I'm really excited to begin this new Bible study with you on Deuteronomy. Now, there's so much amazing stuff in this book. Unfortunately, Deuteronomy, like Leviticus, is one of those books that's kind of skipped over. I mean, you're reading the Pentateuch or you do Bible studies in the Pentateuch.
Most people spend their time in Genesis and Exodus and maybe even in numbers, once you get past the boring name. But all the great stories, the drama and the excitement is there in those books. But Leviticus is full of a bunch of laws. Deuteronomy is full of a bunch of laws and they kind of get skipped over it, which is a mistake because as the Bible study on Leviticus, we went through that in that lesson.
There's so much beauty there and you understand the New Testament so much more and the same, all of that is applicable here with Deuteronomy. What I want to do in this first lesson is to go through a general introduction to Deuteronomy, talk about why we should study it, why is it so important, why is it so beautiful and moving? I mean, there really, truly are so many impassioned, beautiful verses of Moses' exhortation to love God and to serve God and God will love us back and he'll take care of us and it's just incredible. It's an incredible book.
I really like it. So what I want to do is this is a six part series. This first lesson is a general introduction. Why should we study it?
Why is it important? Because it is very important. We'll do in part two here, general introductory topics, talk about authorship and dating titles, the context, of the characteristics of Deuteronomy as the Mosaic law, etc., etc. So we'll do a whole hour on these types of things.
We'll set us up really, really nicely so that way we can spend the rest of our five lessons going through these various sections here. So although we're not diving into chapter one verse one right now, this is a very important task for us to make sure we understand what Deuteronomy is in the context of the Pentateuch as well as the Bible. And that way when we're reading through the actual verses and chapters when difficult things come up and we're trying to wrestle with these themes, we will have this foundational built. So with that, what I want to do, if you have any notes in front of you, I gave you a kind of a longish quote here from your Catholic introduction to the Old Testament.
It's a great quote though because you pretty much pick up any commentary if it's a good commentary. I should say it will spend some time talking about how important Deuteronomy is. So we should not be skipping over it. And I just decided to put this whole quote in here because it really just does a great job.
So this is what it says. And I'll probably make a little comments here and there as I read through it for you. It says quote, the importance of Deuteronomy to the canon of scripture and the tradition of both Judaism and Christianity can scarcely be exaggerated. And that's very true.
The only other Old Testament books that can claim to rival it in theological significance are Genesis, the Psalms and Isaiah. Yet in important ways, the Psalms and Isaiah are both dependent on Deuteronomy. And that is very, very true as well. Just again, make a little comment here.
And that's true because you really want all the illusions, there's so many illusions to Psalms to Deuteronomy. There are so many illusions in Isaiah to Deuteronomy and as well as the prophets. So you're not really going to understand Psalms or Isaiah as important as they are if you don't understand Deuteronomy. Okay?
And it goes on to say, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, more copies of Deuteronomy were found in any other biblical book except for the Psalms. In the New Testament, which we'll talk more about here in a moment, in the New Testament Deuteronomy is third after the Psalms in Isaiah and the number of quotations and illusions. It has rightly been called the lynch pin of the Old Testament. It serves as a hinge or pivot, joining the Pentateuch to the historical books.
And its influence can be felt in all the books of history, most of the prophets and even in the literature. This is because as the final and definitive form of God's covenant with Israel through Moses, it was the theological and political constitution of Israel for the rest of history, even if it was seldom, if ever fully implemented. End quote. All right.
I decided to finish that because I want to say a lot here. When this quote says it's the hinge or the pivot of the Old Testament here connecting the Pentateuch behind it or in front of it, that's true because as we're going to see in the next lesson, Moses is going to make illusions to Israel's history, especially the whole Exodus journey as they left Egypt and they're making their way towards the promised land. So Deuteronomy is going to serve as a lot of commentary on what went before it. But it's also the hidden or pivot together that's it, but the hinge or the pivot for all the historical books.
So when you're going through Joshua, which is the first historical book right after Deuteronomy, naturally, and you go through, you know, first second saying the first second things, all of this Ezra and EMI, all of these books are always looking backwards towards the Pentateuch. Okay. So this is why like if you want to try to understand historical books and what goes on with the exile, for example, why the exile took place and you're looking at the message of the prophets and you're looking at the wisdom literature and trying to understand what it is between the relationship between God and the people and how the people of God must live in that relationship. All of this stuff is based on Deuteronomy, right?
So Deuteronomy has been called the heartbeat of the Old Testament, right? Because it's always present in all of these books. It sometimes also refers to as the gospel of the Old Testament. So Deuteronomy is to the Old Testament what the gospels are to the New Testament.
Deuteronomy is what everyone studied, what they lived, they lived based on the laws of Deuteronomy, not exclusively because naturally there are laws in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers as well. There's a total of 613 laws that has been said, many of which come from Deuteronomy. But nevertheless Deuteronomy is like the gospels for the Old Testament. It's what they live by, it's what they quoted there, the great Shama prayer, the daily prayer comes from Deuteronomy and all this stuff.
So it is as this quote here, Petrian Berg's my point, I used the Constitution of Israel, I'm not the only one to say that. I have another quote for you in your footnote, has another similar quote about its Constitution. This is what drove their life, their daily life, the seasons, the year, all of it, like politically, socially, religiously, it was what governed them as a nation. We in America have the Constitution, which is sometimes followed, as a whole debate now it is at the point of this recording whether or not it's being ignored, I'll just avoid that whole political commentary there, but it is supposed to drive them as a nation.
So holy moly, it's really good to be doing this Bible study and it's really good to take some time and we're going to do six lessons here which could probably add up to over seven hours of content, but it's not going to be enough, we can always do more, but it's really, really important for you if you want to know and understand the rest of the Old Testament, if you're studying any of these books, again, historical books, the prophets, wisdom literature, go into the New Testament, you really have to know what Deuteronomy is all about. I would say in general, you have to know the whole Pentateuch because obviously Deuteronomy is the fifth and final book of the Pentateuch. So understanding as a whole, but really Deuteronomy's role as the capstone of the Pentateuch will serve you so, so well and make your study of scripture so much more fruitful. Okay?
All right, so that's the general great importance of Deuteronomy and as it can, it can scarcely be exaggerated, that's true. All right. So I'm not a little bit about this. Well, rightfully so, rightfully so.
So the second section here, I want to look at Deuteronomy in the New Testament. Okay, so we're talking a little bit about how it's the foundation of historical books and the prophets and the wisdom literature, by the way, those are the four main categories in the Old Testament, the four pillars, right? So you've got the Pentateuch, historical books, which are known as the former prophets. I go through all of this in the general introduction to scripture, scripture 101, but Pentateuch, historical books, the prophets and the wisdom literature, again, all of it kind of rests on Deuteronomy.
So what about the New Testament? Okay. Now, I have two general points. In general, all the law and the prophets point forward to Christ, right?
I think everybody knows this and agrees, but it's really profound to think about. The law is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Torah. We'll talk more about Torah just a little while, but Matthew 5 17 is a great go-to verse where Jesus himself says, do not think that I've come to abolish the law in the prophets. I've come out to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
And similar to that, in Romans 10, 4, Paul says Christ is the end of the law. He's kind of like the Christ is the purpose to fulfillment, the end of the law, so that everyone who has faith may be justified. So if you want to understand what Jesus is doing, he says I'm fulfilling the law and the prophets and Paul says he is the end, the purpose, the finality of the law, you have to have to understand what it is the law is saying. It's going to be a very poor reading of the Gospels and the New Testament if you don't understand Deuteronomy, because Deuteronomy points forward to Christ.
So the more we know the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, the Old Testament as a whole, including the prophets naturally, the better we're going to understand Jesus Christ. The same Augustine said very famously, I've said this quote so many times before, the New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old is revealed in the New. This is essentially what Jesus is saying. And so I have two more verses, they're very similar as well, one from Colossians 2, the other from Hebrews 10.
Colossians 2 says, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. So these are all issues regarding various aspects of the religious law of Israel. He says that no one pass judgment on you about these things, they are only a shadow of what is to come, the substance belongs to Christ. So the Old Testament law, the religious law, the ceremonial dietary laws, the judicial law, all of them are just a shadow of the good things to come, the fulfillment, the substance belongs to Jesus.
And Hebrews 10, 1 says basically the same thing. Since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, namely Jesus, it can never by the same sacrifices which are continually offered year after year make perfect those who draw near. This is going to be really important when we talk about what the purpose of the law is in the next page or two of my notes here, but probably in the middle of the lesson I'll talk a little bit more about this. The insufficiency of the law, why it was important, what its role was, why the law was given.
So hang on to your hats because we will talk more about that. But my point in sharing these verses for you right now is that the law is a shadow of things to come in Christ Jesus. That is what we do all the time in these Bible studies is typology. Typology is the study of persons, places, things, events of the old covenant that point forward to Jesus, the mystery of Christ, the Paschal Mysteries, the church, the new assembly, the Kahlia, Klesia of Christ, all of this stuff, it's fulfilled in Jesus.
So this is my first general point here. This is true of the whole Pentateuch. You have to spend time understanding the law. That's why this got this whole course here that we're building up on the Pentateuch, 40 hours of content to understand this.
All right, excellent. Now, in particular, I've got this little quote here for you from your Bible dictionary. This says, Deuteronomy was quoted by Jesus Christ more than any other of the Old Testament books. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy more than any other book in the gospel.
That's crazy. Seventeen of the 27 books of the New Testament referred to it as well. So my math is correct at 63%. So 63% of all the books of the New Testament refer back to Deuteronomy.
And that's why it's number third. So the Psalms in Isaiah have number one and number two spots. So you got the gold, the silver and the bronze metals here. And Deuteronomy gets the bronze, but Jesus himself quotes it more than any other Old Testament book.
That's pretty amazing. That should tell us, well, let's understand Deuteronomy a little bit. So by way of example, Jesus uses Deuteronomy as the basis for the greatest commandment, right? So when I asked him, hey, what's the greatest commandment?
He quotes Deuteronomy, but he also quotes Deuteronomy, but he gets that. The two books that are often skipped are the two books that Jesus quotes for the greatest and the second greatest commandment. So he quotes, I got the references for you here on the notes. He quotes Deuteronomy 6, 4, 3, 5, that's the Shama.
We'll talk a lot about that as we move on in our Bible study. That's a pretty big deal. Deuteronomy is the foundation for the greatest of all the commandments. Jesus also quotes Deuteronomy to defeat Satan and the wilderness temptations.
All three of his quotes, all three of Jesus quotes of the Bible come from Deuteronomy and from just the span of a couple chapters there. And again, we'll talk about this as we move on as well. Jesus is the new prophet that Moses prophesied would come. So Moses says in Deuteronomy 18, a prophet like me will come from among you, listen to him, heed him, obey him essentially.
This is Jesus. Okay, this is made very, very clear in John chapter 6 as well as in Acts the Apostles. Jesus is the prophet that they were expecting. That's a big deal because I don't want to get too much on a tangent right here, but the theme is they're waiting a new Exodus.
So if a new Moses comes, a new Moses is going to bring about a new Exodus, regather all the tribes back into the land, into the new, newly established of it, Kingdom. There's going to be a new Passover, new man and all of this stuff, the new crossing through waters, right, from slavery to freedom, all this stuff. Jesus is that new prophet. And then finally, Jesus will correct Deuteronomy.
For example, a big example is the teachings on divorce. We'll touch upon this a little bit more in this lesson in later on as well. The divorce was an accommodation and imperfection that Moses allowed for the hardness of their hearts. So Jesus corrects this, right?
Deuteronomy is remarried specifically. But Jesus corrects this and raises the moral bar. So it's all over the place. So why study Deuteronomy?
Because it's so darn important. It's the bedrock of the Old Testament. Like I said, like in the heartbeat of the Old Testament, Jesus quotes it the most. So we're going to do very, very well and have a lot of fun going through these lessons.
All right? So with that, then let's move on to part two and look at some general introductory topics. I think this is important every time you go to a new book, spend a little bit of time. We've got this whole hour dedicated to this, but more or less the authorship, the dating titles, the context, characteristics, the structure, the key themes, all of this kind of stuff here.
So we really understand the nature of this book. How does this book fit within the Pentateuch and then the overarching Old Testament economy? And then understand how and why it passes away with Christ. This is like the big takeaway point, I think.
There's two takeaway points is definitely study at number one and number two, the characteristics of Deuteronomy as the Constitution of Israel, but a Constitution that inevitably passes away with Jesus. We have to understand why that is. So first, let's look at authorship and dating.