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This article concerns the role of covenant in early rabbinic literature in relation to biblical and especially Second Temple-era predecessors. The first part establishes that the Qumran sectarians and earlier circles were drawn to the concept of covenant because it represented, especially through the mechanism of covenant renewal, a powerful tool for defining and supporting group identity. The second part shows that for the rabbis, the importance of covenant lay chiefly, instead, in its capacity to conceptualize the notion of Israel as a collective body defined by corporate responsibility. The third part suggests that this novel deployment of covenant arose in part to counter the individuating force of halakah as law, another innovation of the rabbis.

How does the canon of Scripture fit together? For evangelical Christians, there is no question about the authority of Scripture and its testimony to the centrality of Jesus Christ in God's salvation plan. But several questions remain: How do the Old Testament and New Testament relate to each other? What is the relationship among the biblical covenants? How should Christians read and interpret Scripture in order to do justice to both its individual parts and its whole message? How does Israel relate to the church? In this Spectrum Multiview volume, readers will find four contributors who explore these complex questions. The contributors each make a case for their own view—representing two versions of covenantal theology and two versions of dispensational theology—and then respond to the others' views to offer an animated yet irenic discussion on the continuity of Scripture. Views and Contributors: * Covenant Theology: Michael S. Horton, Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California * Progressive Covenantalism: Stephen J. Wellum, professor of Christian theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary * Progressive Dispensationalism: Darrell L. Bock, Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary * Traditional Dispensationalism: Mark A. Snoeberger, professor of systematic theology and apologetics, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary Spectrum Multiview Books offer a range of viewpoints on contested topics within Christianity, giving contributors the opportunity to present their position and also respond to others in this dynamic publishing format.

No detailed description available for \"Covenant in the Persian Period\".

The struggle to read Jeremiah 31:31–34 as Christian Scripture has a long and divided history, cutting across nearly every major locus of Christian theology. Yet little has been done either to examine closely the varieties of interpretation in the Christian tradition from the post-Nicene period to the modern era, or to make use of such interpretations as helpful interlocutors. This work begins with Augustine's interpretation of Jer 31:31–34 as an absolute contrast between unbelief and faith, rather than the now-standard reading (found in Jerome) of a contrast between two successive religio-historical eras—one that governed Israel (the \"old covenant\") and a new era and its covenant inaugurated in the coming of Christ. Augustine's absolute contrast loosened the strict temporal concern, so that the faithful of any era were members of the \"new covenant.\" The study traces Augustine's reading of an absolute contrast in a few key moments of Christian interpretation: Thomas Aquinas and high medieval theology, then the 16th and 17th century Reformed tradition. The thesis aims at a constructive reading of Jer 31:31–34, and so the struggle identified in these moments in the Christian tradition is brought into dialogue with modern critical discussions from Bernhard Duhm to the present. Finally, the author turns to an exegetical argument for an 'Augustinian' reading of the contrast of the covenants.

The very latest scholarship on the Swiss Reformation has urged us to resituate the conceptual origins and first articulations of a Reformed Covenant theology in the Zurich of Zwingli, Jud, Pellikan, and Bullinger, rather than in the Geneva of Calvin and Beza. Using insights from the recent literature of early modern memory, book history, and art history, this article provides a critical new reading of the preface, text, and paratext of the 1531 folio edition of the Zurich Bible. In doing so, it elucidates how, working with a humanist conception of historical memory, an early Reformed Covenant theology was articulated through its rhetorical juxtaposition of an imagined Israel and Rabbinic Judaism. In line with recent work on the role of historical models in early Reformed Bible culture, I contend that the language of historical memory holds the key to understanding this Reformed rearticulation of Covenant theology and its intended effect on readers of the Zurich Bible. Insights from this reading shed light on the Zurich origins of Reformed Christianity’s ambivalent history of defining itself vis-a-vis an imagined Israel and Rabbinic Judaism, with implications for understanding Protestant discourses on Israel, Judaism, idolatry, antijudaism, and antisemitism.

The present article considers the intersection between genre and covenant in scripture in order to locate historical covenants and to trace their complex textual boundaries. Standing on the shoulders of Smith, Wellhausen, and Gunkel, the joint legacy left behind by Martin and Albrecht Noth is equally significant for both Biblical and Islamic studies. Nothian scholarship laid solid foundations for reconstructing the history of tribal traditions. Both of them together created a common frame of reference for studying primary and secondary themes (Themen), literary and documentary forms (Formen), introductory and concluding formulas (Formeln), and theological and political perspectives (Tendenzen), in addition to geographical, transitional, and framing devices (Schemata). In spite of this shared scholarly heritage, it appears that both Biblical and Qurʾānic studies have either been talking at cross-purposes or have reached a critical crossroads, as has happened in the case of covenant. All things considered, genre and tradition criticism allow us to move forward beyond the Methodenstreit in covenant studies.

This work establishes the significance of the thought of Puritan William Ames (1576-1633) in deepening and systematizing established Reformation teaching on Christian doctrine and life in a way that ensured its subsequent development through the early modern period and beyond. This book argues that William Ames built on existing, but as yet un-developed and un-codified, thought of Reformed and Puritan forerunners to construct an early theological system on the twin pillars of covenant theology and piety. In this exciting new work, van Vliet expounds Ames' covenantal thinking and demonstrates that Ames relocates moral theology from the medieval structures of early, virtue-based, Puritanism, to a Reformed framework anchored in the Decalogue. This is followed by a demonstration of the confluence of Ames' concern for Christian living with similar concerns of seventeenth-century Reformed pastors and thinkers in the Dutch Republic of the early modern period's post-Reformation world (Nadere Reformatie), and his influence on early-American Jonathan Edwards-both directly and through Petrus van Maastricht. In this persuasive argument, van Vliet radically corrects Amesian historiography which has minimized his influence.

into the exegetical and theological underpinnings of the Westminster Confession's chapter on the law by delivering an in-depth analysis of Anthony Burgess's Vindiciae Legis.After a brief introduction to Burgess and his historical context, Casselli details the logical course of Burgess's book considering the law as given to Adam, the law given to.

In Commonwealth and Covenant Marcia Pally argues that in order to address current socioeconomic problems, we need not more economic formulas but rather a better understanding of how the world is set up -- an ontology of how we and the world work.Without this, good proposals that arise lack political will and go unimplemented.

God's grace demonstrated in the biblical narrative through the lens of covenant. This study analyses the different divine covenants of the Old Testament and argues that they are closely related. The successive covenants, from Noah to David, are seen to express the divine purpose for humanity from the creation onwards. William Dumbrell interacts extensively with attempts to explain the significance of concepts such as the gift of the land, victory, rest and the divine presence. This extraordinary book also throws light upon the Christian use of the Old Testament categories. This second, revised edition brings the subject right up to date.