Gospel Red Herring: Spiritualizing the Text

You cannot treat the Bible as you would modern Western writing. The Bible is an Eastern document, and Christianity is an Ancient Near Eastern religion. As such, it is inherently mystical in nature. Such were the Hebrew people who wrote the Old Testament until the rabbis came under Hellenizing influences and adopted a Western analytical outlook. The Pharisees in the Gospels were Hellenized in their intellectual approach, playing legalistic and semantic games with the Old Testament. Much of what Jesus said is recognized by scholars as a call to return to those ancient Hebrew mystical roots. While the Jewish leadership of His day rejected that message, those who accepted Him as their Messiah and Savior did embrace that ancient mystical outlook. Thus, where the New Testament quotes from the Old, you'll see the writers often took a mystical approach. Today you hear warnings from American preachers and Bible teachers that we should not "spiritualize the text" of Scripture, but they are contradicting New Testament practice. This short book surveys about thirty quotes from the Old Testament where they appear in the New Testament, and we show how "spiritualizing the text" is quite common and proper.