Paul Williamson Abraham , Israel and the Church

This article discusses the relationship between the divine promises in the Abraham narrative and the use made by this Old Testament material in the New Testament. It is argued that the New Testament's reinterpretation of the Abrahamic Covenant (e.g. relating the promise of blessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and applying the promise of multitudinous descendants to the Christian Church) is fully congruous with an exegetical interpretation of the core promissory aspects and their development within the Old Testament. 79 M. Silva defines these as follows: 'typological (because it may focus on correspondences between OT and NT events or individuals), eschatological (because it emphasizes the coming of Christ as bringing in the end times), canonical (because it considers that the full meaning of a text depends on the teaching of Scripture as a whole)' 'Old Testament in Paul' in the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters edited by G. F. Hawthome, R P. Martin and D. G. Reid, Leicester/Downers Grove: IVP, 1993,640.