If you've had enough of skeptics shoving the ignorant rantings of Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll, Jim Lippard, Dennis McKinsey, and so on in your face on the topic of the New Testament's use of the Old, then you can addle their brains once and for all with the detailed thunderclap provided by Richard Longenecker. The aforementioned skeptics complain violently about how the NT authors supposedly misused and twisted the OT for their own purposes. Longenecker shows that such complaining is simply anachronistic -- the NT writers were interpreting and explicating within an established paradigm and methodology consistent with Jewish hermeneutics of the period, as evidenced in the works of the rabbis, Philo, and the Qumranites.

This hermeneutic did not sit simply with the literal reading of the text, but assumed a sensus plenoir (fuller sense) that could be unlocked by events of the day. The twin principles of corporate solidarity (which allowed Matthew to apply prophecies about Israel to Jesus, in the view that Jesus was, in a real sense, representing Israel) and typological correspondence (which also allowed the NT writers to see fulfillment in the repetition of themes), are a key here, and while Western, wooden minds will scoff nevertheless, the charge that the NT writers manipulated the texts for their own purposes is thereby reduced to the level of a whispered whine in substance.

Of course, the NT writers could have done none of their interpretation of the OT without the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, with Longenecker in your corner, you can now send the laughing boys who think Paine, et al. knew what they were talking about back to the funny farm. Their simple-minded literalism will take a beating from the details provided in Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period.