Messianic Exegesis

Augsburg Fortress Publishers, January 1998. Paper Back. New. In what manner did early Christian reflection make use of the Scriptures of Israel? Donald Juel argues that the primary use of the Scriptures by the early Christian community was to enable them to understand the gospel and to clarify the implications of faith in Jesus for one's relationship with Israel's God and with the world. Juel bases his reflection on the arguments of his teacher, Nils Dahl, who taught that the confession of Jesus as Messiah can be derived neither from Jesus' teaching about Himself recorded in the Gospels nor from Jewish conceptions of messiahship. Rather the events of the last week of Jesus' ministry gave birth to a confession that determined the interpretive agenda for the new community born at the resurrection. Juel focuses attention on both specific passages as well as the character of scriptural interpretation in the first century, comparing it with the postbiblical scriptural exegesis found in the Jewish sources and offering a model of the ways in which certain biblical passages were used to interpret Jesus Christ and His ministry.