Without the history of Israel, we have no conceptual tools with which to grasp the meaning of the incarnate Son of God and His work. One cannot truly understand Christ and His salvation without some grasp of the whole Levitical system, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and the prophets and wisdom literature. Without the Levitical system, one could not understand the cross of Christ. Without the Old Testament the New Testament would be bodiless; without the New Testament the Old Testament would be headless.
Douglas Kelly, Systematic Theology: Volume 1, (Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2008), 420.
