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"The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers" by Aber Chou

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash

Last month I did a review on G.K. Beale’s Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. And since we’re on that theme, I thought I’d go ahead this month and review Abner Chou’s excellent work, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles.

He’s largely addressing the same issue as Beale: Did the New Testament authors impose Christ onto Old Testament texts or did they legitimately interpret the Old Testament texts according to their authorial intent and see in them a pointing toward the Person and work of Christ?

Chou, like Beale, argues for the latter. How so?

The Quest for Authorial Logic

The evidence, he contends, is found in discerning the authorial logic of the New Testament authors: “The quest for authorial logic concerns bringing the biblical writers’ logic that is in the background to the foreground.”¹

Okay, so what was their logic? On page 20 he argues that New Testament quotations of the Old Testament are oftentimes intended to trigger the larger context of the OT passage cited. Or, as I’ve heard the Bible Project guys say, these OT quotations are like hyperlinks in the NT writings. The apostles wanted us to click on them and take in a larger view. And Chou says that when we do that, we’ll notice that the prophets had their own hermeneutical approach, which in turn influenced the apostolic hermeneutic.² In his own words, “The prophetic hermeneutic continues into the apostolic hermeneutic, which is the Christian hermeneutic.”³

So far so good. But that leads to another question: What was the prophetic hermeneutic that the New Testament authors were picking up on?

The Prophetic Hermeneutic

One thing we can say right off the bat is that the Prophets were steeped in prior OT texts. Chou rightly concludes, “Both deductive and inductive evidence point to the reality the prophets grappled with prior revelation and saturated their own writings with their thinking about past revelation.”⁴ And they were especially keen on God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 of land, seed, and blessing.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

The prophetic literature reveals an accurate understanding of this covenant. What they expanded on was how this covenant would be fulfilled. And it turns out it would be another covenant which the Lord made with David. Chou makes a great observation when he writes, “God promises to make David’s name great… just like he formerly promised to Abram (Gen. 12:2).”⁵ Thus, the Davidic covenant encompasses and brings to fruition the Abrahamic covenant.⁶ But it goes deeper than that.

In the first verse of 2 Samuel 7 — the chapter which contains the Davidic covenant — we’re told that the LORD gave David rest from all his enemies. Chou argues that this echoes the creational rest from Genesis 1.⁷ And over the course of the prophetic literature, this concept of rest began to take on eschatological overtones: “The Davidic covenant was not merely an isolated event of history but something that has theological consequences for the rest of history… It records how God works out the promises of the Davidic covenant and how all that relates to his plan to combat the curse and restore creational rest.”⁸

The Edenic blessing and rest that was lost in Genesis 3 is promised to be restored in Genesis 12 by means of the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7.

Chou concludes:

The prophets were aware of the theological implications of prior revelation and how their predecessors developed those ramifications. As a result, they wrote to continue that logic and advance theology for later authors to expound.⁹

And this is what leads us to the Apostolic hermeneutic.

The Apostolic Hermeneutic

I’ll simply offer up here two conclusive thoughts from Chou:

“My point is the prophets had enough complexity and awareness to legitimately set up later authors to use their writing. As a result, when the apostles come and handle the Old Testament, their use of previous revelation fits well within the intended framework established by the prophets. In sum, the prophets had a redemptive historical logic that establishes their texts in a trajectory which prepares well for the New Testament.”¹⁰

“The key idea of this chapter is directionality, namely, the prophets wrote intentionally setting up for the future…. The prophetic hermeneutic intentionally moves to the apostolic hermeneutic and the apostolic hermeneutic continues the prophetic. Such directionality is a critical piece of the puzzle in the quest for authorial logic.”¹¹

Thus, Chou, in my estimation, has defended his thesis well. The best way to conceive of the relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament is one of directionality or theological trajectory. And since you know how I love graphs, here’s one I made for your viewing pleasure. After you take it in, do yourself a big favor and go out and grab a copy of Chou’s book!

Music for Your Monday

“Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” rendition by Sovereign Grace

1. Abner Chou, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and the Apostles (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2018), 19.

2. Ibid., 20.

3. Ibid., 22.

4. Ibid., 50.

5. Ibid., 73.

6. Chou argues this point from more evidences than this one alone. I’ve only included this one for the sake of brevity.

7. Ibid., 74.

8. Ibid., 77.

9. Ibid., 93.

10. Ibid., 95.

11. Ibid., 119-120.