A common move in HRM interpretation is the appeal to original audience: what did this text mean to the Israelites who first received it? And the answer is typically: it meant keep Torah. Therefore Torah is what it means now. This argument has the appearance of rigorous, historically grounded exegesis. But it rests on a principle that the Bible itself does not endorse - the principle that original audience meaning exhausts a text's significance.

The question of who determines the meaning of a biblical text is genuinely complex, and honest hermeneutics requires sitting with that complexity rather than resolving it prematurely in either direction. But the evidence of the New Testament, and the nature of divine authorship, points clearly toward a conclusion that the original audience's understanding is important but not final.

Two Authors, Not One

Every passage of scripture has two authors: the human author who wrote it, and the divine Author who inspired it. The human author wrote from within a historical situation, with particular questions and concerns, for a particular audience. The divine Author was guiding that writing toward purposes that sometimes exceeded what the human author fully understood.

Peter makes this explicit in 1 Peter 1:10–12: "Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you."

The prophets themselves did not fully understand what they were writing. They "searched and inquired" - they wanted to know what the Spirit in them was pointing toward. This is not a statement about bad human authors failing to grasp their own material. It is a statement about the nature of inspired writing: the divine Author's intent in a prophetic text can exceed what the human author consciously intended or what the original audience could fully grasp.

The New Testament's Own Practice

The New Testament demonstrates repeatedly that the meaning of Old Testament texts extends beyond what was available to their original audience. Matthew's fulfilment citations apply texts whose original context was historical to new events. Paul's christological reading of Deuteronomy 30:12–14 in Romans 10:6–8 goes far beyond what Moses's original audience would have understood. John's identification of Jesus as the eternal Word of John 1 reads Genesis 1 through a lens the original Israelite audience did not have.

None of these apostolic readings are arbitrary impositions. They follow the logic of typological correspondence and progressive revelation. But they all demonstrate that the meaning available to the original audience was not the final meaning of the text.

The HRM argument that we must read the Torah the way its original Israelite recipients understood it would, if applied consistently, eliminate most of the New Testament's reading of the Old. Matthew's Gospel would be illegitimate. Paul's christological midrash on Deuteronomy would be illegitimate. The entire typological reading of the Levitical system in Hebrews would be illegitimate - because none of it was available to the original audience of Moses's writings.

Original Audience as Necessary But Not Sufficient

None of this means original audience is irrelevant. The human author's meaning - what the text meant in its original historical and literary context - is the necessary starting point for interpretation. You cannot read past the literal sense without first understanding it. Original audience meaning provides the stable, verifiable base on which further interpretation is built.

But it is a starting point, not a ceiling. The divine Author, who inspired the text, intended meanings and correspondences that the human author was only partially aware of - and which later revelation, culminating in the coming of Christ, makes visible. The church reads the Old Testament after Christ, with the eyes of those who can now see where the story was going. This is not an illegitimate imposition. It is the fullest reading of what the text was always doing.

The HRM's insistence on original audience meaning as determinative is, paradoxically, a way of keeping the Old Testament in the dark - refusing to allow the light of the New to illuminate it. But the Old Testament itself anticipated that light. The prophets were serving those who would come after them (1 Peter 1:12). Reading the Torah in the light of Christ is not disrespect to Moses. It is the completion of what Moses was doing - as Moses himself knew, when he said that God would raise up a prophet like him, and that it was to that prophet that Israel must listen (Deuteronomy 18:15).

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully. - 1 Peter 1:10