Old and New Testaments: a question of vocabulary

One can note today a tendency to substitute the terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” with “First Testament” and “Second Testament”. As for me, the traditional expressions do not bother me.

The first mention of the expression “Old Testament” is in the Second Letter to the Corinthians (3:14). When Paul uses this expression, and he is probably not the formulator of the term, it is not in opposition to the “New Testament”, which does not yet exist. When he is writing to the Corinthians, he does not imply that he is in the process of editing the New Testament! If he indeed speaks in this context of the Old Testament, it is in order to insist that this Scripture is not invalid but rather, on the contrary, that it is important to know how to read it. The fact that there is a difference between the Jewish reading of the Biblical literature and the Christian one is indeed another issue that cannot be dealt with here.

One might add that in Antiquity, that which is old has authority. The term, therefore, is not pejorative. Indeed, one might say the opposite. One example is the witness of a sentence of Tertulian (2nd century Church Father) about heretics: “those, whose doctrines we do not discuss, but whom we must convince that they are heretics because of the principle objection constituted by their novelty”. Here we see the polar opposite of a mentality that assumes that the new has prestige. In fact, the same author writes: “Verius quod prius” that is “truer is that which precedes”.

During the last Council (Second Vatican Council in the 1960s), the Declaration Nostra Ætate on non-Christian religions uses the expression “old covenant” (antiquum fœdus), a formula that clearly has no pejorative meaning.

The term “New Testament” or new covenant (the double meaning is not significant as the Latin Bible almost always translates the Hebrew b’rit (covenant) with the word testament) is from the Old Testament, appearing in Jeremiah (31:31). It proclaims that God is going to conclude a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. The prophet does not say that God denounces his covenant with Israel in order to conclude a covenant with another people but rather that He is going to renew the expression of his faithfulness to Israel. Here too we can only allude to the subject. The disciples of Jesus, all Jews we might add, saw in the resurrection of their master the fulfillment of this promise of a new covenant with the House of Israel. The fact that the composition of the Church, as it developed later, led to the practical disappearance of the Jewish element is another chapter that we cannot develop here.

One cannot deny that these terms acquired echoes that were foreign to their original meaning over the centuries. The term “old” did come to be almost synonymous with “out of date” However, one might also point out that in our contemporary culture, that which is new does not stay new for long and the word is generally understood to mean ephemeral.

The terms “First Testament” and “Second Testament”, even if their usage is inspired by a noble generosity, do not seem to be better than the traditional terms. They might even be understood in a more dangerous way, especially if the meaning of the word “testament” is misunderstood. It is not necessary to be a lawyer to know that a second testament annuls the first one! These terms promote as well the mistaken idea that the two “testaments” can be reduced to the same level as if what is at stake is a story divided into two volumes. However, each one of the two is unique and has its proper order. “The New is hidden in the Old, the Old is revealed in the New,” according to Saint Augustine.

Therefore, I prefer to use the traditional terms, to be identified according to their origins, even if this means that we must explain them.

The renewed encounter between Christians and Jews, provoked directly by the events linked to Nazism, implied a militant turn about. First of all, what was necessary was to save Jews and then to fight against an anti-Semitism that is always springing up anew. Without retreating from this necessary vigilance, it is absolutely necessary today to work serenely on another level, that of explanation. Manifesting indignation in the face of unfortunate terms, or ones that might have been misunderstood as unfortunate, cannot be a goal in itself. We need today, after centuries of misunderstanding, malevolence and even violence, to learn patiently to get to know one another.