The Canonical Approach To The OT: Its Effect On Understanding Prophecy -- By: John H. Sailhamer

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 30:3 (Sep 1987)
Article: The Canonical Approach To The OT: Its Effect On Understanding Prophecy
Author: John H. Sailhamer


The Canonical Approach To The OT:
Its Effect On Understanding Prophecy

John H. Sailhamer*

*John Sailhamer is associate professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

Let us begin with a simple definition of the “canonical approach”1 to the OT and, on the basis of that definition, turn directly to the application of the approach to the hermeneutical problem of prophecy and fulfillment. In its most general sense the canonical approach to the OT consists of taking seriously the fact that the OT, as we have it today, is a written text. By taking the written text seriously I mean that a canonical approach sees not only the content of the OT, but also its form, as theologically relevant. The final shape of the OT is as important as the actual course of events that are recounted in it. The message of the OT is as much a function of how it is written as of what it recounts. I do not understand the canonical approach to consist of driving a wedge between form and content, these two all-important features of the OT. It is not a matter of one or the other but of both.

With such an understanding of the canonical approach we can now turn to the problem of prophecy and fulfillment. Put simply, the problem of prophecy and fulfillment is the problem of the relationship of the OT to the NT.2 How do we relate the message of the OT writers to that of the NT? How are we to understand the NT writers when they quote passages from the OT that seem to be about the political and historical life of ancient Israel and apply them to Jesus as fulfilled prophecy? What are the hermeneutics that lie behind such a use of Scripture? Or, more to the point, how does the canonical approach help uncover the hermeneutics of such a use of Scripture?

Let me begin with a summary of what I intend to say. First, I want to suggest that when we focus on the work of the final compilers or authors of the Biblical books we can see that their understanding of the events they recount is much the same as that of the NT writers. That is, they see the historical narratives they recount as fundamentally a picture, or foreshadowing, of the future. We might even say they understand their texts as “types” or “typologies” of the future. I will seek to demonstrate such a hermeneutic from the macro- and micro-structure of the first book in the OT, the Torah. Second, I want to suggest that the same sort of topological hermeneutic found within the Torah is picked

up and carried along not only by later Biblical writers but also by t...

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