Essay Sample on Old and New Testaments: Differences & Similarities

Introduction

Bible is popularly known as a unified book with two parts the New Testament and the Old Testament. The two are complementary, whereby the Old Testament is regarded as the foundational while the New Testament is known to build on that foundation through creating further God’s revelation. Bible is a collection of several books, consist of a unique message whereby the New Testament and Old Testament have numerous differences and similarities.

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Old Testament and New Testament are similar since God inspired the writers of all the collections of books in both divisions. Bible is regarded as a holy book, and its uniqueness cannot be compared to other books since the writers never used their own knowledge, but God guided them while writing all the Biblical texts (Popa, Goga N, and Goga M 1-6). Both versions make the Holy Bible, whereby Christianity is drawn. The Old and New Testament focus on the sacred scriptures connecting events. The New Testament appears as a fulfillment of various prophecies that are mentioned in the Old Testament. Both testaments depict God’s miracles.

The time period is different in both the old and New Testament. All the books in the Old Testament were written between the period of Moses and 400BC. This time is about 1000 years, which covers various events starting from the creation of the universe to the time of Jewish return to Jerusalem under Nehemiah and Ezra (Astika 129-149). In the Biblical context, the Old Testament is the first major division of the Christian Bible, while the New Testament is the second major division. The number of the book contained in the Old Testament differs from those in the New Testament.

There is about 4,800 vocabulary contained in the New Testament, while in the Old Testament, the vocabulary sums up to 5,800 words (Astika 129). The Teachings of the Christian Churches and Jesus are mostly found in the New Testament. At the same time, the Old Testament focuses mostly on the creation history of the Universe, Ten Commandments, messiah’s prophesies, and the exodus of the Israelites (Astika 129). The story of Moses and how he delivered the Israelites of the land of Slavery is highly focused in the Old Testament, while the New Testament is mainly the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

Several events took place in the Old Testament and greatly differ from the ones that occurred in the New Testament. For instance, God destroyed the earth with water in the Old Testament, while in the New Testament, He destroyed the earth with fire. The prophecies about Jesus were made in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament (Astika 129-149). Other events that occurred in the Old Testament are the circumcision of Jews, Israelites wandering in the wilderness for forty years, and the book was written in Hebrew, among others. In the New Testament, the Christians are baptized though spirit and fire, and the Bible was written in Greek.

Conclusion

Both the Old and New Testament have strong similarities and differences, but they complement each other. God guided the writers of all books in the Bible; hence there was no personal knowledge that was involved in the writing. The Old Testament is the foundation where the New Testament is built. Jesus fulfilled a lot of divinations that are in the Old Testament in the New Testament. Both Old and New Testament are great biblical divisions that complement each other in a great way giving the Christians a stronger foundation to their faith to God.

Works Cited

Astika, Made. "The Relationship Between Old And New Testament: A Study On Contemporary Debate Of Methodology Of The Old Testament Theology." Jurnal Jaffray 11.1 (2013): 129-149. https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/104885-the-relationship-between-old-and-new-tes-d9bff952.pdf

Popa, Ramona Cristina, Nicolae Goga, and Maria Goga. "Extracting Knowledge from the Bible: A Comparison between the Old and the New Testament." 2019 International Conference on Automation, Computational, and Technology Management (ICACTM). IEEE, 2019. https://amity.edu/icactm/Proceeding/Paper%20Index%20Content/25%20T3%20P5%20ID%20135.pdf