The "Old Testament" is Not All Old

Overheard:

The book of Psalms, David, Law of Moses, the Prophets, are all in reference to the OT which we are not under.

This writer seriously errs here, but it's very understandable: pretty much all of Christendom has taught for centuries this same message, and every Bible you can buy on the shelf at Mardel's or Hastings or the local Bible Book Store emphasizes this incorrect message by their man-made, two-fold division labeled "New Testament" and "Old Testament". But this idea is completely wrong.

The writer above mentioned three portions of the so-called "Old Testament" - "the book of Psalms, David, Law of Moses, the Prophets" (I'm combining "the book of Psalms, David" into simply "the Psalms"). This three-fold division is Biblical; it's how Yahshua divided the Scriptures known in his day:

^{Luke 24:44} ...everything written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

(These three divisions, in the Hebrew language, are called Torah, Nevi'im, and Kethuvim, and taking the first letters of these three words we get TNK, which is how we get the term "Tanakh" to refer to the Hebrew Bible.)

So, we have from the very mouth of God (Yahshua) that what we incorrectly call the "Old Testament" is really divided into three sections. Now look at the prophecy of a new covenant, as foretold by Jeremiah:

^{Jeremiah 31:31} "Look, the days are coming"—[this is] YHWHs declaration—"when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. ³² [This one will] not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt....

What covenant does YHWH say will be replaced?

Does he say the Prophets will be replaced? No!

Does he say the Psalms will be replaced? No!

Does he say the Torah will be replace? Yes! It's the covenant made at Mt. Sinai, when the house of Israel was taken out of Egypt, which will be replaced. Not the covenant He made with Adam. Not the covenant He made with Noah. Not the covenant He made with Abraham. Only the covenant He made with Moses.

The scriptures concerning Adam are still in effect: Yahshua based his teachings on divorce on these scriptures. Yahshua did not give us a NEW law concerning marriage. He reached all the way back to Genesis 2 as the basis for his teachings on marriage/divorce. If we are no longer under Genesis 2, then we no are longer bound by Yahshua's teaching on marriage/divorce, because that's "old testament".

The scriptures concerning Noah are still in effect: we are still under the covenant God made with Noah. If not, then the rainbow means nothing; we can expect a globe-destroying flood any day now, because that's "old testament". If not, then we have no authority to eat meat, because that's "old testament". If not, then we have no responsibility to execute murderers, because that's "old testament".

The scriptures concerning Abraham are still in effect: we are adopted into the covenant God made with Abraham. Paul makes this absolutely clear in Galatians 3:

^{Gal 3:17}the law [Torah - Kent], which came 430 years later, does not revoke a covenant that was previously ratified by God, so as to cancel the promise.

He even goes on to agree with Jeremiah, that it is "the law" (Torah) which was temporary:

¹⁹ Why the law then? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise was made would come.

So Jeremiah and Paul agree; it was the law of Moses that was temporary, and which would be replaced with a new covenant. It was the law, given on Mt. Sinai, that was the old covenant.

The Psalms and the Prophets are not part of the old covenant; only the Torah is the old covenant.

We in our modern culture have lumped two of the divisions defined by Yahshua in with the third, and have mistakenly claimed all three to be "old". No, that is wrong. Two of those three are not "old".