“Behold! I tell you a mystery”, “I want you to understand this mystery”, “the mystery that was kept secret for long ages”, “the mystery was made known to me by revelation”. Quotes such as these are so common that Bible readers surely recognise them, but are they so familiar that we forget we don’t have a clue what they mean? One common understanding of these texts would read dictionary definitions of mystery back in to the Bible and conclude that it denotes an enigmatic idea. Another common view is that mystery refers to a novel idea entirely absent from the Old Testament. Both definitions contain some truth but the authors of Hidden but Now Revealed want to sharpen our focus. But, really, an entire book about mystery? G. K. Beale and Benjamin Gladd believe that mystery plays an important role in interpreting the whole Bible. It is both a bridge that spans the Old Testament to the New and a compass for navigating the continuity and discontinuity in the Testaments.
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