MISSIONARY IDEAS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT: PARADIGMATIC ASPECT

Abstract

The article deals with ideas of the Old Testament that form its missionary paradigm. The purpose of our work is to revise different thoughts of the researchers about missionary phenomenon in the old Bible canon and the Bible as a key document in the understanding of mission. To get a needed scientific result we use methods of logical and comparative analysis, hermeneutical method, and the synthetic one. On the basis of these sources and methods, we will produce a balanced and logical conception of the Old Testament missionary paradigm and study out the difference between Old and New Testament missionary ideas. There are not any studies of the Old Testament missionary work in Ukraine. Some researchers deal with the evangelization in Christian confessions but they do not transcend confessional limits. It can be connected with religion studies tradition to separate two texts of the Bible claiming that New Testament is more acceptable for studying a Christian phenomenon such as missionary. In our work, we assert that Old Testament as a part of Christian Bible and Christian phenomena can be researched through it. Consequently, in this article we try to include this aspect of Old Testament into the dialectic of Ukrainian religion studies. Conclusion. After revision of the OT missionary ideas we can claim that it is difficult to figure out a strict missionary paradigm of the Old Bible canon but there are a lot of principles which gave a strong potential for Christianity to spread around the world such as mercy for enemies, witnessing about God among the Gentiles and worldwide character of God’s mission.