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133 10 / Covenant:A Jewish Biblical Perspective 2005 “Covenant” is in the air again. The concept had enormous popularity in the early and mid-twentieth century,1 when it was hailed as the key to biblical theology. But its popularity among modern thinkers waned as biblical theologians abandoned their attempt to find the one central principle of the Bible and began to concentrate instead on discovering the multiplicity of biblical voices and their complexity. Now, however, the idea of “covenant” is reemerging as an important paradigm for our contemporary understanding of the intricate interrelationships between humanity, Israel, and God. “Covenant” is a richer, more varied, and more complex idea in the Hebrew Bible than in later Judaism or Christianity. In Christianity, covenant was explicitly abandoned as “fulfilled” or mutated into the eschatological “new covenant,” somewhat foreseen by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The old covenant, with its laws and conditions, was associated with the concept of “chosenness” or “election” and was dismissed as Jewish and Jewish alone. At the same time, the term “new covenant,” which in Jeremiah and Ezekiel meant nothing short of a change in human nature, became a term for Christian faith with no real separate referent. The biblical covenants did not fare much better under Judaism. The regulations of the Sinai of covenant evolved into the halakhah and remained as a core element of Judaism. But the Rabbis did not picture the halakhah and its commandments as a covenant. To them it was a “yoke” of submission to the commandments (‘ol mitzvot) or the “yoke of the Kingdom” (‘ol malkhut), submission to God. The idea of “covenant” receded and the very term brit, “covenant,” was limited in Mishnah and Talmud to brit milah, the covenant of circumcision. 134 Comparative Culture II The brit milah is a very important aspect of Judaism,2 for it is the sign of Jewish loyalty to its special relationship with God. Rabbinic Judaism limits the term “covenant” to circumcision, but circumcision is not a trivial matter, and the act of circumcising one’s sons remained both a preliminary and an ultimate declaration of faithfulness to the bond between Israel and God. Circumcision can be a very dangerous act. In addition to its inherent physical dangers as an operation on a very young boy, historical factors made circumcision even more dangerous, for it is the physical sign of being Jewish, and marking the boy as Jewish opened him to all the dangers that have beset the Jews. But these dangers only increased the ability of circumcision to signify the importance of the divine-Israel relationship. The decision of parents to circumcision their infant sons in the face of such dangers has been a major act of parental loyalty to God and a demonstration of their determination to keep themselves and their children in a special relationship to God. Indeed, the loyalty demonstrated by circumcision lies behind one of the most important liturgical poems of the Day of Atonement, “Like Clay in the Hands of the Potter, So We Are in Your Hands.” As Jews acknowledge their utter vulnerability to God, we ask God not to look only to our evil urges (and their consequences), but to look at the covenant. Circumcision, the act of loyalty and steadfastness by which we maintain our intimate relationship with God, is our ace as we petition God to demonstrate compassion and benevolence towards us and all Israel. Despite its intense importance, the Rabbinic notion of covenant is very narrowly conceived. Covenant in the Hebrew Bible, by contrast, is a rich and diverse concept, and its many nuances give it potential importance for contemporary thinking about God and humanity. When we examine the biblical passages relating to covenant without the interpretations they have attracted through their traditional rabbinic, patristic , dogmatic or modern receptions, we can perceive the many facets of this multidimensional concept, and it may then provide a conceptual framework with which to understand how we relate to God. Covenant has been studied before; it is a much studied, possibly even over-determined subject, but most analyses are interested in imposing modern categories on the ancient material, dividing it analytically into “conditional” or “unconditional,” “political” or “ritual,” or other somewhat arbitrary subdivisions. Instead of such structural analyses, it is worth looking at the material as it begins to appear in the text, and letting these appearances teach us what they will. .14.142.115] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 04:23 GMT) 10 / Covenant 135 In the first...

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