Wednesday, November 19, 2008

OT quotes in Romans

The second ETS lecture I attended today was by Andrew Naselli, a doctoral student at Trinity. His paper was "Paul's Use of Isaiah 40:13 and Job 41:11a in Romans 11:34-35." I attended this because my special area of research is in the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament. Andrew did a very fine job of showing how Paul used two quotes from the OT as part of his praise to God. One section that I found very interesting was his explanation of the poetry of Paul's doxology:

O the depth of the riches
Both of the wisdom and knowledge of God
How unsearchable his judgments
How untraceble his ways
For "who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has become his advisor?" (Isaiah 40:13)
"Or who has given to him and will receive back from him" (Job 41:3)
For from him and through him and for him are all things;
To him be the glory forever, amen.

I didn't get a copy of Andrew's notes, so I may be missing something. But Andrew pointed out the chiastic layout, shown in color above. The outer layer (red) refer to God's wealth, then the next layer (orange) shows his wisdom, and the inner layer (green) shows his knowledge.

More to say here, but I am now running off to hear a set of lectures on aspects of the use of the OT in the NT.

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