Reading the Old Testament the Jewish Way

It’s not only Jews who make this mistake; a great many people have done it. One (relatively minor, yet still significant) example of it that strikes me is the issue of the bread to be used in Communion: leavened or unleavened? Those who say the bread should be unleavened (Catholics and Protestants) say it’s because this is the Passover bread, and the Passover bread is unleavened by God’s own commandment.

And that’s true, but it’s not the Jewish Passover we are celebrating; it’s the Christian one. It’s not the Red Sea through which we pass in safety, dryshod as it were; it’s death. The Red Sea only prefigures the true and infinitely greater Passover. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” and Christ is Risen! And so, for the Orthodox, is our Passover Bread.

It’s not which kind of bread to use I’m concerned with here; it’s the argument behind the use of unleavened bread, drawn from reading the Old Testament as a Jew would, without reference to Christ. This makes a nice example, I think, of what happens when we do that, when we fail to read the Old Testament in and by the Light of Christ, the Light of the World. Most of the resulting errors are far more serious than this.

To put it crassly, Old Testament interpretation is in sore need of Christianizing. Yes, the Christian meanings were always there, sometimes explicit, often implicit, but if we overlook them or fail to interpret the OT accordingly, we are making the same mistake as the Jews, of whom St. Paul wrote,

14 But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. 15 But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. 16 Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. (2 Corinthians 3:14-17)

We can make the same error in reverse, too. That is, not only can we misread the Old Testament by failing to refer it to the New; we can also misread the New Testament by interpreting it according to the Old! Proper Christian biblical interpretation conforms the Old to the New, and not the other way around. Jesus Himself began the process of Christianizing the interpretation of the Old Testament for us. St. Paul continued it, and the Fathers after him.

As Jesus pointed out (Matthew 9:17), if we try to put our New Wine into an old wineskin, the old wineskin will be unable to contain it and will burst; and we will lose both it and the wine (both Scripture and Christ, or both Judaism and Christianity) — a truly alarming prospect!