The Forgotten 73% of the Bible — Glenn Martin

So I think that's—I think it's amazing, but maybe it's not so amazing when you consider that New Testaments are sold today, like a Bible, just the New Testament, without an Old Testament even included in the Bible. Which, you know, if you imagine the opposite of that, imagine some Christians selling the Old Testament without a New Testament, you'll be like, "What in the world?" And yet that is almost what the early church had.

Glenn Martin, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you. So you are part of the Strength of Strength YouTube channel, which we've had numerous interactions with you all over the years. You just wrote a book called Righteous Lot, which is, again, about the story of Lot. You know, and we're doing a whole separate episode on that. We're not going to get into that topic. We'll save that for another time. But this got me thinking about different things. And Mr. Russell, Stephen Russell, wrote the foreword to this book. So we've had him on the podcast a number of times. And he makes an interesting point here. And I'd like to use that as kind of a launchpad into today's topic.

So if you don't mind, I'll just read this first bit here in the foreword. And this is what Stephen Russell writes in the foreword. He says, "One of the greatest underused resources available to Christians is the Old Testament."

And he goes on to say, you know, he teaches at Faith Builders, and he mentions different things, how he gets to teach some of these things. And so I just—to jump right in, why don't we read the Old Testament more? And then what are some of the common misunderstandings we have about it? Sure. Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Reagan. Happy to be here. Why don't we read the Old Testament more? Good question. So I think there's maybe two parts to this. We might look at the symptoms and then also the root cause. The symptoms are easier to identify. So maybe we can start with that.

Regarding the symptoms, I think it's indisputable that many Christians today view the Old Testament as being irrelevant or unhelpful or even unspiritual. And the New Testament is dominating in virtually all forms of teaching. And the Old Testament is considered like children's literature. And it's got some quaint stories of David and Goliath, you know, and Noah's Ark. And you know, and that's kind of how it's oftentimes viewed by Christians today.

If you look, like do a Google search on the most neglected books of the Bible, they're almost all Old Testament. Just out of curiosity, not to derail us, but do you know what like would be like the number one or the top most neglected? It'd probably like Leviticus or something. So not all of the lists agree because different people have done studies on this. And I think what does agree is that it's the Old Testament minor prophets that are among the least used, as well as some of the books of the Pentateuch. You mentioned Leviticus, and that would be among those. Yeah, I can imagine numbers is probably up there as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah, this is totally a thing, though, because it's like the Old Testament is a huge chunk of our Bible, but we just aren't very familiar with it, if that makes sense. Or at least I feel like I'm not. But anyways, sorry, continue on, not to derail where you were going. So the Logos Bible Software, which is very, very popular and well-known, they have much more than just the Bible. They have lots of Bible commentaries and things in their suite of resources, Bible dictionaries and journal articles and many other things. So there was a researcher at Logos that took a cross-section of all their resources, and then they extracted the references to Scripture out of that.

So out of all their resources, they came up with a listing of 830,000 references to Scripture. And then you can rank those and see where the interest is. So when that's done, in the top 100 most cited references, only nine were from the Old Testament out of 100. And eight of those nine were from Genesis.

One was from Isaiah. And then the remaining ones are from the New Testament, right? Whoa. Which is amazing, considering that the Old Testament is 73% of the Bible. You know, it's not a 50-50. The dominant text is the Old Testament, and only 9% is being cited from there. So like three quarters, essentially, of the Bible as we have it today is Old Testament. Wow, okay, that's way more skewed than I actually thought. That's a fascinating study.

Wow. And then if you look at the contrast of that for the New Testament, virtually every verse is cited for a book like Romans or First Corinthians. Every verse. And the Old Testament entire books, whole collections of books are not. Yeah.

So I think that's—I think it's amazing. But maybe it's not so amazing when you consider that New Testaments are sold today, like a Bible, just the New Testament, without an Old Testament even included in the Bible. Which, you know, if you imagine the opposite of that, imagine some Christians selling the Old Testament without a New Testament, you'll be like, "What in the world?" And yet that is almost what the early church had.

That's a good point. Get into that a little bit more. Like when you say that's what the early church had, I think that's really easy to forget when, say, Paul is writing and he's talking about the Scriptures and so forth. The only Scripture he would have had at the time would have been what we call the Old Testament now, essentially, right? Exactly. So when we read in the New Testament, some of the things that Paul is saying or others, like for example, let me just take an example from Romans chapter 15. Paul said that whatever things were written before were written for our learning. People are like, "Oh, yeah, that must be, you know, our Bible."

No, it's only the Old Testament. And he's clearly talking about the Old Testament when he says that. Six times in that one chapter, he quotes the Old Testament. He's talking about the Old Testament. And that's what they had. And he says, "These things were written for our learning." So they had an Old Testament without a New Testament, and they preached about Jesus from that. I find that fascinating. Yeah. Well, that's hard to imagine something like that happening today. Or like, you know what I mean? Like if you had to preach Jesus and you only had, yeah, the Old Testament, you know, because the early church, maybe the New Testament hadn't even been written yet, you know, when this is all starting.

That would be a challenge for us today. You know what I mean? Exactly. Right. So I think, you know, that kind of illustrates the symptoms of where we're at, where so little reference is made to the Old Testament that people are becoming largely illiterate of the Old Testament story.

Yeah. Okay, so you just hit some of the symptoms, like what we're seeing. But dive into the root causes then. Sure. Yeah, so identifying the root cause is maybe a little bit more difficult. So I'm going to give you my theory of why it is that we neglect the Old Testament. Sometimes a metaphor is used of a flat Bible. People talk about a flat Bible, meaning that equal weight is placed on all the texts from all places.

It's a hermeneutic where the application or the value or whatever is equivalent wherever you look. Yeah, so I think that's probably not too difficult to understand. I don't believe that. Okay, I don't believe in a flat Bible. I think that clearly the New Testament is the final revelation that we have, but it's built on top of a foundation of the Old Testament. So one thing that I think oftentimes happens is that people will take the statement that I just said, that the New Testament is built on the foundation of the Old Testament, and they'll then look at it as being a New Testament versus Old Testament. Okay? And that's where the contrast is made. But I think that there might be a better way to look at that.

So Jesus, when he came as the Messiah, he was the new Moses. And there's many parallels that you can take a look at of how Jesus parallels Moses. And I think that's really the big difference of authority and weight. Is the old Moses or the new Moses? Well, Jesus presented a new law. Moses had an old law that was given on Sinai that I think has been replaced. So I think that what we should be doing is instead of saying we have Old Testament versus New Testament, we should be saying Jesus versus Moses.

And so the Torah, the law of Moses, has been replaced. But not all of the Old Testament is Torah. We have lots of Old Testament with lots of good teaching that is not all to be disregarded as Old Testament. But instead, we do have a section of that, which is the law of Moses, which has been replaced. Hebrews talks about the, you know, Hebrews is considered to be the book of better things. And he's not comparing the writer of Hebrews, whoever that is, is not comparing the Old Testament to the New Testament. He's comparing the law of Moses to the law of Jesus.

Huh. I don't know if I've ever heard that before. And I think it's because of that, when that's misunderstood and people position the Old Testament against the New Testament, that's why the Old Testament has lost its weight or validity or something like that. Yeah, because it's almost like, well, it's like, oh, that's that old thing over there. It's, you know, whatever. It's not really that relevant anymore. Yeah.

So going back to, actually, let me just find this again, because you mentioned Romans 15 here, which is actually, it's interesting. It's where you start your book out with this, actually, which is pretty neat. So I'm going to just quick read that again. You just quoted it before, but let's hit this again. For whatever things were written before were written for our learning that we, through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope. It's Romans 15, verse 4. And then you said, you know, that you made the point that he goes on to quote the Old Testament multiple times in that same chapter. Okay, so how do we apply what Paul says there in that verse?

Sure. So Paul wrote a lot of other things as well. And part of that is in First Corinthians, chapter 10. And in First Corinthians 10, Paul takes the wilderness journey of Israel, and he applies it to the Christian life. Okay? He says that they were all baptized in the Red Sea. He says, this is how they failed. This is how they failed. You know, don't follow in that way. First Corinthians 10, the earlier part of the chapter, I think, is illustrating very well an example of things that we should be learning from the wilderness journeys and applying to our lives. First Corinthians 10 also calls it examples, and it calls it admonition.

So we're neglecting examples that are for us. We're neglecting admonition that's for us if we neglect those stories. And then very similarly, Second Timothy 3, here we have the same writer again. He calls the Old Testament profitable for doctrine and for reproof and for correction and for instruction and righteousness.

So I think all of those things are simply illustrating that they viewed this as authoritative. It remains authoritative, not the Torah. The Torah has been replaced by Jesus, the new Moses. But the Old Testament as a whole, with the caveat of not the Torah, has a lot of doctrine and instruction for us today.

So this may have to do more with history, but let me just use an example. So Abraham was called by God out of the land of Ur, like 4,000 years ago, roughly. You know, how does something like that far in the past still matter to us today? Like, why should we care about events in the Old Testament, say, that are just so many generations back? It's like, how do, why should we even care about that? That might have to do more with, does history matter almost? You know what I mean? But yeah, how would you answer someone who says? Yeah, no, it's a good question because Abraham was 4,000 years ago. That's a long time ago.

But thousands of years before Abraham, we have Adam and Eve in the garden. And it's interesting that Jesus said to the Pharisees who were challenging him, he said, "Haven't you read that at the beginning, the Creator made them male and female?" And he says, "For that reason, a man will leave his father and mother and so on."

So that's long before Abraham, thousands of years before Abraham. And Jesus said, "You know, haven't you read what happened at the beginning? Like, that should be meaningful to you." He says, "Because of this, for this reason that a man will leave his father and mother." So that's, I think, interesting that all the way back to the beginning, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, there's examples that should be meaningful to our lives today.

As in, you know, these stories are still relevant for our lives in that way. Yes. Okay. Yep. And also, you could go into, in general, why, you know, why history itself matters, or like the history, the story from the world, really, the story throughout time that got us to here, you know, and we talked about that a little bit in the other episode we did with you.

Okay, so I have to ask a little more specifically here. What's your favorite book in the Old Testament? Sure. Well, I love the Old Testament as a whole, but if I were to try to identify what part of it is my favorite, the Pentateuch kind of has my interest.

First Corinthians 10 that I already cited mentions a lot of things that happened that are recorded in Numbers and Exodus, maybe Deuteronomy as well. But yeah, Numbers and Exodus that illustrate lessons that Paul thought are meaningful today. And I think we can like derive a lot of instruction for us to this day. I think it's a foreshadowing of the Christian life that should be meaningful, and I think that will forever intrigue me.

That's, yeah, that's interesting. I have to be honest, it's been a minute since I read Numbers. Okay. So I might have to give that another go. Okay, so as we wrap this up, what is a piece you can leave with our audience to encourage them to get into the Old Testament more, to read it more, engage with it more, study it, and so forth? Sure. I don't know what to say except to jump in. It's like the Old Testament has a lot of value. I think oftentimes when people want to go to the Old Testament, they find it difficult. But part of the reason is just, I think, lack of familiarity. And the more you can become familiar with it, the more meaning it will bring.

I think we need to like place ourselves into their worldview. They weren't living in the time that we're living. So place yourselves back at that time. You were under the law of Moses. So what did these people mean when they said the things that they said? And I think that the more that you delve into it, the more sense it will make, the more intrigue it will bring. And after a while, you won't be able to stop.

That's really, yeah. That's really powerful. I really hope this has encouraged people to read the Old Testament more. I'm kind of with you there that I really enjoy the Old Testament. I don't know why I just always have. It's just that there are so many things going on there. It's such a rich, multi-layered, you know, there's just a lot of depth going on in these stories and the prophets, and especially the major prophets. It's some really fascinating stuff. Right. One more thing I might mention is that when you get a better picture of the Old Testament, then you read the New Testament. Now suddenly you see that these old, that the New Testament writers are making a lot of references back to the Old Testament.

They don't always say it was written such and such, but you can see what they're thinking. And they're thinking of things that have been written thousands of years before have become a part of their life. It's like all the illusions back, you know, with the, it's, well, we had Paul Amichele on the podcast. Again, I'm not sure if it's going to be out when we release this one, but he was talking about Revelation and how it's weaving in all these themes with Eden and the temple and tabernacle and God dwelling with it. And it's like this tapestry that's woven all together. And if you only take just the one piece, you know, you read that chapter in Revelation, that's it.

They're like, okay, that's good, but you're going to miss so many layers of meaning because you haven't read Ezekiel and you haven't read, you know, Genesis and all this stuff. And I was like, huh, you know, to be honest, I have not read Ezekiel in a long time, you know? And so it was kind of an encouragement for me. It was like, well, I should probably pick up Ezekiel again, you know, and so forth.

Wow, this is fascinating. Is there anything else you would like to leave us as we wrap it up? I think that largely covers it. Like I said, jump in. That's fantastic. That's a good note to end it on. So I'm hoping the listeners will take this and go to the Old Testament. Yeah. So appreciate it. Thank you for sharing. Of course. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode with Glenn Martin. If you found this interesting, you should check out the episode we did with Stephen Russell on the Old Testament and non-resistance. And you can find it linked down below. Consider joining our partner program, which is for those that give a monthly gift of any amount. Partners get access to an exclusive podcast as well as other bonus material. And you can sign up on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. Thanks again, and we'll see you in the next episode.