Wick Stick
Active Member
In Acts 2, Peter gives the sermon of his life to the assembled Jews who are at Jerusalem for the Feast of Pentecost. In verses 29-30, he says something I found peculiar - that David was a prophet.
Now, we know David as a king. And David was also a priest - he claims so in Psalm 110. But David a prophet? And that got me to thinking... WHY? David is already the most important king of Israel and one of only 3 members of the prestigious Order of Melchizedek (with Melchizedek and Jesus Himself). Why single him out as a prophet, too? Do the prophets hold some special status that would put them above kings and priests?
The answer seems to be yes.
I found a survey of places where the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament and did a little number-crunching. It turns out that the New Testament authors heavily prefer the books of prophecy:
Even discounting the duplicate quotations for Moses (Exodus & Deuteronomy overlap a lot), that means the New Testament authors quote the prophets nearly 10x as often as non-prophets (201 - 21).
But wait, it gets worse... I looked up those 12 citations from the non-prophetic books and... half of them are from prophets. 4 from Samuel and 2 from Elijah.
So... why DO the New Testament authors quote the prophets almost exclusively?
It seems to me that the NT authors regarded the prophets as more authoritative than the other books.
Now, we know David as a king. And David was also a priest - he claims so in Psalm 110. But David a prophet? And that got me to thinking... WHY? David is already the most important king of Israel and one of only 3 members of the prestigious Order of Melchizedek (with Melchizedek and Jesus Himself). Why single him out as a prophet, too? Do the prophets hold some special status that would put them above kings and priests?
The answer seems to be yes.
I found a survey of places where the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament and did a little number-crunching. It turns out that the New Testament authors heavily prefer the books of prophecy:
| Author | Number of Times Quoted |
| Moses (Genesis - Deuteronomy) | 68 (+27 duplicate quotations) |
| David (Psalms) | 55 |
| Isaiah | 45 |
| Other Books of Prophecy | 33 |
| Books of History (Joshua - Esther) | 12 |
| Solomon (Proverbs, Songs, Ecclesiastes) | 6 |
| Job | 3 |
Even discounting the duplicate quotations for Moses (Exodus & Deuteronomy overlap a lot), that means the New Testament authors quote the prophets nearly 10x as often as non-prophets (201 - 21).
But wait, it gets worse... I looked up those 12 citations from the non-prophetic books and... half of them are from prophets. 4 from Samuel and 2 from Elijah.
So... why DO the New Testament authors quote the prophets almost exclusively?
It seems to me that the NT authors regarded the prophets as more authoritative than the other books.
