What’s the point of studying the Old Testament? It was written by ancient authors to ancient people concerning an obsolete covenant (Heb 8:13). One famous mega-church pastor said we don’t need the old testament scriptures to prop up the new covenant. So why would anyone want to study the Old Testament?
Why study the Old Testament?
The Bible is an interconnected whole. It is like a living organism that cannot be reduced to smaller pieces and retain its essence and being. Check out this marvelous graphic that depicts how the Bible connects and hyperlinks to different parts of itself. Along the bottom of this image is one vertical line for each chapter in the Bible. The longer the line, the longer the chapter. All of the colored arcs show 63,779 Bible cross-references. This is an incredible visualization that drives home the fact that the Bible is an astonishingly complex and interconnected collection of texts. Want to make sense of these scriptural hyperlinks in the New Testament without the Old Testament? Good luck with that!
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