What Happened?
so that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the foundation of the world.” Matthew 13:35
Foundation Of The World – There are a lot of quotations of the Old Testament in the books of the New Testament. We never think too much about them because we assume that the quotations are accurate representations of the Old Testament texts. But have you ever really looked? Take a deep breath. You might be surprised.
Matthew’s quotation of Psalm 78:2 is an example of what we usually find. The verse in Psalms doesn’t quite say what Matthew says. In fact, the verse in Hebrew literally says, “I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old.” You will notice immediately that Matthew’s quotation changes parable to parables and dark sayings from of old to things hidden from the foundation of the world. How is this possible? How can Matthew believe that Psalms is inspired by God, right down to the very letters, and still make all these changes?
Most of us assume that Matthew is just quoting from the Septuagint (LXX). We don’t bother to ask what that tells us about the issue of the inspiration of the LXX. We just think that Matthew was writing in Greek and the problem is in translation. But that won’t quite do it. Why? Because the LXX doesn’t say what Matthew says either.
Maybe the problem is just in the English. Maybe our translations are dynamic instead of word-for-word. A dynamic translation captures the meaning of the text and converts it into the translated language whereas a word-for-word translation tries to be accurate in each word of the original. That might explain the problem, except that Matthew is Jewish and he clearly knew what the original words were, yet the Greek passage here isn’t even close.
The usual explanations fail. Does that mean that we have to give up the usual doctrine of inspiration? Not at all! We just need to understand what inspiration means from a Hebrew point of view. After all, that famous text (2 Timothy 3:16) uses a Greek word for inspiration that Paul had to make up because there was no Greek word available that would capture what he was trying to say about God and God’s revelation. The issue really isn’t so trivial, especially since most of the New Testament authors seem to play fast and loose with Old Testament quotations.
So, let’s get a few of the basics down. First, the Hebrew view of inspiration applies right down to the letters of the words. That’s about as strong a concept of inspiration as you can get. No New Testament author ever doubted the divine authority of the Old Testament. Neither should we. But, second, rabbinic methods of using Scripture are very different than our Greek-based ideas of accurate quotations. We tend to think that quotations must be exactly correct. We provide citations in order to show the reader that we have accurately copied the original author’s words. This is not the way a rabbi thinks. From a rabbinical point of view, it is possible to alter a text to fit the needs of an argument without implying any degradation of the authority of the original, because the point of the argument is not the accuracy of the quotation but rather the impact of the conclusion on the life of the believer. There is a lot more flexibility in the Hebrew idea of inspiration in its application, but there is even more rigidity in its authority and divine authorship.
What does this tell us? It tells us that the way we look at the world from our Greek “has to be exactly right” point of view might not fit the Hebrew worldview. Just as Hebrew is a language of flow and action (while Greek is a language of fixed and static entities), so the Hebrew idea of inspiration has a fluid quality in its application that we don’t usually recognize in our doctrinal positions. So, when you read the New Testament, you are really reading a commentary on the Old Testament. Try that on for size and see how it fits.
Topical Index: Inspiration
