Is the Old Testament Just a Jewish Book? Why a Christian Cannot Reject It

There is a certain view of the Old Testament in circulation - sometimes stated outright, more often present as a quiet assumption. It runs roughly like this: it is the grim history of one nation, dressed up with a religious gloss. A bloody chronicle of a tribe that slaughtered its neighbours, produced kings, lost wars, went into exile - and described all of it as though God stood behind it. From that view comes a conclusion: this is not the inspired word of God. It is a Jewish national book, from which a right to the land and to rule over other nations is derived to this day.

It sounds sober, almost brave. And it is fundamentally mistaken - not because anyone is being malicious, but because the person does not know what he is actually holding when he picks up the Old Testament.

For the Old Testament is not the chronicle of one nation. It is the beginning of one story - a story written by God, whose second half is written by the New Testament. It is one book in two acts, not two libraries foreign to each other. And in this piece I want to show that - calmly, step by step, on the facts. At the end I will disarm the most frequently repeated charge: that the Old Testament grounds someone’s present-day claim to land and power.

First, let us count the books

Let us begin with the simplest thing, which almost no one checks before passing sentence. What is the Old Testament actually made of?

If someone says “a grim history of Israel,” he has roughly one thing in his head: wars, conquests, massacres, court intrigue. True enough - books like that are in the Old Testament. Joshua, Judges, the books of Samuel, the books of Kings, Chronicles. Except that this is a fragment of the whole, not the whole.

Let us honestly count what else is there:

• The Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) - not a national chronicle, but the story of the creation of the world, of man, of sin, and of the moral law. The first eleven chapters of Genesis have nothing to do with Israel at all - they concern all of humanity.
• The wisdom books - Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Sirach, the Book of Wisdom. Meditations on suffering, the meaning of life, transience, prudence. Not a word about conquests.
• Poetry and prayer - the Book of Psalms, one hundred and fifty prayers and songs, the most quoted book in the whole Bible. The Song of Songs - a poem about love.
• The prophets - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and the twelve minor prophets. Not chroniclers, but a conscience - men who thundered against injustice, the exploitation of the poor, empty religiosity, and who foretold the coming of the Messiah.

Stop for a moment. Out of the forty-odd books of the Old Testament, the strictly historical-national ones are perhaps a couple of handfuls. The rest is law, wisdom, poetry, prayer, and prophecy. To call that “a bloody chronicle of one nation” is rather like calling a great library “a collection of instruction manuals” because a few manuals sit on one shelf.

This is not a detail. It shows that the charge comes from not having read it. A person who has genuinely worked through Job, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah will not say it is a tribal chronicle - because he will see that it is one of the deepest reflections on the human condition that humanity has ever produced.

Genesis is the story of every one of us

Let us go to the very beginning - because that is where you see most quickly that the Old Testament is not “Jewish” in that narrow, tribal sense.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

- Gen 1:27 (BT)

This is the first sentence about man in the entire Bible. And it does not say: “God created an Israelite.” It says: he created man - everyone, in his own image. The whole teaching on human dignity, on which Western civilisation rests, human rights, the conviction that every person has infinite worth - all of it flows from this single verse. It is not the property of one nation. It is the foundation of the anthropology of all humanity.

The first eleven chapters of Genesis - creation, the garden, the fall, Cain and Abel, the flood, the tower of Babel - tell a story in which there is as yet no Israel at all. Israel, in the person of Abraham, appears only in chapter twelve. Before that happens, the Bible speaks of what concerns every human being without exception: where we came from, why we are free, why we suffer, where the evil in us comes from.

She took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

- Gen 3:6 (BT)

This is not the description of one tribe’s mistake. It is the description of my choice and yours - the eternal scene of a human being who, having freedom, reaches for what he should not. Each of us repeats Eden daily. That is why this book is as old as the world and as fresh as this morning’s temptation.

And since God gave man the freedom to reach for evil, he gave him real freedom. I have written about this separately, in a piece on free will as the greatest gift and the greatest risk. Here it is enough to say: the drama of Genesis is not a Jewish legend. It is a diagnosis of the human condition more accurate than many a volume of philosophy.

Law and wisdom - for everyone, not for some

Let us go further. The second great gift of the Old Testament is the moral law - and again, not tribal but universal.

You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

- Ex 20:13-16 (BT)

Show me a civilisation, a culture, or a legal system that could survive while rejecting these sentences. You will not find one. The Decalogue is not a local custom of the ancient Near East - it is the moral spine on which the whole world still stands, including the world that wants nothing to do with God. The atheist who says “you must not murder” is unwittingly quoting Sinai.

And alongside the law - wisdom. And here the image of a “grim chronicle” collapses fastest. For listen to how the heart of the wisdom books sounds:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

- Prov 3:5-6 (BT)

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

- Eccl 3:1 (BT)

This is not a chronicle of massacres. It is the purest wisdom about how to live - quoted, sung, and repeated by people of every culture, often even by unbelievers. The Book of Job grapples with the hardest question a human being knows - why the innocent suffer - and does so with a courage no philosophy would be ashamed of (I wrote about this in a piece on Job and the heroism of a man who lost everything). The Psalms are a school of prayer for the whole world. And the Song of Songs is a poem about love so bold that many would be surprised to find it in a “religious book.”

A person who has read this will not call the Old Testament a chronicle of blood. Only the one who has not opened it will call it that.

This whole book points to Christ

Here we come to the thing that matters most for a Christian. The Old Testament is not a closed, self-sufficient book of one nation, because it is waiting for something. It is tensed entirely toward the future, it points its finger beyond itself - to the Messiah.

Already in the third chapter of Genesis, right after the fall, the first promise is made:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

- Gen 3:15 (BT)

Christian tradition calls this the “protoevangelium” - the first Good News, hidden already at the very beginning. And then, over the centuries, the promises thicken. They sound fullest in Isaiah, seven hundred years before Christ:

But he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.

- Is 53:5 (BT)

Read that and ask honestly: who is this about? It was written seven centuries before Golgotha, yet it reads like an eyewitness account from beneath the cross. Psalm 22 begins with the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” - the very words Christ will speak on the cross - and describes pierced hands and feet and the casting of lots for garments, ages before the crucifixion. Micah even names the birthplace of the Messiah - Bethlehem (Mic 5:1).

This is the heart of the matter. The Old Testament without the New is unfinished - a question without an answer. The New Testament without the Old is rootless - an answer without a question. Together they form one story: promise and fulfilment. To throw out the Old Testament is to tear the first three hundred pages out of a novel and then be puzzled that the ending makes no sense.

Christ himself regarded the Old Testament as the word of God

And now the argument that, for a Christian, should settle the matter. One can argue about interpretations. But there is one thing a Christian cannot dispute: Jesus’ own attitude to the Old Testament.

Jesus did not treat these books as the national chronicle of his countrymen. He treated them as the word of God - he quoted them at the most decisive moments, defended them, and said plainly that he had come to fulfil them.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.

- Mt 5:17 (BT)

“The Law and the Prophets” was the name of the Old Testament in that era. Jesus says: I have not come to cancel this - I have come to fulfil it. These are not the words of someone who considers the OT an outdated tribal book.

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, he answers Satan three times with a quotation - and each time it is a quotation from Deuteronomy: “It is written…” (Mt 4:4-10). When he disputes with his opponents, he settles the matter with a sentence that, for a Christian, is devastating:

Scripture cannot be set aside.

- Jn 10:35 (BT)

And after the resurrection, walking with his disciples to Emmaus, he does something telling:

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

- Lk 24:27 (BT)

The risen Christ explains his own life and death through the Old Testament. He takes Moses and the prophets and shows: all of this was spoken of here. This is his own commentary on these books - and it is the commentary of someone who treats them with the utmost seriousness.

From this comes a simple, hard conclusion. If someone calls himself a Christian - that is, a disciple of Christ - then he cannot at the same time reject what his Master called the word of God, what he prayed with, defended himself with, and came to fulfil. You can reject the Old Testament or follow Christ. You cannot do both at once. On how to read these books wisely and without falling into extremes, I have written separately in a piece on how to read the Bible.

A book that does not spare Israel

There is one more fact that completely overturns the image of the Old Testament as national self-promotion. If Israel had written this book for its own glory, it would be the worst-written propaganda in history. For the Old Testament does not flatter Israel - it rebukes it without cease.

God is harder on his own people than on anyone. He charges them with idolatry, unfaithfulness, the oppression of the poor, empty ritual. He sends prophet after prophet - not to praise the nation, but to call it to conversion, often in devastating words.

Woe to the sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity (…). They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.

- Is 1:4 (BT)

This is not the language of national pride. It is the language of a God locked in an unceasing drama with his people - he loves them, chooses them, leads them, and they betray him again and again, go into exile, return, fall once more. The whole history of Israel in the Old Testament is a story of man’s unfaithfulness and God’s faithfulness, not of one nation’s superiority over others. If anyone is “great” in this book, it is not Israel - it is the God who, despite everything, does not abandon it.

And that is precisely why reading the Old Testament as a glorification of the chosen people inverts its meaning. It is not a book that exalts this nation. It is a book that constantly puts it on trial.

”But what about the claim to the land?” - on what the promises really mean

There remains the most serious charge, the political one: if God in the Old Testament promises Israel land and blessing, is this book not simply the foundation for one nation’s present-day claim to land and to rule over others? Is the Old Testament not, after all, a sacred licence for nationalism?

This charge rests on a certain error - and an error that Christianity recognised and resolved two thousand years ago. It is called confusing the figure with the fulfilment.

Let us explain it calmly. The promises given to Abraham had two layers from the start. The first - yes, land, offspring, a nation. But there was a second, more important one, which God speaks at once:

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

- Gen 12:3 (BT)

“All the families of the earth” - not one nation, but all of them. Already in the first promise given to Abraham the goal is not the dominance of one tribe, but a blessing for all nations. And that blessing - the New Testament says plainly - came in Christ.

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.

- Gal 3:16 (BT)

This is the key. St. Paul says: the true addressee and fulfilment of the promise is one Person - Christ. And through him, heirs of the promise become all who belong to him - from every nation, language, and people. The promised land turns out to be a figure of something incomparably greater: the Kingdom of God, the heavenly homeland, to which every human being has entry, not only the citizen of one state.

But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

- Heb 11:16 (BT)

The author of Hebrews says this of Abraham and the patriarchs: they themselves were seeking not a strip of ground in the Near East, but a heavenly homeland. The land was a sign, a pledge, a foreshadowing - not the final goal.

And here is something that must not be overlooked, because history has already shown where it leads. This very error - reading God’s promises as the announcement of Israel’s earthly power - is exactly the error through which Christ was not recognised. When the Messiah came, many who awaited him read the prophecies in their own way: they expected a warrior-king who would throw off the yoke of Rome and restore the nation’s earthly glory. They were looking for a throne, an army, political liberation. And when there stood before them a Messiah who was meek, suffering, crucified - exactly as Isaiah had foretold in his fifty-third chapter - they did not recognise him. They had the prophecy of the Suffering Servant before their eyes and did not read it, because they were waiting for a conqueror. The deepest misreading of Scripture in history was precisely this: God’s promises were taken for the announcement of an earthly, national triumph - and so their true fulfilment was missed.

This is a warning, not an accusation. For if a reading of those same promises today - “God gave us the land and dominion over the nations” - again takes them for a mandate of earthly power, it repeats that old mistake. It springs from the same root: confusing the Kingdom of God with a kingdom of this world. And this is exactly what Scripture warns against - for this misunderstanding once already caused men to overlook God himself, when he stood in their midst.

And so to read the ancient promises as a present-day geopolitical programme - as an eternal deed of ownership to a territory or a mandate to rule over nations - is a double misunderstanding. First, it confuses the historical order with the political: describing a certain stage of God’s plan is not the same as a recipe for today’s borders. Second, and more importantly, it overlooks the fact that Christianity from the beginning reads these promises as fulfilled in Christ, not as awaiting realisation by any earthly power.

In other words: the charge that “the Old Testament justifies one nation’s claim to rule” does not strike the Christian Old Testament. At most it strikes a reading of it detached from Christ - and such a reading a Christian must reject anyway, for it is precisely Christ who is the key to these books. For a Christian the promised land is not the Near East. It is the Kingdom, in which “there is neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal 3:28).

One story in two acts

Let us return, then, to the diagnosis we began with - the one about “the grim history of Israel dressed up with a religious gloss.” It is now clear why it is false.

First, the Old Testament is not the chronicle of one nation - it is mostly law, wisdom, poetry, prayer, and prophecy, and the purely historical books are only a part of it. Second, it begins not with Israel but with the creation of man and the world - it is the story of every one of us. Third, it gives the world the Decalogue and the wisdom on which the whole of civilisation still stands. Fourth, it is tensed entirely toward Christ - it is the first act of a drama whose resolution is the Gospel. Fifth and finally, Christ himself regarded it as the word of God - so a Christian has no choice here.

And the “religious gloss”? That is the truth turned inside out. God is not poured into this history for flavour. God is its Author and chief Protagonist. It is not the history of Israel with a dash of God - it is the history of God, who walks with man through the ages, patiently, step by step, until the day he himself becomes man.

So one can respect another person’s intelligence and still say: here you are mistaken. The Old Testament is not a Jewish national book from which someone derives a right to land. It is the first half of a letter God wrote to all of humanity - and the second half bears the name Jesus.

Whoever reads only the first half complains that the story is dark and unfinished. Whoever tries to read only the second does not understand where it came from. Only the two together form one whole: the history of salvation, which God writes from the first “let there be” to the last “Come, Lord Jesus.” I have written more about this one continuous story in a piece on the history of salvation.

And if particular dark passages of the Old Testament trouble you - the wars, the plagues, the wrath of God - I have honestly grappled with them separately, in a piece on why God in the Old Testament was cruel. For to acknowledge that this is the word of God does not mean pretending there are no difficult pages in it. It means having the courage to read them to the end - until it turns out they lead to the Cross.