“For David Said Concerning Him”: Foundations of Hope in Psalm 16 and Acts 2

Abstract

ABSTRACT Peter's use of Ps 16 in his pentecostal speech has been a touchstone of debates about the use of the OT in the NT and thus about the continuity and discontinuity between the writings of the earliest Jesus followers and the sacred writings they claimed as their own. My contribution to this enormous debate is an analysis of the continuity and discontinuity between the foundations of hope—that is, the reasons to hope—that inform the statements of hope in these two texts. I examine the nature of hope and the foundations of hope (of which I identify three in Ps 16 and five in Acts 2) in each text in turn. I conclude that the nature of the continuities and discontinuities between the texts are fundamentally the result of the messianic and resurrection logic that characterizes many NT writings (including Luke–Acts), in which the discontinuity is at the service of the underlying continuity with the long-established story in which the NT authors and speakers place themselves.