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Matthew begins his gospel with an allusion to Genesis. He is writing a new book of beginnings, a book of new beginnings. That might fool us into thinking that the Bible starts all over again with the New Testament, but that's not the case.
In many portions and many ways, Matthew shows us that his gospel is a continuation of the story of the Old Testament. He traces Jesus’ ancestry from Abraham. He frequently tells us that Jesus fulfills Scripture. He implicitly compares Jesus' life with the lives of Moses, Joshua, Solomon, Elisha, Jeremiah. Jesus lives through the history of Israel from exodus to exile and beyond.
Matthew's gospel is not complete in itself. His text is full of "holes" (Dale Allison), holes that only the reader with a thorough knowledge of the Old Testament can fill.
In past ages, Christians were able to fill those gaps. Scripture was pop culture and "popular music" (Allison) for the church fathers and medieval monks. They read Scripture, heard it, sang it, studied it, copied it, painted it, carved it into stone and wood. It enveloped them. Saturated with Scripture, they instinctively noticed things we miss. And, saturated with Scripture, they built a civilization whose capital still sustains us.
We are terribly distracted. There are so many voices, so much music, so many images to dazzle and delight. Scripture is not our pop culture. It is not the air we breathe. But if we hope to grasp the depths of the gospel, the Bible must envelop us too. If we want to come anywhere near to creating the kind of Christian literature, art, architecture, polity and poetry that earlier Christians created, Scripture must become our pop culture.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, April 22, 2007 at 07:43 AM
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