratives are retold with embellishments (see BIBLICAL CHARACTERS AND STORIES). The two major themes of Stephen’s speech are Israel’s continued disobedience of God and the idea that God “does not dwell in houses made with human hands” (Acts 7:48, NRSV), a claim he supports with prooftexts from Isaiah. In his letter to the Romans, Paul employs prooftexts from Genesis 15 to prove that circumcision is not a precondition for receiving God’s blessing because God recognized and entered into a covenant with Abraham years before God commanded him to undergo circumcision. This exegetical argument is the basis of Paul’s message that gentiles ought not enter into the covenant of circumcision, because they will partake of God’s promise to Abraham through their faith, as Abraham did. Finally, the second-century church father Tertullian interpreted Paul and his mission to the gentiles as the fulfilment of prophetic verses from Isaiah.