How the Tanakh shapes every page of the New Testament
By Jill Szoo Wilson
For the past two years, I’ve been studying God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That journey has brought me to the following summary. Over the next several months, I’ll be writing more about what I’ve learned.
The faith of Jesus of Nazareth and his earliest followers was never intended to create a new religion separated from Israel, but to reveal the long-awaited fulfillment of the story God had already been telling through the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, collectively referred to as the Tanakh*. This conviction is rooted in Second Temple Judaism** and in the apocalyptic imagination of the first-century Jewish world, where the writings of the New Testament introduce no fundamentally new theological categories, but instead reach back into the Tanakh with extraordinary density, depth, and intentionality. Nearly every covenant, feast, sacrifice, kingdom motif, wilderness narrative, prophetic vision, temple image, priestly act, messianic promise, and apocalyptic expectation in the Hebrew Scriptures finds its echo, expansion, or unveiling in the New Testament. Scripture is one unified, divinely authored story in which the later writings constantly hyperlink back to what came before, not to replace it, but to reveal its fullness.
There is no theological dividing wall between Judaism and Christianity, nor has the Church replaced Israel. Through Israel’s Messiah, the nations are grafted into Israel’s covenantal promises, sharing in the rich root of the olive tree described by Paul the Apostle in Romans. The promises remain Israel’s promises. The covenants remain Israel’s covenants. The Messiah remains Israel’s Messiah, now extending mercy to the nations.
Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish Messiah promised in the Tanakh. The New Testament does not replace Israel’s story; it reveals its ongoing messianic fulfillment. Gentile believers are grafted into Israel’s covenantal promises through Israel’s Messiah. And that story reaches its climactic fulfillment on the Day of the Lord, when Jesus returns to reign from Jerusalem exactly as the prophets anticipated.
From beginning to end, Scripture reveals one God, one covenantal story, one unfolding kingdom, and one Messiah bringing that story to its appointed fulfillment.
*For readers unfamiliar with the acronym Tanakh:
T = Torah (the law): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
N = Nevi’im (the Prophets): Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets
K = Ketuvim (The Writings): Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra–Nehemiah, Chronicles
**Second Temple Judaism refers to the period of Jewish history between the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile (c. 516 BC) and its destruction by Rome in AD 70. This was the theological, cultural, and apocalyptic world of Jesus of Nazareth, his disciples, and the earliest believers. To read the New Testament through the lens of Second Temple Judaism is to read it as a thoroughly Jewish document emerging from Israel’s already existing covenantal, messianic, and prophetic worldview.
Jill Szoo Wilson 