Is the Sabbath Part of the "New Covenant"? (original) (raw)

The Role of God’s Moral Law, Including Sabbath, in the "New Covenant

2004

M any Christians today believe and teach that when the "old covenant" of the Old Testament gave way to the "new covenant"/New Testament of Christianity, the entire "old covenant" law became obsolete. 2 Since the seventh day Sabbath was part of that law, it is logical to conclude that literal Sabbath observance is no longer relevant or required. This approach has been adopted by a broad spectrum of Christians, from those (especially evangelicals) who hold that Christians are not bound to keep any particular day 3 to others (including Pope John Paul II) who slide aspects of the Old Testament Sabbath over to Sunday in order to make it a Christian "Sabbath." 4 The line of reasoning just described is logical: "Old covenant" law, which includes seventh day Sabbath, is replaced by "new covenant." Therefore seventh day Sabbath comes to an end. However, this logic is founded on an assumption, namely, that the Bible teaches such a sharp break between "Old" and "New" Testament religion that there is no continuity between the covenants that they represent. This assumption has a profound effect upon the nature of Christianity, so that many Christians reject the divine authority and value of much or all of the Old Testament. 5 If we examine the crucial assumption that there is no continuity between the "Old" and "New" Testament cov

The Ten Commandments - A Critical Reading

2010

The social and ethic nature of the Ten Commandments; The validity of the Ten Commandments; Monotheism at stake; Sabbath (Saturday) as day of rest; The perfect Codex of Law.

The Role of God’s Moral Law, Including Sabbath, in the “New Covenant”1

2004

Many Christians today believe and teach that when the “old covenant” of the Old Testament gave way to the “new covenant”/New Testament of Christianity, the entire “old covenant” law became obsolete.2 Since the seventh day Sabbath was part of that law, it is logical to conclude that literal Sabbath observance is no longer relevant or required. This approach has been adopted by a broad spectrum of Christians, from those (especially evangelicals) who hold that Christians are not bound to keep any particular day3 to others (including Pope John Paul II) who slide aspects of the Old Testament Sabbath over to Sunday in order to make it a Christian “Sabbath.”4 The line of reasoning just described is logical: “Old covenant” law, which includes seventh day Sabbath, is replaced by “new covenant.” Therefore seventh day Sabbath comes to an end. However, this logic is founded on an assumption, namely, that the Bible teaches such a sharp break between “Old” and “New” Testament religion that there ...

A Fresh Look at the Ten Commandments

The Living Light, 2000

A Decalogue (5:7–21) is ten instructions, a handbook explaining the obligations of clients to their patrons (10:12—11:32; 16:18—17:13; 22:1–12; 24:6). A long-standing tradition of interpretation considers decalogues to be a genre developed by elite males to teach one another the basic stipulations of the Covenant between YHWH and Israel. Decalogues are codes of honor which reflect what elite males expect of themselves, and how other elite males will evaluate how well they fulfill their roles in their households, villages and tribes.5 The long-standing tradition of interpretation that the decalogue is a genre developed by elite males Furthermore, the emphasis on worshipping YHWH alone would be an unusual teaching of women whose household worship was more inclusive of other members of the divine assembly like Asherah (5:6–10), and it is unlikely that women would view themselves as household possessions rather than as full, contributing members of their households (5:21). The Decalogue teaches the Hebrews to treat one another the way YHWH treats them. Their behavior is an image of YHWH. They were not to be competitive, but to create communities where even the powerless could survive. Only Hebrews who could remember their own sufferings well enough could be compassionate. Only then could their households live simply so that other households may simply live.

The Theologies of Commandment in Biblical Israel

Harvard Theological Review, 1980

Critical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible a hundred years ago held a much lower estimation of the role of law in the religion of ancient Israel and of the value of biblical law than do scholars today. Julius Wellhausen, for example, whose work was the most influential of the nineteeth century, maintained that in its creative period, Israel had no law, but only “usage and tradition” which “were looked on to a large extent as the institution of the Deity.” Thus, the prophets, whom Wellhausen stressed, did not preach out of any legal tradition in his view, but rather “out of the spirit which judges all things and itself is judged of no man.” In their canonical shape, however, the materials ancient Israel bequeathed us are so strongly nomistic that even Wellhausen could not deny that at a certain point law became central, displacing the spirit. That point marks the transition from Israelite religion to something new called “Judaism,” which is distinguished by the idea of a written Torah....

The two versions of the sabbath-commandment: structural similarities

2006

In Old Testament studies the Decalogue is usually considered to be the paradigm-example of a doublet. No wonder. Indeed, it is quite strange that we can read such an important and in many ways highlighted text twice in the Torah – twice and differently. It is a well-known fact that the literarily most developed and thematically most important differences are to be found in the Sabbath-Commandment. The questions of the mutual relationship between the two versions, their particular origin and the specific intentions of the variations have been discussed since ancient times. The two different versions of the Sabbath-Commandment were profoundly studied in the past. In modern times the hypotheses were usually constructed in the paradigm of literary history or the history of traditions (Literaturgeschichte, Traditionsgeschichte); this is documented in several surveys of the history of the Decalogue-research published in recent decades. I would like to look at the problem of the two versio...

BOOKENDS OF OLD TESTAMENT ETHICS: THE FIRST AND TENTH COMMANDMENTS AND HUMAN DIGNITY

Scriptura 106, 2011

The final position of the tenth commandment might suggest that it is intended as the climactic statement of a series of 'ten words' and is linked to the first commandment to form an inclusio. While the first commandment insists that there is no other God and that this is rooted in an internal posture; so too the tenth commandment is opposed to an inner attitude of self-interest that could influence and precipitate actions that violate one of the preceding commandments.