Journal: Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal
Volume: DBSJ 25:1 (NA 2020)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

DBSJ 25 (2020) p. 135

Book Reviews

The Messianic Vision of the Pentateuch, by Kevin S. Chen. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019. xiv + 303 pp. $29.00.

Kevin Chen has written an important and welcome contribution to discussions surrounding typology, biblical theology, and Christocentric or Christotelic interpretations of the Old Testament. Chen serves as the Associate Professor of Old Testament at Christian Witness Theological Seminary in San Jose, CA. He completed his doctoral studies under the late John Sailhamer, with the latter bearing a formative influence on the perspective Chen brings to correlating the message of the Pentateuch. Chen argues that the OT Law points forward decisively and pervasively to the Messiah, not because the New Testament authors have moved beyond the constraints of the original text to find Christ but because the author Moses intended it to do so. As such, he submits that “the purpose of this book is to argue that the Pentateuch itself sets forth an authorially intended, coherent portrait of the Messiah as the center of its theological message” (5). In view of this purpose Chen examines in detail seven Pentateuchal passages that he contends constitute implicit prophecies or “lenses” on the coming Messiah: (1) Gen 3:15; (2) Gen 12:1–3 (with amplifications in the patriarchal narratives); (3) Gen 49:8–12; (4) Exodus 12 and 15; (5) Num 24:3–19; (6) Deut 18:15–19; and (7) Deut 33:7.

The first chapter sets the foundation by providing an introduction to Chen’s hermeneutical approach with a focus on typology and authorial intent. Here Chen introduces the concept of lenses as a metaphor for the way in which specific OT texts refract “light rays” to bring focus upon Messianic expectations to be developed later in the train of progressive revelation: “Each Messianic prophecy can be treated as a ‘lens’ that combines and focuses select Messianic ‘wavelengths’ or ‘colors’ (themes) (7). The metaphor is apt, although perhaps pressed too far. Chen argues here for several propositions that are increasingly rare in discussions of typology and the NT use of the OT: that the divine author and human author share a unitive intent in biblical texts, that meaning is derived from this singular intent, that biblical revelation should be read “forward” rather than “backward” (it is inherently prospective, even eschatological, rather than retrospective), and that the OT human authors frequentl...