MetaCatholic

What do we call the collection of books that are shared between Jews and Christians? Picking up on an article in the Chicago Tribune which claimed that the term Old Testament was insensitive to Judaism Claude Mariottini entered the debate with a firm commitment to the term for theological reasons. Chris Heard responded with a preference for Tanakh, as the Jewish term of designating them. Tyler Williams reminds everyone that this debate has been had before and has a great cartoon to boot! He notes that he uses the awkward Old Testament / Hebrew Bible. Chris Weimer goes for Jewish Scriptures, and now Claude Mariottini has returned to the fray with a stronger pleas for retaining Old Testament.

Clearly, both in terms of a non-confessional academia, and a confessional inter-religious dialogue, language is a problem. Within confessional Judaism, there is nor problem referring to Tanakh. Within confessional Christianity there is no problem in referring to Old Testament (or at least, only a small one as I note below). But most of us blog, write, speak and live within a multiplicity of overlapping contexts, and there we don’t know what to call these books. So what are the strengths and weaknesses of each name? I will leave aside until the end the issue Mariottini raise about what one then calls the New Testament if we use any term other than the Old Testament.

Tanakh has the advantage of describing the books essentially descriptively. It’s also as near as any name (other than a generic scriptures or writings) comes to being, as it were, canonised as a description in the New Testament (avoiding the question of what we cal that for the moment) — “the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44) However, unless you are a Protestant Christian, Tanakh is not co-terminous with the Old Testament, but considerably shorter.

Hebrew Bible sounds descriptive, but is probably the least satisfactory in two ways. First the minor quibble that bits of it are Aramaic. Second, and more significantly, it imports implicit Christian concepts of Bible that do not, as far as I can see, do justice to Jewish views of the scriptures. It neither highlights the priority of Torah, nor deals with the fact that in many ways Talmud and Mishnah as a hermeneutical lens for the reading of these books, that they function in ways not totally dissimilar from that of the New Testament for Christians. The same point about different canons of (OT) scripture for Jews / Protestants and Catholic and Orthodox still applies.

Jewish Scriptures sounds neutral but misses the point that these books are also Christian Scriptures. And ditto the same canonical discrepancy as above.

First Testament is increasingly the term I’m trying to favour (though years of habit mean I’m as likely to write OT / Old Testament as anything else).That is of course as much an implicit theological judgement as calling it Old Testament, but in my view a more positive one. I don’t agree with Mariottini that “The term “Second Testament” for the Scriptures of the church is not acceptable” (nor that we have to drop New Testament as a term if we say “First Testament.”) What’s wrong with calling the the NT “the Second Testament” or, being truly eschatological “the Last Testament”. In favour of either I’d adduce Paul’s language about Christ who is both “the last Adam” and “the second man” (1 Cor 15:45,47) without implying a whole sequence to come between or after. Like the traditional term “Old Testament” it cheerfully blurs the canonical discrepancy.

Old Testament is of course hallowed by tradition, and has the clarity that we know what we’re talking about (saving the blurred canonical boundary). It does, however, suffer a certain problem in modern usage, in that “Old” has increasingly become surrounded with negative connotations: obsolete, crumbling, out-of-date, irrelevant are just some of the ideas the adjective carries around with it in most contemporary English. When one adds that to the problems of finding a sufficiently respectful term in inter-confessional dialogue, one is indeed forced to wonder whether the term “Old Testament” is, well, how can I put this — old.