Rereading the OT

Christotelic interpreters (e.g. Doug Green, Dan McCartney, Tremper Longman) like to illustrate their hermeneutic in the following way:

Imagine reading the OT first, apart from the NT. What would it mean to you on a first reading? Then, after reading the NT, go back and reread the OT. What would it mean to you a second time, in light of your exposure to the NT?

Taken by itself, this is a fairly innocuous illustration. Indeed, this illustration is so generic that I doubt it singles out christotelism. Surely critics like Beale could easily co-opt that illustration. 

But now I'd like to make a different point. The illustration is deeply misleading. That's because it's so one-sided. For, if you think about it, we could turn this around.

Imagine if all you had was the NT. Suppose the OT was long-lost and forgotten. Just consider how bewildering the NT would be absent the OT. Commentaries would be written, rife with ingenious speculation about how to explain this baffling, incomplete story. You see, knowing the ending without knowing the beginning or the middle is just as confusing as the reverse. 

In fact, I expect many of us have switched on the TV, and seen a movie in progress. We started watching it about halfway through. As a result, there's a lot we don't follow. If we like what we saw, we may rent the movie to catch the beginning. To see what we missed. Just as what comes later may be crucial to understanding a story, what came before may be crucial to understanding a story. 

Suppose the OT was rediscovered. Imagine reading the NT first, apart from the OT. What would it mean to you on a first reading? Then, after reading the OT, go back and reread the NT. What would it mean to you a second time, in light of your exposure to the OT?

You see, there's a deceptive asymmetry to the christotelic illustration, for the two Testaments are mutually interpreting. The NT helps us understand the OT, yet the OT helps us understand the NT.