"Preaching the Law. Reconsidering the Relationship between the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy," SJOT 37/1 (2023) 148–165 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rewriting and Revision as Amendment in the Laws of Deuteronomy (reading sample)
Rewriting and Revision as Amendment in the Laws of Deuteronomy, 2018
One of the defining features of Deuteronomy is its reworking of textual sources. Many of Deuteronomy’s laws rewrite the laws of the Covenant Collection, also known as the Covenant Code (Exod 20:22–23:19). The purpose of the rewriting is disputed: was Deuteronomy designed to stand alongside the Covenant Collection as a supplement to it, or to stand alone as a replacement for it? This study proposes a mediating model of amendment: Deuteronomy was designed to change how the Covenant Collection would be understood by its readers. The competing models of replacement and supplementation emphasize different aspects of the relationship between Deuteronomy and the Covenant Collection: models of “replacement” focus on discontinuity (contradictions and tensions), whereas models of “supplementation” focus on continuity (presupposition, reference, and complementation). An amendment model accounts both for the seriousness of the disagreements between Deuteronomy and the Covenant Collection and for the extent to which Deuteronomy requires reference to the Covenant Collection. The internal growth of laws within Deuteronomy provides an important point of comparison to Deuteronomy’s reworking of the Covenant Collection. Deuteronomy’s authors responded to their own growing text in a range of ways that parallels their responses to the Covenant Collection: they contradicted it and changed its meaning at certain points, but also presupposed it and referenced it. This similarity in interpretive results suggests a similarity in purpose, suggesting that Deuteronomy’s authors sought to amend the Covenant Collection even as they continued to amend their own growing text. I analyze the responses to source texts evident in three sets of Deuteronomic laws: its laws of cultic place, sacrifice, and slaughter (Deut 12:1–28; cf. Exod 20:24–26); its tithe and firstling regulations (Deut 14:22–29; 15:19–23; 26:12–15; cf. Exod 22:28–29); and its asylum legislation (Deut 19:1–13; cf. Exod 21:12–14).
This expansive volume is an apt development in Lundbom’s career, as it complements his longstanding interest in rhetorics, and follows his three-volume commentary on Jeremiah for the Anchor Bible series. The connections between Jeremiah’s prophecy and the redaction of his book to the Deuteronomistic school, and the setting of Deuteronomy as an extended oration delivered by Moses in the Transjordan, are two branches that connect the commentary to the author’s previous projects as an obvious continuum, evident in the erudition and the scope of his commentary. My qualms as a legal historian aside, Lundbom’s commentary is dense in breadth and depth. He covers an impressive ground of scholarship and traditions, ranging from the Ancient Near East to classical Greco-Roman sources, Christian interpretation, and modern scholarship. The introduction alone is a valuable guide, and his rhetorical and structural analysis of each passage of the book is a tremendous resource for any scholar of Deuteronomy. In his survey of previous research and his presentation of theology, Lundbom offers a new path for twenty-first century scholarship. I did not always agree with his theological interpretations, but his choice to focus on theological issues such as love and justice serves as an important reminder of the brilliant cohesion of Deuteronomy, for all its complexities, that made its impact longstanding on many generations to come
The Covenant Code: A New Way of Reading the Ancient Writing: Kline and Hocking
2022 International Meeting of the SBL Salzburg, Austria; Stylistics and the Hebrew Bible, 2022
This paper2 suggests a new way of reading the Torah, not described in scholarly guides (such as, Clines et al., 1990; Barton, 1996; Kugel, 2012), because it argues for a different way of understanding the writing. It is a literary-critical, synchronic case study of what we take to be a single literary unit in the so-called “Covenant Code” (Exod 22:17[Eng. 18]–23:19). For avoidance of doubt, the paper considers the literary composition of the extant text, not its historical composition, so it does not engage with diachronic questions addressed elsewhere (Van Seters, 2003; Levinson, 2004; Wright, 2009; Kilchör, 2013), nor with its relationship with ANE legal collections (for references, see Alexander, 2017, 447–49). The paper sets out evidence that suggests the extant form of the unit was constructed in parallel in two dimensions, and with a suasive intent that is more covenantal than legal.
Law and Gospel in New Covenant Preaching
This paper examines the ever-abiding relevance of the Old Testament in preaching by examining the exegetical-theological relationship between law and gospel. In addition, different historical interpretations of the two are examined to observe the different effects produced by different frameworks. Finally, applications are discussed to assist the minister in faithfully proclaiming the word of God.
Reconsidering "law" in Hebrews
Verbum et Ecclesia, 2021
In this contribution, the notion that the concept of ‘law’ in the Letter to the Hebrews only pertains to the cultic domain is challenged against the discourse on law in the whole letter. Apart from instances in which the law includes moral aspects of the law, the broader theological context in which the concept of ‘law’ is set in Hebrews suggests that the whole Mosaic system is in view throughout the letter. Such a conclusion is drawn on the basis of pertinent contrasts in the letter between the old and new covenants, between the different sources of revelation, between Moses and Jesus, between the ways in which priesthood and sacrifices function in relation to sin, between the outward or physical and the inward or spiritual, and between the earthly and heavenly domains of the respective covenantal systems.
A Call to Covenant Love: Text Grammar and Literary Structure in Deuteronomy 5–11 (2007 excerpt)
Gorgias, 2007
Targeted toward the exegete, A CALL TO COVENANT LOVE offers a clear method for establishing flow of thought, text hierarchy, and literary macrostructure in biblical Hebrew prose. The study contributes both to hermeneutical theory and to the study of Deuteronomy by arguing for the application of discourse linguistics alongside stylistic and semantic analysis in the interpretation of OT texts. It is distinct from most other textlinguistic studies in its attention to reported direct speech and in its inclusion of a brief literary-structural and theological commentary on Deuteronomy 5–11 that models the text grammatical approach and shows its benefits for exegesis. The study's first goal is to clarify the formal elements of biblical Hebrew that operate above the sentence level and that help guide the understanding of text structure. Through rigorous analysis of the formal features, semantic meaning, and discourse function of every clause in Deuteronomy 5–11, this study lucidly evaluates and articulates how biblical Hebrew marks and/or tracks logic and flow of thought, foregrounding, participant reference, and various discourse signals. As the book s main title suggests, in this study discourse grammar is a servant to exegesis. Through numerous examples and commentary, the study demonstrates that the biblical text is both coherent in its discussion and cohesive in its organization. Furthermore, A CALL TO COVENANT LOVE clearly and passionately articulates the lasting message of one of the OT Scripture's most foundational sections, extending the original call to life-encompassing, Godward surrender into the present age.
Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually. Edited by Katharine Dell and Will Kynes. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 587. London: T&T Clark, 2014. Pages 28–41., 2014
The historical-critical method that characterizes academic biblical studies remains often separate from approaches that stress the history of interpretation, which are employed most frequently in the area of Second Temple or Dead Sea Scrolls research. This paper examines a test-case where the two methods mutually reinforce one another. The law of vows in Deuteronomy 23:22-24 is difficult both in its syntax and in its legal content. The difficulty is resolved once it is recognized that the law contains a previously unrecognized interpolation that disrupts the original coherence of the law. However, once that interpolation was added and became accepted as part of the textual tradition, it created a “ripple effect” whereby Second Temple readers were forced to resolve the disruption in order to make sense of the text’s content and syntax. The divergent reformulations of the law by Qoheleth 5:4–7, on the one hand, and 11QTemple 53:11–14, on the other, suggest that each of these independent witnesses sensed the textual disruption and sought to compensate for it. The fact that each did so in a different way, while seeming to respond to the same textual “trigger,” appears to confirm the hypothesis of the interpolation. In that way, the history of interpretation offers a window into the composition history of Deuteronomy’s law of vows. Keywords law of vows; intertextuality; inner-biblical exegesis; linguistic updating; protasis; conditional clauses; interpolation; Deut 23:22–24; Qoh 5:4–7; Eccl 5:4-7; 11QTemple 53:11–14; Temple Scroll; Numbers 30, Sipre Deuteronomy; Sifre; Matthew 5:33-37