Commenting
on Acts 2:16-21 and Peter’s appeal to the Old Testament, I. Howard Marshall
noted:
What was happening was to be seen as the
fulfilment of a prophecy by Joel, and
here Peter proceeded to cite the relevant passage, Joel 2:28-32. A further
phrase from the same passage is to be found in verse 39, and the same passage
is also cited in Rom 10:13 and Rev. 6:12 (these citations show that the prophecy
was one that was used in the early church, and not one first introduced into
the speech by Luke himself). The quotation
follows the LXX but with a number of small alterations to adept the prophecy to
its context (it was natural for New Testament writers to adopt the form of
Old Testament text which best suited their purpose or to adapt the wording as
necessary. The meaning was more important than reproduction of the exact
wording; see E.E. Ellis, ‘Quotations (in the New Testament)’, NBD, p. 1071). One of the more important
of these changes is the way in which Joel’s ‘And it shall come to pass afterward’ has been altered to ‘And in the last days it shall be’. Peter
regards Joel’s prophecy as applying to the last days, and claims that his hearers
are now living in the last days. God’s final act of salvation has begun to take
place. (I. Howard Marshall, Acts: An
Introduction and Commentary [Tyndale New Testament Commentaries; Leicester:
Inter-Varsity Press, 1980], 73, emphasis in bold added)
Elsewhere,
with respect to James’ use of Amos 9:11-12 in Acts 15:16-18, Marshall wrote the
following about the version of the text James used:
The LXX version rests on a hypothetical
Hebrew text which differs only slightly in lettering from the MT; hence the
difference may be due to a revision of the Hebrew text to make it relevant to a
new situation. (Ibid., 253)
According to
Marshall, who was a leading New Testament scholar during his lifetime, had no
issue with the New Testament authors and apostles, not simply reinterpreting Old
Testament texts in light of the Christ event, but reworked the text of the Old Testament “to make it
relevant to a new situation.” Imagine if Joseph Smith did this—Evangelicals would
be using this as “proof” of how anti-Christian “Mormonism” is, and yet, the New
Testament apostles had no qualms with doing such!
On the issue
of prophets and apostles changing their words and/or the words of previous
prophets, one might wish to pursue the following article:
Biblical Prophets Changing their Words and the Words of Previous Prophets