New Theology in Light of Old Testament Interpretation in the Pauline Epistles

The early Church Fathers, by reordering the Jewish sacred texts, placed the officially canonized Christian scriptures alongside the Hebrew scriptures in a manner that allowed the former to be perceived as a continuation of the latter. Thus, the religious authority of the Jewish scriptures remained intact and they became an integral part of the Christian theological worldview. Furthermore, the Gospels reference the fulfillment of prophetic promises made in the Hebrew Bible concerning the Jewish Messiah, aligning these prophecies with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and thereby affirming the historical continuity of the Jewish texts. The Pauline Epistles, which constitute a foundational portion of the official Christian canon, occupy a distinct position in this context. While affirming the sacredness of Jewish scripture, Paul presents a conception of divine action in history that departs from earlier phases of human religious experience. Employing an allegorical method of interpretation rooted in the Jewish tradition, Paul articulates a philosophy of history that situates the advent of Jesus Christ, as the sacrificial Son of God, as a transformative turning point in human history. In this framework, although the Jewish texts are retained as the “former covenant” between God and humanity, they are reinterpreted as sources for articulating a novel theological vision. The legalistic orientation of those scriptures, however, is rendered obsolete. This study, through an analytical-descriptive approach, explores Paul’s use of allegorical interpretation of Jewish religious texts and the emergence of a new theological structure grounded in this hermeneutic.

کلیدواژه ها:

نامه های پولس ، الهیات پولسی ، تفسیر عهد عتیق ، تفسیر کنایه ای ، فلسفه تاریخ مسیحی