The simplest answer is that who does not understand the Old Testament will not understand the new either. And who understands neither, no way can grasp the basis of ten thousand years cultural, literary, moral and philosophical improvement. And that one shall not see the continuity that links together the antiquity with our modern age. This is the basic truth that even Nietzsche, who was a big fan of the Old Testament, recognized.
Why is it important to recognize this at an age when many deny the importance of the Bible?
I have described partly above, but at the time the Old Testament was written (in a few hundred years), people were still living in tribal societies and were not ready to receive the New Testament. They superstitiously feared the elements of nature and sacrificed their children to reconcile their gods. They were not yet ready for the teachings of Christ. They needed laws and judges.
I can compare this to the fact that no child is mature enough to understand more abstract messages for adults. The chosen people first had to understand that the natural and divine elements were not the same. They may not endow materials, trees, stones, lightning, and carved objects with powers and properties that they do not possess, like pagans do. In fact, it is one of the very first commandment of the Ten Commandments. Natural phenomena have no divine power.
What is the significance of this now in the XXI. century? Development is not only a collective but also an individual process. In fact, neither individual maturity nor lack thereof, i.e., infantilism, is collective, since it is individual. Yet it has collective significance. And one cannot be mature for the message of Christ who adores esotericism, astrology, and occultism. This is as true today as it was two thousand five hundred years ago.
This phenomenon is by the way more common nowadays than the dear reader would think. Many seek spirituality in a modern world (which is lacking), which is understandable and instinctive. At the same time, they do not accept the renunciations, virtues, commitments, and responsibilities that come with it. But what they get is not spirituality, just the illusion of it.
The Old Testament has a clear message: Tell the truth, discipline yourself, do good, and grow up. Take a goddamn responsibility for your life. Do not break the covenant with God, nor depart from the path of universal morality, or may heaven have mercy.
This is not as self-evident as it sounds. Most people are incredibly corrupt and coward. And language is the most powerful weapon to manipulate them. But language is also a power to tell the truth. One who speaks from his or her own conscience conveys the word of God. On the other hand, he who uses language to manipulate and mislead others betrays this divine gift and also betrays own honest nature.
Dostoevsky once said that telling the truth is always the hardest, flattering is always the easiest. Of course, this is true in the short term. However, living a full life in lie is as dangerous as possible. Truth makes you lonely, but living in lies makes you more lonely. In liar society there’s no room for righteous, and has nothing to gain there either. In the Old Testament, almost all the prophets were outcast, exiled, and excommunicated just because they said what no one wanted to hear, the truth. It is no accident that the saying came, no one is a prophet in his own country.
When the prophet Jeremiah called the besieged Jerusalem to lay down their arms before the Babylonians and to stop fighting against the Chaldeans, because they are the outstretched arms of God, he committed the worst transgression, the high treason. Chaldeans were sent by God to punish the disobedient Judah. Anyone who does not line up, and brave enough to follow his conscience and convey the word of God, risks being persecuted, exiled, or killed. How many remember the soldiers who fell in the two world wars as heroes, but how many remember those who did everything they could to avoid the war and who no one paid attention to. Because they are the true heroes. The prophets, philosophers, the conscience of society.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that war can never be justified by anything, and obviously that’s not what the Old Testament says, as you’re aware of. In most wars in history, however, there has been no blessing from God, for they were false in their reasoning, with selfish and human intent.
But anyways, the New Testament is incomprehensible without the Old Testament, the way a child must be mature to become an adult. You have to learn to discipline yourself, find a purpose for your life, make sacrifices, hold back the vast majority of your potential in order to actualize some of it. The law, the Ten Commandments, is about nothing but self-control and self-discipline, controlling your impulses. If you became a master of this, that makes you mature enough to love your neighbor as you love yourself. What is ultimately the only commandment is the commandment of Christ, which is all the Ten Commandments in a single sentence. The Old Testament is the answer to how, and the New Testament is the answer to why.
However, just as the New Testament cannot be interpreted without knowledge of the Old Testament, grasping at the level of the Old Testament means sticking at a certain level of spiritual and intellectual development. The New Testament is no longer about keeping the law, but about voluntarily accepting the suffering and sacrifice that comes with life. It is no coincidence that the Bible contains both testaments. Each and every one of us has limitation, we are not omnipotent, actually we are as far from it as humanly possible. But everyone is blessed with unique potential, and mission. And finding this meaning makes the suffering which comes with existence bearable.
The above philosophical reasoning was self-evident for a long time. The whole of Western civilization was built on this structure, topped symbolically by God. This spared the West from monumentalism and totalitarianism, which was unique in history amongst civilizations. The West was made great by individuals, not collectives. In the modern age, however, this structure collapsed, coinciding with the time of the secularization of society. With the development of science, no one was willing to accept God’s symbolic but indirect leadership anymore. However, this triggered an unexpected effect. Societies have become increasingly intellectually sterile. People are no longer trying to find a purpose for their existence that leads existencial stagnation and suffering. And the West was no longer able to withstand the satanic temptation of the omnipotent government that promised an existing earthly utopia.
Just think about it. The Israelites were slaves to a state machine of monumental character, pharaohs’ Egypt. They had no purpose in their lives. Slaves have no purpose but to serve their masters. Their lives were excruciating and hopeless, but predictable. When Moses freed the Israelites from the house of bondage in Egypt by the will of God, he did nothing but liberate them from the totalitarian state. Suddenly, these people, who had previously been slaves, did not know what to do with themselves. They were accustomed that they had always been told what to do. Now they were left without guidance. At least earthly guidance. They required laws.
These laws, in turn, were engraved on stone tablets and came from God, not from an earthly power. The lesson is to follow the laws, but not the ones created by man, at least not in all cases. As man can be corrupted, the man-made laws can’t be legal if we accept that morality is not man-made either, or truth can exist outside of our mind. Think of how many nazis referred at the end of the war to just following the law. They were right about that. They followed man-made diabolic laws.
It’s essential to understand, if we follows albirtary man-made laws only, that inevitably leads us to moral relativism. On the one hand, we are becoming helpless puppets of totalitarianism. On the other hand, if we get out of state control, what keeps us from doing whatever we want. What keeps people from robbing, raping, looting, forbidding adultery and fornication? The Israelites were just like children without the watchful eye of a daddy. They began to worship materials as pagans at their infantile level. They needed a law, but this time one that they would keep even if they were not under state surveillance. This is very important because any other case would assume that one oppressive power has replaced another. As freedom does not mean we replace slave master by another. Those who claim that the God is like a slave master, must claim that too, the morality and truth we are all subordinated to, and not man-made by any means, are slave master either.
Moses brought this to the Israelites, not the law of another tyranny. People follow this even if they are not forced to, and even and if they are contrary to the laws of man. This is the essence of the Old Testament, and it is on this foundation that the New Testament builds. But without this foundation, nothing is built. The Old Testament did not end with Moses. The Israelites rebelled against God’s laws. They began to behave like children like other pagan peoples. They yielded to the temptation of totalitarianism and wanted a king like the rest of the people have, not judges, the anointed of God. As result the laws engraved in stone plates lost with the ark of the covenant. This time the laws should be engraved in heart of people. This allowed the arrival of the New Testament and the Messiah.
If you’re interested in similar topics, please visit my previous posts bellow:
Thanks for reading me!