The Old Testament

about Jesus; second, we come to believe in Him ourselves; third, we remain with Jesus and He with us; and fourth, we give evidence of our discipleship by showing the love of Jesus to one another.

Unveiling the Scriptural essence of this concept of discipleship begins with, no surprise here, words. The key is to track down the subtle shadings of the pertinent Greek and Hebrew words within their context because this is how we get to the root of their intentional meanings. This is where my personal search began, and it is my privilege to share what I learned about discipleship with you.

In the Old Testament, I found much less than I expected. There are times when a person lives as a disciple or student of some teacher or master, but these times are relatively few and much less central than they are in the Gospels. The Old Testament uses the usual Hebrew word for disciple (talmîd) one time and the other word for disciple (limmûd) four times.1 Discipleship did become important for the Jewish rabbis who were descended from the Pharisees of the New Testament period, but not until the second century after Christ. There are also other relationships in the Old Testament of masters and disciples in relationship with one another, but none of these scattered Old Testament prefigurations of discipleship captures the clear and consistent concept of discipleship that we see in the Gospels. Our search for the biblical understanding of discipleship, therefore, will be rooted in the New Testament.

1. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 3, Companions and Competitors (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2001), 42. The single use is merely to describe an apprentice musician in 1 Chronicles 25:8.