Introduction: Tracing the Discrepancies between the Testaments
God’s decisions differ. This statement is often used to describe the content of two Testaments. The scholars of all times have been investigating the sources and the logical explanations of some discrepancies that put a strong line of demarcation between the Old and the New Testament.
However, the Bible transitions often seem unperceivable for a human mind. Thus, people tend to interpret separate issues from the Testaments in contrastive ways. The inconsistencies in both Testaments refer to such concepts as love, hatred, death, mercy, prophecy and many others. In this essay, the theme of justice is reviewed in the light of its depiction in the New American Bible.
Sources of Biblical Justice
Justice is a concept that determines whether something is right or wrong. Thus, to identify the sources of justice in the Bible, one has to understand the backbone of the decisions that are illustrated in each Testament. Throughout the history, various scientists approached an interpretation of Bible in different ways.
According to Joseph Fitzmyer, the only correct way of tracing the Holy Scripture’s patterns is a historical-critical method. Thus, the author states that Biblical themes need historical explanations on different levels: literal, spiritual and so on (13).
Following Fitzmyer’s approach, one can identify the sources of justice through the exploration of the issues that were judged in two Testaments. The Old Testament provides some judgment on the behavior of Adam and Eve, Achan, Sodom and Gomorrah as well as unscrupulous contemporaries of Noah. In the New Testament, one may find the critical evaluation of Jews and the corrupt churches.
The key difference between the judgments that are provided in two Testaments is the way in which they were sustained. While the first part of Holy Script demonstrates justice of punishment, the second one is rather an embodiment of justice of mercy. If one verifies the context of Noah times’ judgments against the judgments of Jews, one can deduce that there was a crucial difference between them.
The Bible criticizes Jews in context of Christianized world, while the corrupt society of Noah times is judged through a prism of governance and authority. Therefore, it may be concluded that a major source of justice in two Testaments is a status of religion in the world. While the Old Testament only establishes the rules of conversion to religion, the New Testament provides an overview of godly decisions that are sustained in religious society.
