Last week, we saw a sudden bump in traffic to our list of New Testament books that quote the Old Testament, thanks to the game show Jeopardy!
On November 16, the clue to the final round was “Paul’s letter to them is the New Testament epistle with the most Old Testament quotations.” And there was much uproar when the contestant who responded with “Who are the Hebrews” was credited with being correct. So the fact-checkers among the show’s fans have been visiting our site in droves to observe that we’ve actually got Romans at the top of the list.
The biggest online uproar has been over the fact that most contemporary scholars believe Paul didn’t even write Hebrews, despite the King James Bible crediting the book to him. But I think the bigger issue is simply: What counts as a “quotation”? Because Hebrews has more OT references than Romans only if you count allusions (such that you count every reference to Moses, covenant, priest, or sacrifice). But by any measure of clear quotations or explicit citations of an OT text, Romans wins.
The Jeopardy! contestant with the correct answer should have blown out the others but instead lost the game!
Dr. Greg Lanier from Reformed Theological Seminary agrees that this is the more substantive problem with the Jeopardy! clue. His piece at the Gospel Coalition blog explains with much clarity and detail.
Where would Jeopardy writers have even picked this up? The writers didn’t pour through the NT themselves counting what they counted as “quotations”. What source would have a table saying Hebrews is the top?
I imagine they would have found a list somewhere that included both quotations and allusions, which would have Hebrews at the top. But then they didn’t nuance their question clearly enough.
The answer would have been correct if the qualifier ‘Paul’s letters’ had been omitted.
If St. Paul didn’t write Hebrews, then who else. Who among the apostles was a master in OT besides St. Paul. Whoever wrote Hebrews was an OT master.
The reason St. Paul did not write his name at the beginning of Hebrews is because it was written to Hebrews! He wrote to the Hebrew/Jewish Christians who got licked out of the temple because of their christian faith. They were so sorrowful not to see the temple again.
It was known about St. Paul that he always preached not to keep the Sabbath, circumcision, etc. in order to be Christians. This enraged the Jewish Christians who thought all these things are important for salvation. But Paul stated clearly they are not, but salvation is by faith in the blood of Christ alone.
So if St. Paul would have written his name at the very beginning of the letter, the Jewish Christians would have thrown it in the trash.
In the letter to the Hebrews St. Paul states that all the things like the temple or the tabernacle or people like Aaron or Joshua or Moses, they were nothing more than just a shadow of the real thing. He told them you did not lose anything, becaue you have the real thing – Jesus Christ.
Only towards the end of the epistle did St. Paul mentions Timothy (Heb 13:23). Where you see the name Timothy (the protege of St. Paul) you know right away that Paul is around the corner.
If Paul didn’t write this masterpiece of how the OT points to the Lord Jesus Christ, then who else? Would it be possible that there was someone that was knowledgeable in OT, and was hidden?