The resurrection of Christ is the final consummation of
all Scripture—it is the sign of fulfillment. Jesus fits the pattern of
the prophets in his life and death and completes it. Deuteronomy 18:55f becomes
the programmatic text in the Old Testament for Jesus’ interpretation of the
Scriptures as fulfilled in himself. As Bock suggests in his exposition of the
transfiguration imperative “listen to him” in 9:35, Deuteronomy 18 is Luke’s
source, and Moses is the one who sets the pattern for Jesus’ rejection of well
as his teaching and miracles:
“This use of Deuteronomy 18 as a call to understand God’s
plan as revealed in the prophet like Moses, Jesus is present also in Acts
3.19-24. Its connection with teaching about Jesus’ suffering and coming glory
suggests that these points of Jesus’ ministry may not have been appreciated as
a part of the OT hope about Messiah.” (Bock, Proclamation from Prophecy and
Pattern, 115)
Even the use of “to raise up” (anasthêsei) in
Deuteronomy 18:15 could be seen as an allusion to the resurrection of Jesus.
Luke’s phrase “beginning with Moses” suggests that we read back into the Gospel
to see the evangelist’s development of his Moses typology that sets the pattern
par excellence for the progressive unfolding of those prophetic
characteristics that will mark the Messiah, a pattern that may be seen in
Abraham, David, Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, the future apostolic
community in Acts, and in Israel itself.
Jesus, therefore, is the eschatological prophet,
the end of the ages, the fulfillment of all Scripture. He is the teacher
who, at the table, completes the teaching of the prophets—he is the
miracle-worker who, through his miracles and his presence at the table,
before and after the resurrection, demonstrates the presence in the world of
the new age of salvation, demonstrates the presence of the world of the new age
of salvation, the fulfillment of the kingdom of God—he is the rejected one
who, by his death on the cross, fulfills his own prophecy that “a prophet
should not perish away from Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33). But the disciples or the
people of Israel could not understand that Jesus was the fulfillment of
Scripture until after the resurrection. As Dillon concludes: “Only at
Easter could that properly Mosaic prophecy of Jesus be brought to
light.” (Dillon, From Eyewitnesses, 136) (Arthur A. Just, Jr., The
Ongoing Feast: Table Fellowship and Eschatology at Emmaus [Collegeville,
Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1993], 214-15, italics in original)
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