Paul and the Old Testament – His Legacy and Ours

Abstract

The legacy that Paul received was the Jewish scriptures that he quoted extensively in Greek from the Septuagint. This was a legacy not widely appreciated, for various theological reasons, until relatively recently. However, a count of Paul's citations, quotations from and allusions to scripture comes to over 250. Paul's thinking was framed by his re-reading of scripture and emphasises how Jewish was his historical context and theological frame of reference. How this affects our interpretation of Paul's theology is illustrated by four examples from Wisdom, the Psalms in general, Ps 78 in particular, and Paul's rewriting of the Shema Israel in 1 Cor 8.6. There are some brief comments on the difficulties that Paul's use of scripture leaves us with.