These are notes from a lecture by Dr. Justin Gohl, Lecturer in Old Testament at St Tikhon’s Seminary, (Here are some of his numerous publications).
Any errors in the following are all mine and not Dr. Gohl’s. I wrote it up here to preserve it for my own future reference and application and anyone who might find it helpful.
A Few General Observations
The first thing I want to say is I found this lecture by Dr. Gohn quite refreshing. I attended two prominent Evangelical seminaries and took the required Old Testament classes. At one point I was subjected to a semester transcribing notes from the OT professor into the Blackboard system. What I found was that there’s rarely an Old Testament professor even at conservative Evangelical Seminaries who believes the Old Testament was a faithful historical record. Those professors spent most of the courses teaching us about the Documentary (JEDP) hypothesis and other things that are unprofitable for spiritual growth. The JEDP/Documentary hypothesis has come under critical review in more recent times (See here for a critique of the method).
I left the courses at Seminary not knowing the Old Testament any better. Worst of all I feel out of love with the Old Testament. I spent much of my time arguing with the professor and fellow students. If you are ever in that unfortunate situation, I recommend Gleason Archer’s book “A Survey of Old Testament Introduction” which refutes many of their basic errors. I had the first edition since the class was 1996, but there’s a 2nd edition now. It’s hard to keep up with bad ideas so there are probably even newer and better treatments of the subject.
While Dr. Gohl didn’t speak to the historical questions it seemed clear enough to me that he believed the Scriptures to be inspired by God. The phrase he used was the literal translation that the Scriptures were “belched out” by the prophets. This is a vivid image of a prophet giving a word from God that is beyond the control of the one who is inspired.
More importantly the Psalms are texts that should make us love Christ more when we see the beauty of the texts and the way the Church properly uses them.
Which Old Testament?
Dr. Gohl spent more time than he probably wanted to answering questions about the differences between the Septuagint (LXX) Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT). We all like to Geek out on this – me as much as the guy sitting next to me. Since the autographs of the texts were written in Hebrew, on the surface it seems a Hebrew text would be more faithful to them than a Greek translation of the text. Much of this has been shown to be a bad assumption based on texts found in the Dead Sea Scrolls starting in the middle of the last century. These texts along with the Early Church Fathers more often represent the text in the LXX (4rd century BC) than the MT (oldest mss are from ca 1000 AD).
Apologetically, using the LXX has further value since it pre-dates any claim that the Jews altered the texts after Christ – as they likely did in some cases to obscure the Christian claim that Jesus is the Messiah. This bypasses many Muslim apologetics which claim the Scriptures were corrupted by the Church since they pre-date the Church by several centuries and claims that the Jews corrupted the text (since they predate the oldest complete MT by 1300 years. I have used this point myself when asked about the Scriptures from Muslims and they have been unable to answer it. Mostly because they are unfamiliar with the Orthodox claims about the inspiration of the translation of the LXX.
This particular apologetic argument even has teeth with some Protestants who start asking questions about what OT text Luther and the later Reformation figures used when they translated their texts. The Reformers studied vocabulary under Jewish scholars as well as the texts themselves. This should raise suspicion that they were not being properly taught. There were few or no Hebrew scholars at the time of the Reformation other than Jews.
Most modern translations to English are done by Protestants and are based on the MT. However, the Gospels and Epistles most often quote the LXX text. The Orthodox Fathers have been using the LXX since the first century and this leads to some different readings of the Old Testament. For this reason, Dr. Gohl used the LXX text for his presentation.
The Psalms as Read from the New Testament
We often think of David as a King but need to remember that David wrote the Psalms which are inspired Scripture. Jesus Himself noted this when He said David [spoke] in [by the] Spirit.
Since David operated as a prophet, we should look to see what future things David was prophesying about. These were things that were in the future from when he spoke (ca 1000 BC). For some of these Psalms, we see them directly quoted in the New Testament. One obvious example is this passage where Jesus specifically quotes Psalm 109 (110 MT ordering)
Matthew 22:43-45 He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?
Here Jesus is speaking to the Scribes and He’s using a text from the Psalms which would have been very familiar to them. He’s using it to ask a question about Himself. The Scribes were looking for a Messiah which was only a human, but Jesus was making the claim to be the God-Man. If the Scribes don’t like the idea that Jesus is God because they think God can’t have a Son, then what did David mean by the text which clearly shows Two Divine Persons? This would later be understood as a substantial part of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
Shorter Quotes and Longer Contexts
Sometimes, the Psalm is quoted as just the start of the passage. Such an example is where Jesus is on the cross and cries out:
Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
There’s a lot to unpack there and Dr. Gohl only had a limited amount of time so I will attempt to fill it in as best I can.
First of all, this passage is a quotation from Psalm 21 (22 in the MT):
Psalm 22:1 [[To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.]] My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
As noted, this is just the start of the Psalm 22 and it would have brought to mind the entire range of Psalms 21-23 (22-24 in the MT). If you read on farther into the text you can see that God did not leave Jesus alone but rescued Him and a fuller picture of the plan of God is seen. Here I am grateful to the Lutheran apologists Bob and Gretchen Passantino who helped me understand this passage way back in the mid 1990’s. They are both gone now. They seriously considered becoming Orthodox but felt their apologetic skills would be put to use better in the Lutheran Church. May God have mercy on them, and me.
Psalm 22:24 For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.
But this lecture was about the Nativity and not Lent so this passage was not the subject of Dr. Gohl’s talk.
I would love to hear the same talk centered around the Lenten Fast and Holy Week, but Dr. Gohl gave me (us) the tools to look at the Holy Week texts and understand them when this time comes again.
The Paradigm then is…
This is where this system gets expanded and explained. It’s not just the Psalms that the New Testament directly quotes, but all of the Psalms can and should be put through this interpretive paradigm. This is the skeleton of this paradigm (more or less copied verbatim from the lecture notes):
- Superscription/Titles
It’s the thing on brackets like [A Psalm of David for…] This can sometimes be found in one or another variant of the text where the church scholars would have made notes on the context of understanding of the text within the Church.
Dr. Gohl pulled another English LXX out of his bag at that point which made me smile. How many people carry multiple LXX texts on them? Loved it. - Sequence of Meaning
In the Psalter (there’s a lot more to this than can described herein where there is an incredible structure to the ordering of the Psalms)
In Liturgical Services. We trust the Church to put the right Psalms in the right places in daily worship and in the Great Feast calendar of the Church. - Encoded prophetic drama of the event described.
- Person based reading of the text
- Totus Christum – Christ is the primary One praying the Psalms and the Church prays them along with Him.
Here, I really had to admire Dr. Gohl’s presentation skills. It was to a lay audience and some humble Catechumens like myself. It probably would have taken an entire course in the seminary to just scratch the surface of applying the method. He did quite well with such an ambitious assignment. Fortunately, the audience was mostly older people who have lived these texts out year by year for a very long time.
Application of the Paradigm to the Royal Hours of the Nativity
The texts of the Royal Hours of the Nativity are Psalms 5, 44, 45, 66, 86, and 50 (this is just the First Hour texts). The Sixth and Ninth Royal Hours of the Nativity were listed Psalms 71, 131, and 90 and Psalms 109, 110, and 85.
Dr. Gohl spent time going through the Psalms using the paradigm. The result was spiritually edifying and opened my eyes to the way that the Church prays these along with Jesus as the leader. We were way too time limited to dig deeply but I am convinced the methodology of the paradigm is sound. The copious list of the Fathers Dr. Gohl provided confirm this is the way the Church reads the Psalms.
Reading the Psalms in the Hourly Prayers
There are some Psalms that are used in the Services of the Hours (from the LXX numbering of the Psalms which is different than the MT numbering).
- First Hour uses Psalms 5, 89, 100
- Third Hour uses Psalms 16, 24, 50
- Sixth Hour uses Psalms 53, 54, 90
- Nineth Hour uses Psalms 83, 84, 85
The same interpretive paradigm applies.
Thank you Dr. Gohl for travelling a long distance and speaking to us.
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