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The guiding question that accompanies us in the following is: Do we read the Bible from right to left, or from left to right? Do we read the Holy Scriptures from front to back – the way we actually watch every movie – or from back to front? Or, to put it another way, perhaps more clearly: Do we read the New Testament against the background of the Old Testament?, in the order in which God revealed His thoughts one after the other and thus set the hermeneutical course – or do we think we have to understand the Old Testament through the eyes of the New Testament?, in which case it usually remains unexplained from whence one actually wants to understand the New Testament.
He who calls the generations from the beginning
Fundamentally, the prophet Isaiah (41:4) emphasizes that the Lord, the God of Israel, is “The first – and with the last ones: I am the One.” For Isaiah, it is important that the Lord is the “קֹרֵא הַדֹּרֹות מֵרֹאשׁ/Kore’ HaDorot MeRosh”, the One who “calls the generations from the beginning.” This means that He knew exactly what He was doing from the very beginning. And He puts his plan into action until He achieves His goal – step by step, just as He had it in mind from the beginning.
This is why Isaiah (46:9-10) calls on his readers: “remember the former things of old; for I am God. There is no other God. None is like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’” It is not supernatural clairvoyance or mysterious fortune-telling that reveal the future to us. Only those who understand the beginnings that the biblical word reveals to us will have a view of where world history is heading.
The psalmist Asaph can say with great certainty: “I unlock riddles from the ancient” (Psalm 78:2b). And the prophet Isaiah (41:22) logically answers the question of what is to come with the quest: “Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come.”
Anyone who wants to understand the “end times” must know what is reported in the creation story. If you want to know what it all boils down to, you have to understand what the Creator had in mind at the beginning. The one, true, living God created the space in which we live and also the time we live through. He holds everything in His hand. And He will definitely reach the goal He has set for Himself under all conceivable circumstances. That is the message of the Bible.
Islamic Thinking
In contrast, there is a way of thinking that seems to assume that God is also subject to the dictates of time. If any creature decides against him, behaves or develops differently than he had originally imagined, he must react by correcting it, finding a way out, showing an alternative, coming up with something new.
Allah, the God of Islam, is obviously subject to the dictates of time. Therefore, according to the thinking of Islam, he must correct himself again and again. If a declaration of intent proves to be unenforceable due to any circumstances, it is replaced by a new revelation. Since the Qur’an is not written in chronological order, classical interpreters of the Qur’an struggle to determine which statements are older and which are more recent. They discuss this and then draw conclusions about its validity.
In the technical language of Qur’an scholars, it is said that the more recent revelation “abrogates” an older revelation on the same subject. They call this principle of interpretation نسخ/naskh in Arabic, which means “abolition,” “replacement,” “dissolution” or “abrogation”.
The Direction of Prayer – the Qur’an abrogates a biblical instruction
A classic example of the abrogation of a biblical order by the السنة/Sunnah (tradition) of the Qur’an is the change in the قِبْلَة/Qibla (direction) of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca (Sura 2:142-150). Whereas Jews – and possibly all Bible-believing human beings – should pray in the direction of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Holy of Holies[1], Muslims pray in the direction of Mecca.
Any attentive contemporary may observe when in Jerusalem on the southern half of the Temple Mount – on the Haram Ash-Sherif – in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, hundreds of thousands of Muslims turn their “very backsides” towards the place that is seen in biblical tradition as the site chosen by the God of Israel and therefore designated as the Holy of Holies.
The clarity of this body language should not only be understandable to every Oriental. Muslims do this on the express command of their prophet and thus unmistakably demonstrate – before the eyes of the whole world! – what they think of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. In the Qur’an, the focus of prayer on Jerusalem is abrogated in favor of Mecca.
The Sword Verse – an abrogation within the Qur’an itself
The so-called “Sword Verse” in Sura 9:5 proclaims: “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”[2]
Many interpreters of the Qur’an believe that this verse supersedes, i.e. invalidates, more than 120 verses that call for peace and coexistence between Muslims and people of other faiths. Anyone who wants to portray Islam as a peace-loving and tolerant religion and uses a Qur’anic statement that is clearly older than the sword verse as proof of this must be aware of this fact.
Muhammad undoubtedly made a whole series of conciliatory statements about his contemporaries of other faiths in the early days – as long as he cherished the hope that Jews and Christians would recognize him as the true prophet; as long as he was weak and in the minority; as long as his military success was uncertain. Later, however, his attitude and behavior towards monotheists of other faiths changed radically. And in this case, too, the principle of interpretation of naskh is decisive for the thinking of devout Muslims to this day.
A Replacement Theory …
The idea of naskh (= abolition, replacement, dissolution, abrogation) applies to individual statements, but also to entire complexes of revelation. Thus, in Islamic thinking, the Qur’an, the revelation to the Prophet Muhammad, replaces the New Testament, the Holy Scriptures of the Christians.
Previously, the New Testament had abrogated the Holy Scriptures of the Jews, sometimes referred to as the Old Testament. Consequently, Christians have replaced Jews as the people of God – just as, according to the Islamic concept, the أمة/ummah (community, nation) of Muslims replaces the Church of Christians as the custodian of divine revelation and the body of salvation.
If, from an Islamic point of view, the actions of people are ultimately decisive, this view lacks neither a reference to the Holy Scriptures nor a grasp of reality. Both the Old and New Testaments testify that the Jewish people failed in their divine mission, if not rebelled against it.
And the Christian community has not really presented a good picture in the light of biblical statements over the past two thousand years either. It is hard to deny that a God who looks at Judaism and Christianity could come to the conclusion that “the kingdom of God should be taken from them and given to a people who bear its fruits” (Matthew 21:43).
… and its Consequences for the Concept of God
However, thought through to its logical conclusion, this means that such a God, who constantly must correct himself through new revelations, is not really “God”. Rather, the behavior of his misfit(?!) creatures and, above all, time has the last word.[3] A “God of abrogation” has to correct himself again and again because he did not originally consider some things correctly or even saw them mistakenly.
As mentioned at the beginning, the God of the prophet Isaiah tirelessly counters this: “I am truly and in every respect God!” Isaiah’s fundamental conviction is: “The word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8) and is neither changed by human behavior nor by any events.
The View of the New Testament
On this basis, the apostle Paul can claim: “I say nothing but what the prophets and Moses said” (Acts 26:22). He makes it unmistakably clear that “A covenant, previously ratified by the one, true, living God, is not overruled by a law that is given 430 years later, so as to make the promise void” (Galatians 3:17).
Even Jesus – before Paul – had not corrected old revelations but led his listeners and disciples back to the original will of God. This may be seen, for example, when he answers the Pharisees’ question concerning divorce permitted by Moses with the question (Matthew 19:3-8): “Have you not read what He who created them” had in mind “from the very beginning”? Jesus argues from the creation account[4] to show the original will of God. Moses – according to Jesus’ argument – met the people of Israel with his legislation for the sake of their “hardness of heart”. “But it was not [intended] that way from the beginning.”
God’s Original Intent …
Obviously, when reading the Bible, we have to learn to distinguish between where the Creator comes to meet people in His grace and mercy, “picks them up” as it were – and what is God’s own initiative, his own thought and original will.
According to the testimony of Holy Scripture, divorce and polygamy are just as much concessions made by God to a rebellious humanity as the consumption of meat or the offering of sacrifices. Thus, the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Joseph Herman Hertz, states: “Nowhere in Scripture is the significance of the sacrificial ritual formally explained; it is treated as self-evident and familiar to everyone … So, sacrifice was an ancient custom in Israel and was considered as old as mankind.”[5] If God accepts the sacrifices of people, then this is an initiative, a need of human beings that God directs and lovingly meets.
… and His Concessions
In much the same way, the office of a king[6], the building of a sanctuary – from the tabernacle in the desert to the temple in Jerusalem[7] – and even the idea of a mediator[8] are re-actions of the Father in heaven to the nature, imaginative possibilities and desires of people.
God’s covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, on the other hand, are God’s very own initiatives. He chooses Abraham and his descendants, the people of Israel, to bless all the families of the earth. He leads him to a country, chooses a place where He wants to reveal Himself.
Thought of in New Testament terms …
The letter to the Hebrews speaks – like no other scripture in the New Testament – of a “new covenant” that makes “the first [covenant] an old one”. And “what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13).
What then is the author of Hebrews doing when he wants to show that Jesus represents a different, more effective priesthood than the Levitical priesthood? – He goes back(!) to Melchizedek[9], who is the first person in the history of mankind to be called a “Priest of God Most High” (Genesis 14:18). In Melchizedek we may see how this term is defined.
Thus, in this case too, the “new” in the “New Testament” is not a naskh (= abolition, replacement, dissolution, abrogation), but a going back to the original of God’s revelation.
… not annulment, but confirming fulfillment
In principle, Messiah Yeshua explains (Matthew 5:17-20): “Do not think that I have come to terminate the Torah or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until the heaven and the earth pass away neither a yota, not a dot, will pass from the Torah until all is accomplished. Whoever relaxes one of the least of these arrangements and teaches others in this way, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them, he will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds by far that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The former Berlin professor of theology Friedrich Wilhelm Marquardt points out the consequences of these Islamic ideas when he writes: “This Arab intellectual school of thought has many sympathizers here today, especially among Christians and theologians. We read Paul almost consistently in the same Qur’anic way as Arab Christians, with very similar convictions about the political consequences as far as Israel is concerned. Conservative Protestant theology and left-wing political anti-Zionism play into each other’s hands on this issue.”[10]
Footnotes:
[1] Compare 1 Kings 8:41-43 and the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berakhot 30a.
[2] https://www.thequran.com/read (31.01.2022).
[3] See the previous article in this series on hermeneutics “Who is God?”: https://gerloff.co.il/en/god/.
[4] Genesis 1:27 and 2:24.
[5] Joseph Herman Hertz, Pentateuch und Haftoroth. Hebräischer Text und deutsche Übersetzung mit Kommentar, Band 3: Leviticus (Zürich: Verlag Morascha, 1984), 5.
[6] Compare Deuteronomy 17:14-19; 1 Samuel 8.
[7] See especially Isaiah 66:1.
[8] See, for example, Deuteronomy 18:15-18 and note the reasoning.
[9] Hebrews 5:6, 10; 6:20-7:28.
[10] Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, Die Juden und ihr Land (Hamburg: Siebenstern Taschenbuch Verlag, 1975), 151.
The Author
