Parallel Reading Strategies and the Search for the Christian Bible

The Relationship Between the Testaments as a Crux Interpretum

An article I wrote for a special issue of the journal Perichoresis has been released. The issue’s topic is “parallel reading.” The other articles are more strictly exegetical (examining specific instances of intertextual connections). My contribution relates to the art of reading the Bible as a two-testament witness.

Here’s the abstract:

This article examines the interpretive activity of reading biblical texts in parallel, focusing on its role in conceptualizing the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Because the biblical canon provides no single, explicit articulation of its internal dynamic, this relationship is a crux interpretum that faces every reader of the Christian Bible.

The first section surveys distinct biblical-theological frameworks for relating the testaments and notes that each conveys important insights but also has inherent limitations.

The second section focuses on a specific example: the varied New Testament utilization of Psalm 110. This case study illustrates how the practice of parallel reading, even at the granular level of exegesis, requires navigating between canonical continuity and tension. Ultimately, this hermeneutical reflection on the canon’s internal complexity will deepen a reader’s understanding of Scripture’s multifaceted witness to Christ.

Here’s how I unfold the study:

1. Canonical Patterns: Conceptualizing the Relationship Between the Testaments

   1. The Flow of Redemptive History

   2. The Plotline of a Mega Narrative

   3. A Stream of Tradition History

   4. A Series of Shared Theological Confessions

   5. Unity and Diversity in the Context of the Canon

2. Exegetical Horizons: Pairings and Parallels in the NT’s Reception of Psalm 110

   1. The Messiah, Whose Son is He?

   2. The Son of Man who Sits Down

   3. The Son Who is Seated and the Spirit Who is Sent

   4. The Exalted Son and Appointed Priest

   5. What the Son Does at the Father’s Right Hand

3. The Joyful Complexity of Parallel Reading

Here’s how I wrap things up:

The exercise of reading texts in parallel also shows that the relationship between the testaments is neither simple nor secondary. It is constitutive of the way the Christian Bible communicates its message. The biblical canon continually presses its readers into patterns of comparison and synthesis. Further, the conceptual patterns surveyed above each capture something essential about the internal relation of Christian Scripture’s two-testament witness: its historical unfolding, its narrative coherence, its layered composition, and its theological confession. In exegesis, an interpreter must have a grasp of the canon’s shape that is firm enough to admit some form of organic unity and yet flexible enough to handle the varied ways that one biblical text draws upon another.

Such complexity is not a hermeneutical liability but a theological gift that reminds readers that the meaning of Scripture is not exhausted by a single pane of a larger mosaic. Rather, this interpretive density reflects both the inexhaustibility of the biblical witness and the richness of the one to whom it testifies. To read in parallel, then, is not merely to decipher exegetical puzzles but to inhabit the spaciousness of the canon and to deepen our awareness of how its symphony of textual refrains converge in the confession that Jesus is both Lord and Christ.

In this sense, the “search for the Christian Bible” that Childs described is not merely an academic pursuit but a lived hermeneutical task. The canon itself summons readers into a discipline of parallel reading where coherence emerges through ongoing engagement with the whole collection. The joyful complexity of this practice is not a problem to be solved but a readerly reality to be embraced. In the end, this canonical dynamic is worth persevering because through it the voice of the living God continues to address the church through the Scriptures.

NB:

• If you’d like to read the full article, it’s open access through the Journal’s website. You can also DM me for a PDF.

• The full issue is edited by OT scholar Josh Williams and features articles on Deuteronomy, the Psalms, the temple account, Mark’s Gospel, and Clement of Alexandria.