{"id":1081,"date":"2016-05-04T08:17:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T13:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunergoi.com\/?p=1081"},"modified":"2016-05-04T09:08:24","modified_gmt":"2016-05-04T14:08:24","slug":"the-blueprint-and-the-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/?p=1081","title":{"rendered":"The Blueprint and the Building"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a new post<\/a> over at The Gospel Coalition on the way in which the Old Testament Scriptures relate to the New.<\/p>\n

Any persistent student of Scripture\u00a0soon stumbles on the problem of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. The confusion springs from several key differences between them.<\/p>\n

First, the scope<\/em> of the testaments differs considerably. The former covers roughly a millennium and\u00a0half of redemptive history (not counting the hazy period before\u00a0Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob)\u00a0and involves a multitude of characters living in different periods and locations around the ancient Near East. The latter covers a time period spanning less than a century and involving a relatively limited cast of characters.<\/p>\n

Second, the form<\/em> of the two testaments differs greatly. The Old exhibits texts comprising\u00a0diverse genres ranging from poetry to legal code, from historical narrative to apocalyptic vision, while the New is comprised primarily of a historically unique genre called \u201cGospel\u201d\u00a0and a list of letters, at least one of which includes an extensive apocalyptic section.<\/p>\n

Third, the message<\/em>\u00a0of the two testaments seems divergent. The Old encodes the prehistory and history of an ethnic\u2014not to mention geopolitical\u2014entity called Israel, including its constitutional documents and great orators, while the New describes the life and times of a singular individual and the followers he commissioned to proclaim his message of salvation.<\/p>\n

Helpful Paradigm<\/h3>\n

As an Old Testament professor\u00a0I often get asked, \u201cHow does the Old Testament relate to the New?\u201d\u00a0Here\u2019s an analogy I like to give in response: The Old Testament is the blueprint; the New Testament is the building.<\/p>\n

Before you build, you need a blueprint. The blueprint explains exactly how the building will be built. It shows you the wiring, the framing, the joists, the rooms, the floorplans. But once the building is built you don\u2019t throw out the blueprint; you keep it\u00a0around since it shows you the inner-workings. Anyone who\u2019s renovated a home\u00a0knows the value of the blueprint. You need to know where the wiring is laid, where the load-bearing walls are located,\u00a0where the stairways and exits can be found in case of emergency. It\u2019s hard to locate these things\u00a0when you\u2019re looking at the building. The blueprint is\u00a0of utmost importance, but no one would say the blueprint is the building.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have a new post over at The Gospel Coalition on the way in which the Old Testament Scriptures relate to the New. \n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sunergoi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Blueprint.jpg?fit=800%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ESBE-hr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1089,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions\/1089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunergoi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}