08 Christian Reading

Christian reading begins with the New Testament writers reading the scriptures of Israel as bearing witness to Jesus Christ. Characteristic of the Great Church is the determination to continue reading these scriptures (which Christians later came to call the Old Testament) as authoritative even for Gentile Christians, despite the fact it is the history of the Jews and many of its laws do not apply to Gentiles. One key strategy for such reading is typology, in which people and events of the Old Testament prefigure those of the New Testament. Another key strategy is allegory, in which the text has another meaning in addition to its literal sense, one which points beyond historical events to eternal truth.