A response from The Way
Question
How does Paul read the Old Testament?
Answer
Paul does something that can feel surprising the first time you notice it: he reads the Hebrew scriptures almost entirely through one lens — the resurrection of Jesus. Everything gets reread backwards, as if the ending finally explained what the earlier chapters were really about. The technical term for this is *typology* — the idea that people and events in Israel's story were "types," or advance sketches, of something that would come later. Adam is a type of Christ (Romans 5:14). The exodus from Egypt is a type of salvation (1 Corinthians 10:1–4). The rock that gave water in the desert? Paul says flatly, "that rock was Christ." He's not embarrassed about this. For him, it isn't a stretch — it's the whole point. He also does something scholars call *midrash* — a Jewish interpretive method where you press hard on a text's details to unlock deeper meaning. In Galatians 3:16, he builds an entire argument on the fact that Genesis uses "seed" (singular) rather than "seeds" (plural) when making promises to Abraham. One