Gary Edward Schnittjer
“It’s embarrassing.”
That is how I answered a question in a recent podcast interview about the Bible of Jesus—what we call the Old Testament.
They had asked: “In all of your experience in teaching at the university level, what would you say students find most difficult when it comes to engaging with the Old Testament?”
I answered the podcast hosts that students are embarrassed because of uninformed prejudice against the Old Testament in the different spheres of students’ lives. Their friends think it’s boring. Churches minimize and correct it. And especially modern culture ridicules it.1
These things are not new. They are not in doubt. These things should be troubling. They should alarm us. That many Christians have accepted the embarrassment of the Old Testament is part of the problem.
Unpacking the embarrassment about the Bible of Jesus is personal. I say this as a Christian and as a professor of Old Testament.
Jesus is not embarrassed about his Bible. He owns it. He studies it. He teaches it. He taunts his enemies with it. He claims it teaches us all we need to know about redemption (Luke 16:31). If this tells us anything, it says we are wrong for being ashamed of his Bible. This means it is not enough to shake our heads and sigh about what has become of the Old Testament in our day. We need to resurrect the Bible of Jesus to its proper place in our lives.
Embarrassment about the Old Testament among Christians
Churches tend to love the New Testament and Jesus. The Old Testament, not so much. On any given Sunday many churchgoers are bound to hear the contrast between the Old and the New. Christian teachers and preachers speak about the New Testament Christ of love who is unlike the Old Testament God of wrath. The message also can be read in books by church-going scholars or evangelical ministers.
In 2023 a seasoned Old Testament scholar named James W. Watts crossed out all the so-called “immoral” verses in his commentary on Leviticus 11‒20. He goes on to call upon all scholars and Bible publishers to cross out all the “immoral” verses in the entire Bible—the vast majority are in Torah. He lists all of them. Watts’ list includes all commands about killing Canaanites, slavery, patriarchy, capital punishment, and more, as well as some sexual purity standards. He tells laity not to wait for Bible publishers but to cross out the immoral teachings in their own Bibles.2
The pastor of a large church in Georgia named Andy Stanley thinks that the Old Testament is ruining the gospel message. He is troubled by the sharp contrast between the wrathful God of Israel and the Christ of love.3 He tells his readers not to obey the Ten Commandments.4
This is incredibly bad advice. It is also directly opposed to the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament.
Again and again, Christians express their relief at not needing to bother with Old Testament teachings. Congregants shake their heads at what they see as God’s legalistic treatment of ancient Israel. They sometimes even comment on how much different Jesus is. Different than God? That’s not a Christian view. It’s also mistaken.
There are only 613 laws in the Torah. This only seems like a lot until we realize that there are more than 800 commands in the New Testament.5 People worry about the oddness of the laws of Torah. True, but commands in the New Testament are odd, too. Kiss one another (1 Cor 16:20). Women, cover your heads (11:5‒6). Be kind to strangers in case they are angelic beings in disguise (Heb 13:2). And many more.
Christians complain about the difficulty of obeying the laws of Torah. These Christians need to reread the commands of Christ placed at a much more demanding level. Torah says do not murder or commit adultery (Exod 20:13‒14). Jesus says do not act in anger or look with lust (Matt 5:21‒22, 27‒28).
Remember, we are saved by grace alone and nothing of ourselves in order to serve God by good works (Eph 2:8‒10). And the point of the great commission is “teaching them to keep all that I commanded you” (Matt 28:20 LSB).6
The contrast between God’s wrath and Christ’s love is prevalent in our day. It has been said so often that many congregants do not realize it is a lie.
Pushing Back Against Disparagement of the Old Testament by Culture
The enemies of Christianity say that the God of the Old Testament hates people, and he is a racist. These widespread assertions are a big part of why many Christians are ashamed of the Bible of Jesus.
These brazen claims of our day against the God of the Old Testament need to be challenged. They only make sense to people who do not know the Bible of Jesus. Anyone can read the Old Testament for themselves and see that the scorn heaped upon it by our prevailing culture is misguided.
And that’s the thing: There is nothing to be afraid of. Read the Old Testament for yourself.
The following questions push back against a handful of accusations that the God of the Old Testament is a racist who hates people. Though there is more to each of these issues, this will suffice for the present purposes.
Did you know that when Israel sins Yahweh treats them exactly like he treats the nations of Canaan? Seriously. Listen to what he says:
[Yahweh:] “But as for you [Israel], you shall keep my statutes and my judgments and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native nor the sojourner who sojourns among you . . . so that the land will not vomit you out, should you defile it, as it has vomited out the nation which has been before you.” (Lev 18:26, 28; cf. 20:22‒23; Deut 29:23)Many people, including modern Christians, do not realize that Yahweh punishes his own people in the very same way as anyone else, and for the same kinds of sin.7 It is worth evaluating the prejudices that modern readers impose upon biblical texts that emphasize Yahweh’s equality of justice.
Did you know that Yahweh punishes adulterers with the same severity as those who practice same-sex relations? Really. Read Leviticus 20:
“If there is a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife . . . the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. . . . If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman . . . they shall surely be put to death.” (Lev 20:10a, c, 13a, c)
God takes all kinds of illicit sexual relations as violations of what is right for those creatures made in his own image. He demands purity. The punishment seems harsh until we realize that it is not just a personal choice. The individuals who practiced these illicit sins put the entire nation at risk of exile. Yahweh’s call upon his people to be holy as he is holy should be taken seriously by all Christians.8
Did you know that Yahweh has always welcomed outsiders in the same way as his own people? I am not making this up. Notice the place for outsiders as early as Torah and as late as the return from exile:
“But if a sojourner sojourns with you [Israel] and celebrates the Passover to Yahweh, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it.” (Exod 12:48)
“Then the sons of Israel who returned from exile and all those who had separated themselves from the uncleanness of the nations of the land to join them, to seek Yahweh, the God of Israel, ate the Passover.” (Ezra 6:21)
The prophets and Jesus likewise emphasize that Yahweh makes a place for outsiders to worship him (cf. Isa 56:6‒7; Mark 11:17).
Did you know that Yahweh has compassion for those who are in trouble as though they are his own dependents? Look for yourself:
“You [Israel] shall not mistreat a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. And if you indeed afflict him, and if he earnestly cries out to me, I will surely hear his cry.” (Exod 22:21‒23)
“Yahweh keeps the sojourners; he helps up the orphan and the widow, but he bends the way of the wicked.” (Ps 146:9)
When Yahweh commands his people to care for outsiders, he calls them to do what he himself does (cf. Deut 10:18‒19). To love outsiders is to imitate Yahweh.
Did you know that Yahweh loves the wayward as he loves his very own? It’s true. Consider what he says about his own servant suffering in exile, the one who is ultimately identified as Jesus the Messiah:
“But Yahweh was pleased to crush him [the servant], putting him to grief. . . . As a result of the anguish of his soul . . . my servant, will justify the many, as he will bear their iniquities.” (Isa 53:10a, 11a, c)
As I said, there is more to it. These examples are just a tiny fraction of the evidence that could be presented here. But this is enough to make the point. The Old Testament does not line up with the distorted attitudes about it in the modern world, and even in modern Christianity.
Resurrecting the Bible of Jesus
Consider setting aside the wrongful attitudes moderns bring against the Bible of Jesus. A place to start is taking on the attitude of Jesus toward his Bible.
We should own it. Study it. Be humbled by it. Teach it. Tell others what it says about Yahweh’s mercy.
I invite you to read it for yourself. There’s no wrong place to begin. Jesus stopped the tempter with three teachings in Deuteronomy 6‒11. This section tells the people to love Yahweh who loved them first. This is one place we can start to see the Bible of Jesus resurrected to its rightful place in our lives.
The Bible of Jesus is God’s gift to those he loves.
An earlier version of this article appeared in the Cairn University magazine and is adapted by permission.
Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament at Cairn University and author of Torah Story, Old Testament Narrative Books: The Israel Story, the award-winning Old Testament Use of Old Testament, and co-author of How to Study the Bible’s Use of the Bible.
Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law
- See “Gary Schnittjer Interview – ‘Old Testament Narrative Books: The Israel Story,'” Hebrew Bible Insights, 46:52 at https://youtu.be/8g-umDyeKZQ?si=xT_qIdJFhdfKaYxd&t=2812.[↩]
- See James W. Watts, Leviticus 11‒20, Historical Commentary on the Old Testament (Leuven: Peeters, 2023), xxi‒xxxvi. Also see Gary Edward Schnittjer, “Fixing Moses: James W. Watts and Moses as Mediator of ‘Immoral’ Instructions,” invited paper for the Torah consultation, Evangelical Theological Society, San Diego, 21 Nov 2024.[↩]
- See Andy Stanley, Irresistible: Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 223, 257.[↩]
- See ibid., 136.[↩]
- See https://scriptureworkshop.com/bh/x/n/nt_commands_list.pdf.[↩]
- Unless stated otherwise, biblical translations come from Legacy Standard Bible—capitalization and emphasis modified. All emphasis is mine.[↩]
- See Gary Edward Schnittjer, Torah Story, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2023), 428‒32.[↩]
- For an introductory explanation of the teachings on sexual purity in Leviticus, see ibid., 297–98.[↩]