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  • From: "meta" <meta AT rraz.net>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Toward a Theology of OT Covenant
  • Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 21:23:37 -0700


John: God is 'establishing' a covenant which already exists rather than
making a new covenant.

Me: John, how do you support this statement, without please eisegesis of
applying Abe's or Noah's experience? But even if you do that, then still
how do you support the connection? I agree that the covenants are
different. I agree with you on definition and use of "establish."

John: 'covenant' in the unilateral sense, we are looking at a promise which
I would submit has conditions attached to it...."

Me: OK, so it is established with only Noah, et al, not to those destroyed,
but you say the condition is not to consume animal blood? But since I
disagree with your original premise, since I see no evidence for it, I do
not think the covenant with Moses reflects or continues from the promise to
Noah. Of course there are many laws established by yhwh, but how do you tie
this into a specific covenant, as is obviously accomplished in the covenant
with Moses?

The life for life postulate is evident in contemporaneous and previous ANE
laws, as indeed in Hammurabi's, not just Hebrew. Of course the obligations
are evident in the Hebrew laws, but the question is, is there a specific
obligation or mention of an obligation in the covenant as promise,
distinguished from specific obligations directly tied to the covenant as
contract with Moses, and the people? Stated another way, the relationship
between yhwh and his people in terms of obligations is continuous throughout
the Torah, but how specifically related to the promise covenant with Abram?
El made a promise with Abe, what did he require in return?

John: This would indicate IMO that God was keeping the terms of an earlier
covenant by preserving part of the creation along with Noah and his family
during the flood.

Me: I understand that this is your opinion, but I don't see evidence. You
are reading the Torah as a continuous, interconnected, coherent, single
story, which I think is the wrong way to read it. It is a compilation of
stories meant to incite belief and trust in the truth claimed, which
basically is not presented until the Moses saga. And this I think is what
Paul is hitting on, that there was a covenant, God's promise and contract
with human obligations, beginning with Moses, and so long as the Jews were
faithful to that covenant they would be saved. But for others, non-Jews,
since they were not covered in this covenant, still they are held
accountable but virtue of the law imprinted in their minds (genetic
inheritance?--natural law?), but saved through the faith of the father of
all, including non-Jews, the goyim, Abraham because of his faith. Thus for
the gentiles, not involved in a contractual covenant, the obligation is what
they were supposed to know anyway. Now that we have Paul in this picture,
perhaps it fits into the purposes of this group, whereas this conversation
should be considered inappropriate, and therefore should be rejected. And I
don't think your discussion of tense of the Hebrew is applicable, and anyway
it could work either for or against your argument--the past is past.

John: Dumbrell says that covenant 'refers to a final solemn commitment by
which a state of existing relationships is normalized (Dumbrell, 1979, p3).

Me: There is very much evidence of covenants in the ANE, many long before
the Hebrews or Israelites ever existed, some on stones (as Moses's
tablets?). Many are in the form of treaties, meant to reach mutual
agreements with obligations in lieu of continued fighting and killing. They
are bilateral, even if it means only that one side may take possession of
the other's entire land, all livestock, all valuables including gold, etc.,
but that these others are spared their lives, and maybe their women (to my
knowledge this is only hypothetical, but to prove the point). And to
Drumbrell, yes commitment, but whose? And what could "normalized" possibly
mean? Let's just say ameliorated to mutual satisfactions.

Yes, agreed with the Ennuma Elish, typical during the times, and as you
know, it also had a creation story, including man (a god's blood and dirt).
I agree about the more advanced and altruistically enhanced legal concepts,
as in Deut. Wouldn't you agree this reflects the second temple period,
during the Axial Age of religious flourishment around the world? I don't
think it is any different from other moral statements elsewhere during the
time. It doesn't even begin to compare with the altruism in Buddhism, but
of course, that's in the East. Judaism is more closely compared with
Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persian Babylonia, where the Jews were in
exile. Judaism had no monopoly on care for the widows and orphans and the
poor, and justice. Maybe you'd better read Hammurabi again!--even going way
back in time.

John: the revelation to Israel provides the corrective model. Whereas the
responsibility of man in the commutative transaction was sacrifice only in
the cultures around the world; the responsibility of man according to the
revelation given to Israel was sacrifice and the maintenance of justice
especially in terms of the weak in its midst.

Me: Uhhh?
Well, John, I think our basic disagreement is on how to read the Bible.

Thank you,
Richard Godwin.





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