2. the Old Testament and the conflict for spirit- ual freedom.— So long as the preaching of the gos- pel was confined to Jews, the new wine was easily kept within the old bottles. But a conflict was inevitable when the wine began to ferment, and the freedom of the faith to assert itself against Jewish limitations. This conflict is already foreshadowed in St. Stephen's preaching ; but it became acute only with the conversion and world-wide ministry of St. Paul.
The Apostle to the Gentiles was a Pharisee ' of the straitest sect,' brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and thus imbued not merely with a deep reverence and love for the Scriptures, but also with the Rabbinic method of expounding them, in entire independence of their historical setting and signifi- cance, as a store-house of separate 'oracles,' the manifold sense of which (literal, allegorical, rational, and mystical) was to be deduced by the interpreter's own insight, logical acumen, or fancy, according to the rules laid down by representative Rabbis. His luve for the ' sacred writings ' St. Paul naturally brou.^ht with him into the service of Christ. His sermons and Epistles are steeped in the language of tlie OT, and proof-texts are abundantly used to point the edge of an argument, or to emphasize his counsels for Christian life (see art. Quotation.?). Like his Jewish teachers, the Apostle continued to read the Scriptures as a body of independent 'words,' each charged with a life and force of its own. He is usually indifferent to the exact exegesis of his texts, following the LXX even when its rendering is faulty, though occasionally he does appear to cite from tlie original Hebrew. In other directions he claims a wide freedom in his reproduction and application of texts. Nor has he shaken himself
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quite clear of Rabbinic subtleties. Tims the naiTow- ing of Abraham's 'seed' to Christ (Gal 3"') is a thoroughly characteristic example of the verbal exegesis of the Rabbis. The allegory of Sarah and Hiigar, the freewonian and the luuKlniaid (Gal 4-"'')> and tlie extracting of a hidden personal principle from the hum.ane law of the unmuzzled ox ( 1 Co 9"'-, 1 Ti 5"), illustrate the ' manifold sense ' read into the letter of Scripture ; while the liold way in which he transfers to Gentile Christians the promises made to Israel (Ro 9^"-), and lindsin the Dcuteronomist's great thought of the nearness of the J^aw sugges- tions of Christ's descent to earth and His rising from the dead (Ro lO""'-), or in the ' strange tongues ' of Is 28"'^- a forecast of Christian 'tongues' (I Co 14-'), betrays the unrestrained liberty of in- terpretation exercised by the Jewish exegete. It is remarkable, however, that the Apostle is so little influenced by Rabbinic methods. Ap.artfrom these few survivals from a dead past, which touch only the periphery of his thought, there is nothing in his Epistles that reminds us of the arbitrary and highly extravagant exegetical results of his Jewish contemporaries. So deeply has he entered into the spirit of his Master that his whole treatment of the OT is marked by a sanity and sobriety of mind, enriched with a breadth, sympathy, and penetrating insight surpassed only by Christ.
In his preaching to the Jews St. Paul follows the practice of the earlier apostles, though with a new fullness and range. ' He reasoned with them from the scriptures, opening and alleging, that it behoved the Christ to sufl'er, and to rise again from the dead' (Ac 17-'- ; cf. 2S23f'). Thus in his speech at Antioch he sets forth Jesus as the Saviour of David's seed brought unto Israel ' according to the promise,' whose condemnation and death at the hands of the people and rulers of Jerusalem were the fulfilment of the words of the propliets ' which are read every sabbath,' and His resurrection the bringing to pass of ' the holy and sure blessings of David, as pro- mised in Psalms 2 and 8 (Ac IS^'^-). In his Epistles, too, he cites OT texts as direct predictions of the gospel. The new faith of which he was called to be an Apostle is ' the gospel of God, which he promised afore by his prophets in the holy scrip- tures' (Ro 1"-; cf. 3-1). Christ both died and rose again ' according to the scriptures' (1 Co 15''-), while proof-texts are adduced for the promise of the Spirit (Gal S'''), the destruction of human wisdom through the foolishness of preaching (1 Co 1'*), the universal range of the preaching of salvation (Ro 10'*), the vital principle of righteousness by faith (1" 3-', Gal 3"), the fatal unbelief of the Jews (Ro lO'^*-) and the calling of the Gentiles (<j25fr. 1Q19L i59ir.)_ the final salvation of Israel (II-"-), Christ's victory over all His enemies (1 Co 15-'"'-), and the swallowing up of death and sin in the immortality won through Him (v."'-).
So far, then, the OT is treated as a Jewish book, pointing to the fulfilment of the 'promise' in Christ. But the extension of the gospel to the Gentiles, which was an essential part of this promise (cf. above), of necessity involved a change in the Apostle's attitude to the Scriptures. As a Jewish book, the OT made no direct appeal to other nations. They had their own modes of thought and expression, and the most cultivated of them possessed a literature of surpassing beauty and power. On occasion the Apostle might ap- proach their conscience by this path (cf. especi- ally his speech to the Athenians) ; but his mind was so saturated with OT ideas, and the book itself was so manifestly the Word of God which made men 'wise unto salvation' (2 Ti 3'°), that he could not withhold it from any nation. Irrespective, then, of the Jewish origin and cast of the whole, he deliberately transformed