Enlightenment attempts to save the Old Testament Pastors and scholars today lament the Old Testament's neglect in the West. But this is nothing new. In the eighteenth century, natural philosopher John Hutchinson witnessed the Old Testament becoming devalued as Scripture. And in his mind, the blame lay with Isaac Newton. In The Quest to Save the Old Testament, David Ney traces the battle over Scripture during the Enlightenment period. For Hutchinson, critical scholarship's enchantment with the naturalism of Newton undermined the study of the Old Testament. As cultural forces reshaped biblical interpretation, Hutchinson spawned a movement that sought, above all, to reclaim the Old Testament as Christian Scripture. Hutchinson's followers sought to be shaped by Scripture, not culture. Rejecting the Newtonian degradation of history, they offered a compelling figural defense of the Old Testament's doctrinal and moral significance. The Old Testament is the voice of Providence. It is the means of discerning God's hand at work both in nature and in history. The Quest to Save the Old Testament is a timely retelling of fateful and faithful attempts to "save" the Old Testament.

Enlightenment attempts to save the Old Testament Pastors and scholars today lament the Old Testament's neglect in the West. But this is nothing new. In the eighteenth century, natural philosopher John Hutchinson witnessed the Old Testament becoming devalued as Scripture. And in his mind, the blame lay with Isaac Newton. In The Quest to Save the Old Testament, David Ney traces the battle over Scripture during the Enlightenment period. For Hutchinson, critical scholarship's enchantment with the naturalism of Newton undermined the study of the Old Testament. As cultural forces reshaped biblical interpretation, Hutchinson spawned a movement that sought, above all, to reclaim the Old Testament as Christian Scripture. Hutchinson's followers sought to be shaped by Scripture, not culture. Rejecting the Newtonian degradation of history, they offered a compelling figural defense of the Old Testament's doctrinal and moral significance. The Old Testament is the voice of Providence. It is the means of discerning God's hand at work both in nature and in history. The Quest to Save the Old Testament is a timely retelling of fateful and faithful attempts to "save" the Old Testament.

Based on selections from the Old Testament.

If only we could hold the actual words of Luke's descriptive narrative or Paul's outpouring of pastoral pain to the church at Corinth. Now we can. A continuing quest to recover the New Testament text allows Christians to open their Bibles with confidence that the words approximate the writers' Greek quill strokes or the English equivalents. Such thought breaths excitement into Philip Comfort's history of the New Testament text and discussion of the credibility (and limitations) of texts and translations. Comfort challenges the view that early copyists were careless and took editorial liberties. He argues that their accuracy and integrity are indisputable. While this task involves comparing manuscripts, technical facts are framed in historical and cultural color. He assures Christians that even uncovering the paper signed by Paul would not change our understanding of what he said. This introduction to the work of textual criticism challenges students to continue the quest for the original text. It is essentially a sequel to 'Early Manuscripts and Modern Translations of the New Testament.'

The conviction that the Old Testament struggles to function as Scripture for Christians in the modern west has a long history. The first to identify the problem was likely eighteenth-century natural philosopher John Hutchinson. Hutchinson complained that the Old Testament had fallen into disrepute because, while people were praising Newton as the font of natural philosophical wisdom, they should have been looking to Moses. Hutchinson accordingly devised an ingenious method of interpreting the words of Moses as natural philosophical emblems. Hutchinson's disciples applied Hutchinson's method to the full range of Scriptural words. In the process, they developed a method in which the providential significance of the full range of natural and historical objects could be identified by their reinterpretation as Scriptural figures. The way the Hutchinsonians were able to make all Scriptural words beneficial for providential discernment enabled them to defend the Old Testament as an equal partner in the Christian canon of Scripture. It was as a historical document that the Old Testament was called into question in eighteenth-century England. In a Newtonian context captivated by the ability of the new empirical science to illumine the providential order of nature, people questioned the ability of history and historically contingent disciplines to provide similar illumination. It is thus that Newton's protégé Samuel Clarke dismisses the Old Testament as antithetical to principles of natural religion. The arduous journey to resuscitate the Old Testament I document, therefore, was a battle against the Newtonian assumption that nature alone could serve as the basis of a providential vision of the world. It was equally, however, a struggle against the Newtonian assumption that conceptual frameworks should be imposed on history to locate providential order. Hutchinsonian Scriptural interpretation rejects conceptual approaches to providential discernment and therefore denies that philosophies of history are either necessary or beneficial. The alternative path to providential discernment it provides is an invitation to people of all ages and intellectual abilities to reflect upon the objects they encounter in their everyday lives in light of the revelation of Scripture. And as such, it is not just a call to acknowledge the Old Testament. It is an invitation to intellectual humility.

Is the Old Testament a closed book? Does it have any relevance for us today? What did Jesus say? Does the manger scene on your lawn at Christmas time present the true picture of what really occurred? Have astronomers ever located the star of Bethlehem? Who were the wise men from the East? Were there only three? Why did Jesus say, Before Abraham was, I Am? Why didn't He say, Before Abraham was, I was? If He never attended the schools of His day, from what sources did He obtain enough wisdom to hold multitudes spellbound? These questions, and many more, will be answered for you in this book.