Playing Fast and Loose With Scripture: The New Testament Writers

People often either love or hate the Bible. 

Those who love it sometimes love it with a rather simple kind of love. They swallow it whole—or at least they swallow whole what their pastors and other respected spiritual authority figures tell them about it.

And those who hate it—well, they see the (very real and valid) problems with it, and with how it has been used. And they want nothing to do with it. 

Of course, not everyone falls in one of these two camps. There are those of us—and I would guess there are rather a lot of us, whether or not it feels safe to say so in our churches or other circles—who still engage with the Bible, but in a less straightforward way. 

We wrestle with it. We aren’t sure what to think of it sometimes. But we keep reading. And we keep thinking. 

Its stories are stored in our souls and carry value there. But we have not exactly swallowed it whole.

My time in seminary gave me some perspectives on this that I still think about often. Over the next four-ish posts, I’d like to share some of these perspectives. 

The first involves the ways the New Testament writers worked with the Hebrew Scriptures. I was shocked to learn how fast and loose they played with their (and our) holy texts. But I also found this knowledge liberating.

Who Wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews?

I am not over a certain Final Jeopardy question from the Tournament of Champions back in November. 

The clue: “Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations.”

“Hebrews” was considered the correct answer. 

Jeopardy! defended this decision, even though scholars generally agree that the book of Hebrews was not written by Paul, and so the clue is…confusing, at best.

I don’t know what random seminarian they asked—one of the show’s researchers said they “reached out to a seminarian who had verified that our information, as written in the clue, was correct”—but I was taught in seminary that Hebrews was likely not written by Paul. In fact, on the sliding scale of New Testament books with some historical claim to Pauline authorship that likely weren’t actually written by Paul, it ranks firmly at the bottom. 

I learned from my biblical interpretation professor Dr. Love Sechrest (to give credit where credit is due!) that scholars generally agree on seven New Testament epistles written by Paul: 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Philemon, and Philippians.

Scholars tend to argue about the authorship of these six epistles: Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus (listed in order of most likely to least likely written by Paul).

And then there’s Hebrews. Which was clearly enough not written by Paul that it’s kind of in its own category.

All this to say, biblical interpretation is complicated. Authorship is complicated. And who we think wrote these books influences how we read them. 

The Hebrew Scriptures Shaped Everything…But How?

Jeopardy! gripes aside, Hebrews is not the only New Testament book that quotes (and paraphrases) a ton from the Hebrew scriptures. It doesn’t take much time reading the New Testament—at least if you’ve got some good footnotes—to realize this.

The Hebrew scriptures (often called the Old Testament by Christians…and apparently by Jeopardy! writers, too) informed and deeply shaped how the writers of the New Testament understood life, faith, God, the universe, and everything. (*Nods to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.*) But how it did so is a little more complex.

Before seminary I had not thought much about this how. Not just the what, but the how. Not just what content the New Testament writers brought in from their Hebrew religious scriptures, but also questions such as:

1. How they thought about that content
2. How fast and loose they felt free to play with it
3. How literally they took it
4. How word-for-word they transcribed it
5. How important they felt it was to get the details straight
6. How much of their own agenda they felt free to read into it 

It turns out the answers, respectively, at least as far as I can tell, are something like this: 

1. All sorts of different ways. Each New Testament writer had their own theologies and beliefs. They each had their own goals in writing. There was quite a bit of diversity among them. And that’s a good thing—it makes the New Testament as a whole much more rich, complex, full, and interesting.
2. Very fast and loose. Surprisingly so, at least to me. They combine a few words from one scripture with a few words from another, like a remix of your favorite ‘80s song with a new refrain. They quote from different translations and versions—sometimes multiple translations in the same breath, as if they’re picking the words they like best. They combine it seamlessly with their own thoughts.
3. Not very. They’re looking to apply it in particular ways to their own lives and communities, making meaning of it in ways its original writers would likely never have been able to predict.
4. Again, not very. (See #2.)
5. Again, not very.
6. Plenty. They’re often making a particular point that has nothing to do with the original meaning of the scripture in its original context. They feel free to reinterpret it to mean something new for the new time and place they find themselves in, something that feels relevant to their overarching argument. They are choosing their biases. They’re exercising agency regarding what they are looking for and how they’re finding it.

How did Christians get from this place—a place of creativity, of thinking imaginatively about sacred texts from long ago and listening together to the Spirit of love and justice as we think about how they might relate to our lives today—to a place of literal readings, rigid doctrine, and authoritarian control?

That might be a question for another time. But it feels worth asking. 

Freedom for the New Testament Writers, and for Us Too

Personally, I’ve found it immensely liberating to know that the New Testament writers felt like they could approach scripture with such freedom. Perhaps there’s room for us to do the same. 

Perhaps there’s room for us, too, to:

• Question the interpretations we have been handed
• Look for ourselves and see what we find
• Draw from different translations that speak to us
• Remix different parts together in a way that breathes life and hope into our lives and communities
• Be less concerned with obedience to a set of rules and more concerned with listening to God and listening to people

For me, there’s life in this.

I’ve moved from being suspicious of those who don’t seem to take scripture seriously enough to being more open to the different forms “taking scripture seriously” can take. To embracing questions, thinking, wrestling. To approaching the Bible in ways that feel liberating rather than constraining.

Those of us who do not want to leave the Bible behind but also do not accept the Standard Evangelical Way of reading it are engaging in the same work Christians have been doing since the very beginning. Since the writing of the New Testament. 

If you are among those engaging in this work, blessings to you.