I don’t often highlight academic books in the Book of the Month page, but this is a book I’ve been waiting for all of last year, and it has finally appeared.

We all know that there are two parts to the Bible: the Old and New Testaments. We also know that the Bible tells one story, one ‘gospel’, delivered to Abraham (Galatians 3:8), fulfilled in Christ, and preached now throughout the world.

One of the ways the Bible communicates that message to us is through the New Testament quoting, citing, or alluding to the Old. The very first chapter of the New Testament, for example, begins with a list of Old Testament names; then in Matthew 1:22 he tells us that certain events fulfil certain predictions, and he quotes the prophecy which is fulfilled.

That seems straightforward enough; but what about when Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1 in 2:15? How do Hosea’s original words, which look back to the exodus from Egypt, refer to Jesus? Or Matthew 2:23 – how can Matthew describe a prediction that can’t be found in the Old Testament as being fulfilled?

And that’s just the first two chapters of Matthew! The reality is that the whole of the New Testament is permeated with stuff from the Old, and any serious reader of the Bible should know how to handle such material.

This Commentary is unlike any other. Edited by Greg Beale and Don Carson, two of the most respected evangelical New Testament scholars of our day, it works through every citation and allusion in the books of the New Testament, looking at the verses in their New Testament context, their Old Testament context, their use in Jewish sources, the textual background, the manner of interpretation and the theological use the writer makes of the citation.

It is a big book, and an expensive book. But for serious Bible students it will be one of this year’s ‘must haves’!

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