Thanks for the prayers, the Lord answered them in the affirmative! I was able to finish reading the papers I needed to read in preparation for my class and I was able to translate Matthew 5-6. I’m now trying to memorize the passages so that I can pass the quiz (prayer would be appreciated — I take the test tomorrow). I’m a little rusty in Greek, so this should be interesting.
I mentioned that I might post something about the Green paper and I think that I can sum it up in this: what is the genre of the Old Testament and how should we read the Old Testament? And I think Green’s answer to these questions would be that you should read the Bible as redemptive history and to do that you should read the Old Testament as if you had never heard the gospel. A complete grammatical-historical (how the text was intended to be read by the author)read. This is a first reading of the text. It’s like when you read a murder mystery and you have no idea who the killer is, as you read you pick up clues and then at the end the killer is revealed. Reading with no knowledge of the ending.
After you’ve read the Bible from the aspect of the writer then you read it again from the aspect of the end of the story — from the aspect of the Gospel. That’s the second reading of the text. It’s reading a murder mystery a second time with the knowledge of who was the killer. You will look at the story differently now that you know who did it. You will be able to see clues that you missed before. The movie The Sixth Sense is a perfect example of this, it is a completely different movie when you watch it with the understanding of what you discover at the end.
You really can’t understand the story of redemption completely and what the Old Testament is about if you skip the first reading and go immediately to the seconding reading.
The paper that I had linked on Friday to will give you more insight into first readings and second readings. I think it might be worth your time to check it out.