The terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” are ubiquitous among Christians, and for that matter the non-religious world. Jews, on the other hand, typically refer to the first 39 books as the Hebrew Scriptures, Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh—a bit of an acronym for its three basic components: the Torah (Instruction), the Nevi’im (Prophets), and the Ketuvim (Writings). Tanakh seems like a really useful name for the Hebrew Scriptures as it is both descriptive and a reminder of their diversity of genre.
It is worth asking the question what the word “Testament” is meant to signify, and from whence did the term arise to describe the books of the Bible.
As explained in The Origin of the Bible by F. F. Bruce, J. I. Packer, Philip Comfort, and Carl F. H. Henry:
The word “testament” in the designations “Old Testament” and “New Testament,” given to the two divisions of the Bible, goes back through Latin testamentum to Greek diatheke, which in most of its occurrences in the Greek Bible means “covenant” rather than “testament.”…
The terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” for the two collections of books came into general Christian use in the later part of the second century; Tertullian rendered diatheke into Latin by instrumentum (a legal document) and also by testamentum; it was the latter word that survived, unfortunately, since the two parts of the Bible are not “testaments” in the ordinary sense of the term.
To refer to a set of books—even inspired books—as the testament/covenant between God and man is to miss the essential point of covenant as expressed, defined, and explained in the very books themselves. In Scripture, covenant refers to a personal commitment between God and his people. As Keith A. Mathison sums it up:
The word covenant appears for the first time in Genesis 6:18, where God says to Noah, “I will establish my covenant with you.” It occurs another 270 times throughout the Old Testament. Most often, it is a translation of the Hebrew word berith. In addition to being used to refer to covenants established by God with man, it is also used to refer to covenants made by men with one another (e.g., Gen. 21:27), to marriages (Mal. 2:14), to friendships (1 Sam. 18:3), to vows (Ezra 10:3), and to commitments (2 Kings 11:4), among other things. Covenants are even made with impersonal things such as stones and animals (Job 5:23), eyes (Job 31:1), death (Isa. 28:15), and the day and night (Jer. 33:20).
Thus, covenant is a relational concept and has to do with personal commitments of loyalty, obedience, and devotion, and should not be equated with a set of books. Put another way, how can the books of, say Judges or Esther or Psalms be considered as binding components of a covenant? Rather, aren’t these, and every other book of the Hebrew Scriptures, witnesses to covenant faithfulness and covenant failure on the part of the people of Israel in light of God’s unwavering covenant faithfulness? The Torah, which describes God’s covenant with Israel, includes both commandments and narrative, and thus is itself a witness to the covenant and is not the covenant itself.
When we come to the Christian Scriptures, they most certainly are not to be equated with the new covenant. Jesus said, in his last meal with the disciples, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you.” In other words, the cup of Passover wine was the symbol of the blood that sealed a new and eternal covenant for the forgiveness of man’s sins.
The book of Hebrews brings this point to light in chapter 8 where it quotes Jeremiah 31:
“The days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,
and I turned away from them,
declares the Lord.
This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
Covenant is described as renewed minds and hearts, relationship, intimacy, utter forgiveness.
Not books.
So we might do well to use the terms Hebrew and Christian Scriptures rather than the Old and New Testaments. Now this may seem like an arcane effort to redefine generally understood terms used for centuries to refer to the two parts of the Bible. But perhaps that’s the point of such redefinition—to better appreciate the Bible’s role , not as the covenant itself but the source of understanding what covenant faithfulness means for us, both individually and communally.
And one final point: to show respect to our Jewish friends, Christians might want to avoid the term Old Testament in conversations with them. Jews see the Tanakh as relevant and fresh, not old. The term “old” also suggests to many Jews the supersessionism that has served to fuel much antisemitism.
In summation, God made multiple covenants with his people. Indeed the new and final covenant, building on the others, is found in Christ’s sacrifice for the sins of mankind. The Bible in all its variegated literary forms, is a rich anthology of testimonies to the covenants, but the book we call the Bible is neither the Old Testament nor the New one.
Granolativity 