Over his life as a scholar and an ordained minister, [Iain] Provan says he has had cause to nuance many things he was taught as a child, and to reject some entirely. But viewing the Old and New Testaments as a cohesive whole is not one of these. Provan believes you can\u2019t understand the latter without the former.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the New Testament everywhere presupposes that people know the old and that what the New Testament offers is fresh exegeses of the Old Testament in the light of Jesus and his life and teaching, his death and resurrection,\u201d\u009d he says.<\/p>\n
What about contradictions between the two? Provan doesn\u2019t see any.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think what we have is a developing story that is not the same at different points because stories develop in time,\u201d\u009d he says. \u201cIn the Old Testament, you largely have the story of God working in the world through one people group and then in the New Testament, of course, it\u2019s a rather different situation. A lot of what people think of as contradictions are simply the story having different phases and moving on.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n