From the Sola Panel:
This is the third instalment of a five-part series (read parts 1 and 2.)
We’ve been looking at Psalm 8 and have discovered that stargazing should make us wonder why God the creator should have anything to do with us.
At this point, if you were sceptical about the existence of the creator himself, I could point you to proofs of a designer in the universe. For example, I could use the ‘fine-tuning’ argument for the existence of God—the fact that there are over 20 fundamental physical constants in the universe that all work together to make the universe work as it does, and that can’t be explained as a coincidence—at least, not yet. If any one of these constants had been a tiny bit different, life couldn’t appear. For example, if the force of gravity was even slightly different by a colossally tiny factor (1 part in 1040), no life-supporting stars could exist. Or I could talk about the statistical improbability of life itself emerging—the fact that even a small protein has 1095 possible folding combinations, and the chances of a protein folding by accident into a functional life-conducive shape during the lifetime of the universe is something like 1 in 1065.
But then you might come back with an answer—the multiverse. Do you know about the multiverse? The multiverse is a philosophical theory, born out of reflection on cosmology and quantum theory. It’s the idea that we are just one out of a gigantic number of different possible universes. The multiverse is a way to solve the problem of the fine-tuning of the universe. Since there’s such a huge or infinite number of possible universes, it’s no problem that our universe just happens to exist by chance—a universe with impossibly fine-tuned life-supporting physical constants, where proteins folded in just the right way. The multiverse is an act of faith; it’s not a scientific hypothesis in the strict sense. There is no scientific evidence for the multiverse; in fact, there’s no experimental test that anyone has conceived that could possibly prove it or disprove it. It’s a philosophy that tries to solve the apparent design of the universe without resorting to a designer. The multiverse theory is complex, physically and philosophically, and it seems to me to be the last resort of the desperate. But if you’re philosophically committed to atheism, that’s what you’ve got at your disposal at the moment.
But actually there’s a bigger problem with my proofs for a designer. You see, even if my arguments for the existence of a cosmic designer were true and irrefutable, and even if you believed them, what does that actually prove? That there is a great designer—a purpose—to the universe doesn’t say anything about you and me.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there is a great grand design to the existence of the 70 sextillion-plus stars out there. Say there is some grand 13-billion-year-old design to it all, and that God the creator is behind it all. So what? What on earth would that have to do with you, your life, your relationships, your joys, your sorrows, your acts of kindness, your feelings of guilt at those evil things you’ve said and thought and done, your goals, your children, your ethics, your conviction that it’s wrong to hurt and right to love, and your death as you dissolve back into the dust you came from? What is that to God? Why does that matter at all in this gigantic universe?
Yet this is the question of our poet, as the song continues:
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
(Ps 8:5-8)
This is actually a real puzzle—a problem—the crisis of the song—that this God, the one who made the heavens for some reason, deliberately and personally sees you and me as important. You and I are a key part of his creation. We (as the song says) are “crowned … with glory and honor”. We are rulers. We have dominion.
These words ‘rule’ and ‘dominion’ recall the words of Genesis 1-2. They are used to describe the reality that humans are put on the earth by God himself to care for it, not to exploit it for our own ends. It’s a statement of our glory and our responsibility, not a statement of our God-given right to use the world any way we want. Our poet in this biblical song recalls these words to express wonder at the fact that we specks of dust are somehow glorious in God’s eyes. The evidence of the stars suggests that we are nothing, but God himself, the creator of the stars, says we are something. We have been made by God for a purpose in this world: we have responsibility. We have responsibility to God to do what is right—to rule the works of God’s hands. And, as the rest of the Bible points out, we have a responsibility to live rightly in our relationships with each other—to honour God, to care for his world, to care for each other, to live under his loving rule.
But that’s the problem. That’s the puzzle. How is it that such a great creator—such a great and super-powerful supreme being—has given us specks of dust this responsibility?
Verse 9 gives us no answer:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
The song ends where it began. It hasn’t solved the puzzle; it has just expressed it. God is great in the earth, and somehow, for some reason, we are important to him.
To be continued …
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From the Sola Panel
In the second instalment of a five-part series, I contemplate the extent of our significance in the universe. (Read Part 1.)
We’ve been looking at Psalm 8, and we’ve discovered that stargazing helps us to see how insignificant we really are.
Just think about the size of space for a moment. Imagine you could get into the fastest jet on earth (last time I checked, this was the SR-71 Blackbird). Its official speed record is almost 2,500 miles per hour. Now imagine you could speed it up 100 times to 250,000 miles per hour. Then imagine that you could take it on a trip to space. It would take you an hour to get to the moon—that’s pretty reasonable! It would take you eight days to get to Mars, the closest planet to Earth. It would take you four months to get to the planet Saturn (remember, we’re travelling 100 times faster than the fastest jet ever built). It would take you a year and a half to get to the planet Pluto at the edge of our solar system. To get to the closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, it would take you 12,000 years. To get to the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy, it would take you 80 million years. To the next closest galaxy, Andromeda, it would take you seven billion years. To get to the edge of the visible universe, it would take you 40 million million years. And they think that the size of the non-visible universe is vastly huger than this: that would take you a million million million million, etc. years.
I’ll quote another modern ‘poet’—this time, the late Douglas Adams, writing The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy:
Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.1
The ancient biblical poet was ignorant about billions of parsecs or millisecond pulsars. He just knew that space was big, wonderful, majestic and beyond us. That’s the universe we live in.
So the Bible has a question for you: who are you?
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
(Ps 8:4)
What is man? Who am I in comparison to this world? Who are you? You are one of seven billion tiny organisms, living on an infinitesimally small pinprick of a dust ball, who are giving birth, breathing, eating, maybe reproducing and dying.
But that’s the Bible’s question: what is it to be human? What is your existence—your family, your career, your study, your relationships, your life—compared to this immense universe with its big bang, its nebulas and its millisecond pulsars?
But did you notice something? That’s not quite the way the song puts it, isn’t it. It’s not just the universe that’s big; this biblical song makes an even more profound point. It’s a point about God himself: God is big. See verse 1:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
We’re not just talking here about how small we are compared to the universe; this is a song about our relationship to the majesty of the Lord—the God who created that universe.
Now it’s important to realize that this ‘God’ spoken about in the Bible has nothing to do with superstition and magical religion. The Bible’s view of God is the opposite of superstition. In fact, it’s the biblical view of God that enabled the early Christians to throw astrology away and promote astronomy instead. Astrology is the belief that the stars have something to do with our lives. Astrology happens when people look out at the stars, see how distant and high they are, and decide that somehow, in some magical way, these stars have a direct influence on their own personal lives.
But just listen for a moment to Augustine, a Christian theologian who was writing in about 425 AD—a man whose influence over western thought has been profound and continues to this day. This is what Augustine says about astronomy and astrology, and their relative value:
Astronomy … makes possible systematic predictions about the future, which are not speculative and conjectural but firm and certain; but we should not try to extract something of relevance to our own actions and experiences, like the maniacs who cast horoscopes, but confine our interest to the stars themselves.2
Augustine rejected astrology because he believed in the God of the Bible—the God we meet here in this very song—a God whose glory is above the heavens. See verse 3: this is the God who made the heavens, and set the moon and stars in place. This is the God who is majestic and great, and above and beyond those stars themselves. He is a God of order who set those heavenly bodies where they should be. But he’s done it for his glory, not for magical speculation about how your week is going to pan out.
So the question of verse 4 is a question about our place before this God:
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Why on earth would this God, who created the stars, be interested in you and me? There are more stars in the visible universe than grains of sand in all the beaches on the earth. According to an Australian estimate in 2003, there are 70 sextillion stars. This is 7 x 1022. Who are we in all of this? I can’t resist quoting Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again:
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.3
Even then, he’s talking about one galaxy amongst quadrillions. And that’s just the visible universe.
There is a God who made it all. So what on earth would he have to do with us? Who are you? What is man?
To be continued …
1 Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Del Ray, 2005 (1979), p. 65.
2 Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, II.113.
3 Adams, p. 3.
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What does the word διαθήκη (“covenant”) mean in Galatians 3:15?
(This post is part of a series)
Some interpreters understand the word to mean “last will and testament”.[1] In this understanding, when Paul speaks in “human terms” (κατὰ ἄνθρωπον) about a “human” covenant (ἀνθρώπον [. . .] διαθήκην) he refers to the secular Graeco-Roman practice of will-making. According to this understanding, Paul then proceeds, by way of comparison, to show that just as a human will cannot be rejected (cf. ἀθετεῖ) or reordered (cf. ἐπιδιατάσσεται), so it is with God’s covenant.
Hughes, however, marshalling an impressive array of internal and external evidence, shows that διαθήκη in Gal 3:15 cannot possibly be used in the Hellenistic sense of “will”.[2] Throughout the ancient world, a will could, and frequently was, nullified and changed by the testator.[3] If Paul was using a will as his “human” example, the basic premise of his comparison would have been nonsense to his original readers. On the other hand, if Paul meant “covenant” according to our inductive definition (“elected relationship of obligation under oath”), the argument makes perfect sense. Sworn covenants between human beings in the Old Testament were inviolable (e.g. Josh 9:19–20, cf. 2 Sam 21:1–14).[4] So, it seems, was the birds” covenant with Peisetaerus. Hence Paul is arguing from the general inviolability of covenants between human beings (3:15) to the inviolability of the particular covenant with Abraham (3:17).[5] He is not introducing the idea of a “will” into his argument.
[1] E.g. Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians (Word Biblical Commentary 41; Dallas: Word, 1990); N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (London: T & T Clark, 1991) , 166; see also the Bible versions NJB, RSV, NRSV.
[2] John J. Hughes, “Hebrews IX 15ff. and Galatians III 15ff: A Study in Covenant Practice and Procedure”, Novum Testamentum 21 (1979): 27–96 (here 66–96).
[3] Of course, a “last will and testament” couldn’t be changed by anyone other than the testator, nor for this reason could it be changed after the testator’s death; but this is irrelevant, for Paul is claiming that God himself would not change his own previously ratified διαθήκη.
[4] Scott W. Hahn, “Covenant, Oath, and the Aqedah: Διαθήκη in Galatians 3:15–18”, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 67 (2005): 79–100 (esp. 83–86).
[5] Hahn, “Covenant, Oath, and the Aqedah”, 95.
The argument of Galatians 3:15–22 is “generally reckoned among the most difficult in Paul”.[1] In Galatians, Paul is strenuously arguing against opponents who want the Gentile Christians to adopt circumcision and the law (i.e. become ethnic Jews) as a prerequisite for salvation in Christ (e.g. Gal 2:14, 4:21, 5:3, 11, 6:13). Wright, in the light of his assumption of a “covenantal” background to Galatians 3–4, concludes that these chapters are about the inclusion of the Gentiles in the Abrahamic covenant without the need for them to become ethnic Jews. According to Wright, Christ’s death and resurrection has reordered Israel’s covenant in favour of the Gentiles. Now that the “demarcating mark” of the “new covenant family” is faith rather than Torah, Gentiles may “get in” to the covenant.[2]
However, a close reading of Paul’s argument in the light of our inductive definition of the Old Testament term “covenant” (“elected relationship of obligation under oath”, see above) and the two-fold nature of the Abrahamic covenants (nationhood followed by international blessing) points to a very different, even opposite, conclusion. As we will see, Paul’s sustained argument is that the extension of blessing to the Gentiles is not brought about by their inclusion in the covenant. Rather, the extension of sonship to the Gentiles happens by the coming of Christ, the one seed of Abraham, who fulfils the covenants, pours out the Spirit, and enables all nations to be blessed in him through faith.
To be continued …
(This post is part of a series)
[1] N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (London: T & T Clark, 1991) , 157.
[2] Wright, Climax, 155–56.
Before we look in detail at Paul’s use of the word “covenant”, it’s worth pausing briefly to review what we have learned about the use of the word “covenant” in the Old Testament, second-temple Jewish literature, and Greek sources. In particular, two important conclusions flow from our survey of the idea of “covenant” in the background to Paul’s thought.
Firstly, the concept of “covenant” takes many different shapes and sizes. While all covenants have the same basic nature (an elected, as opposed to natural, relationship of obligation under oath), there are various types of divine-human covenants in the documents we have examined:[1]
- a covenant between God and Abram (and his seed), to make him into a geopolitical nation (Gen 15).
- a related but distinct covenant between God and Abraham (and his seed), to bring about international blessing contingent upon his loyalty (Gen 17). This covenant involves the sign of circumcision (which seems to signify the restraint of the flesh), and is ratified by the sacrifice of his son.
- a covenant of law with Israel, related to the covenant of Genesis 17. If Israel is obedient to God, they will be a source of international blessing (e.g. Exod. 19). This covenant is broken by Israel as soon as it is received.
- a covenant of mediation between Moses and God, upon which the covenant with Israel becomes contingent (Exod 33-34).
- a related covenant of mediation between God and the Levitical priesthood (Num 25:11-13, Neh 13:28, Jer 33:21, Mal 2:4). This involved offering sacrifices and teaching the law. This is emphasised as a covenant of great glory in Sirach 45.
- the servant of Yahweh, who is “a covenant [for the] people” and (therefore) “a light [for the] nations” (Isa 42:6, 49:8).
- a covenant between God and redeemed Israel, that they will minister to the nations (Isa 59-61). This also appears to be the expectation of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
- the single, overarching covenant of human obligation expounded in Jubilees.
- Philo’s allegorical interpretations of the covenants as “bequests”
- the unique sociological view expounded by the Qumran “Community of Those Entering the New Covenant”, in which concepts such as “community”, “entry” and boundary markers begin to make an appearance. This kind of view of the meaning of “covenant” is also often assumed by proponents of the New Perspective on Paul, even though it is the one that is farthest removed from the Old Testament.
The task of identifying any “covenantal” background to Paul’s thought must take this pluriformity into consideration. We cannot simply speak of “the covenant”, as if it is an easily identifiable, monolithic entity. We must understand which covenant (or covenants), if any, Paul is speaking about in any given passage. This observation, of course, also follows from the fact that Paul himself tends to speak of a plurality of covenants.
Secondly, there is no indication in these documents that blessing for the nations is contingent upon their “entering into” any of these covenants. The fulfillment of the covenants by Israel does, indeed, bring salvific blessing to the nations, but there is no requirement that they must be a party to any of the covenants. A salvific relationship with God, therefore, is a much broader concept than the narrower category of “covenant”.
[1] In addition to covenants that we have not examined: e.g. the covenant with David in Psalm 89.
On the Sola Panel:
In the first instalment of a five-part series, I’m pondering what astronomy has to teach us.
I’m a fan of space. I don’t actually know much about the details of astronomy or cosmology or astrophysics; I just think that the space is really cool.
If there are any real scientists reading this, I want to say thanks. I know that most of your work involves boring and tedious searching, collating and number crunching. Thanks for doing all that stuff so that I can see those fantastic pictures of nebulas on the internet and wonder at it all.
For example, I’m a fan of millisecond pulsars. A gigantic star, millions of light years away, explodes in a huge supernova. It creates a fireball ten million billion billion times bigger than Hiroshima. In its ashes, it leaves behind a neutron star made of dense atomic nuclei, squashed together at a density 10 trillion times greater than steel. A teaspoon full of neutron star weighs about the same as Sydney Harbour. Sometimes this neutron star will steal stuff from a nearby star and start spinning. Some neutron stars spin hundreds of times a second—a whole star rotating as fast as an idling car engine. Many of these super-dense, revving stars send out pulses of electromagnetic radiation, milliseconds apart. And we might be able to use these millisecond pulsars as standard cosmological clocks to help us detect gravitational waves, explore space-time bending, and understand more about the tiniest particles in the universe.
But apart from the wow factor, what’s the point of learning about space?
Some people might say that, in the end, astronomy is a complete waste of time. Sherlock Holmes, that fictional epitome of scientific rationalism, cared nothing for astronomy. When his friend Dr Watson scolded him for being ignorant even of the basic facts of the solar system, he interrupted and said, “What the deuce is it to me? … you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”1
Is Mr Holmes correct? Is stargazing a completely useless exercise?
Well, you could point out that weather and tide and climate predictions need detailed solar, lunar and planetary modelling. You could also point out that car engines need modern mechanics, which is all based on the laws of motion formulated by Isaac Newton, who used the orbits of planets to calculate and build his theories. Or you could point to the humble GPS satellite navigator, which relies on Einstein’s theory of relativity and orbiting satellites. Of course, astronomy is useful; after all, it helps us to work out whether it’s raining, and how to drive quickly to the cricket and back without taking a wrong turn!
But I want to suggest that stargazing is far more important than all this. In fact, the Bible itself gives us a very good reason for considering the stars. There is a song in the Bible about the stars—a song composed thousands of years ago in ancient Israel. This is how the song begins:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
(Ps 8:1-2)
You’ll notice that this poet believes in God (just like many of the astronomers down through the ages). In fact, this whole song is a prayer to the creator of the universe. We’ll come back to this shortly. But for the moment, let’s look at his exercise in stargazing. Do you see what he says in the third verse of the song?
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place …
When you think about it, stargazing is something that would have been easier and more natural for an ancient Israelite than for us. Yes, we can use our light, radio and gamma ray telescopes to penetrate vast distances, and we can use our complex mathematical and cosmological theories to make determinations and predictions. Of course, the ancients couldn’t do that. But on the other hand, they had a very big advantage over us: they had a clear, unpolluted sky in their backyards. We have so many lights on earth—especially in our cities—that the lights of the stars and the moons are drowned out. When I go into my backyard on a clear night, all I can see are a few pinpricks. But this biblical songwriter could step into his own backyard and see far more than you or I. He could see the glory of it all—the heavens, the Milky Way, the wandering planets.
We don’t tend to look up very much at all, do we. We don’t use the night time to look at the heavens; we use the night time to look down—to watch TV, to immerse ourselves in virtual worlds online. We know cyberspace very well, but this ancient poet sees real space with his naked eyes. We know the intimate details of the lives of rock stars and football stars, but this song is about the real stars. At this point, this biblical poet is far more in touch with the reality of the universe than we are. And knowing these stars—seeing them there before him—what does this do for the poet? How does it make him feel? Look at verse 4:
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
What does astronomy do for this poet? What is the use of astronomy for all of us? Astronomy is very useful. It does something very negative for us, but it’s still very worthwhile: it reminds us how very very very small and insignificant we really are. In case you’re wondering, the words translated ‘man’ here mean ‘all humanity’. The question “What is man?” is an expression of amazement that human beings have any importance at all in the face of the evidence of the stars.
To be continued …
1 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘A Study in Scarlet’ in Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Long Stories, John Murray, London, 1929, p. 17.
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We asked, in our previous post in this series, whether we could detect a shift in the second temple literature away from the pervasive Old Testament understanding of the word “covenant” (“an elected relationship of obligation under oath”) towards a more sociological concept (akin to the New Perspective’s emphasis). The answer was “no” – apart from one exception. This post discusses the exception.
Of all the second-temple documents we have surveyed, the writings of the Qumran community are the most strikingly radical in their interpretations of the Old Testament “covenant” concept. At Qumran, covenantal vocabulary became inseparably bound up with sociological, sectarian concepts such as “community”, “entry” and boundary markers.[1] The history of the community helps us to explain this transformation: it seems that after being expelled by the Jerusalem priesthood, this community was established outside Jerusalem by its leader, the “Teacher of Righteousness”. They believed that the rest of Israel had committed apostasy. Their own community was the only true remnant of Israel, and therefore the unique locus of God’s covenant with Israel. The particular rules of the community (involving worship, calendar observance, etc.) were coterminous with the boundaries of the new (or renewed) covenant thus established: all other Jews were outside the covenant.[2]
The Qumran community describes itself as “The Community of Those Entering the new covenant” (יחד באי הברית החדשה).[3] A person’s commitment is described in terms of “entry” (בוא) into the Covenant (1QS 2.12, 18; 5.8, 20; 6.15; CD 2.2; 3.10; 6.11, 19; 8.1; 9.3; 13.14; 15.5; 19.14; 20.25; 1QHa 13.23; 21.9); “crossing over” (עבר) to the Covenant (1QS 1.16, 18, 20, 24; 2.10; CD 1.20; 16.12); and “holding fast to” (חזק) the Covenant (1QS 5.3; 1QSb 1.2; CD 20.27; 1QHa 10.28; 12.39; 23.9).[4] It seems that the Qumran community had taken concepts that initially applied to the initiation of the covenant relationship between God and Israel, and has transformed them by speaking of an individual entering into an already established covenant. The verb עבר, which in Deut 29:11 refers to the whole community “crossing over” (the Jordan) into a covenant, is used in the initiation ceremony for an individual who is “inducted into” the covenant.[5] Food laws, in particular, served as important marks distinguishing between the Qumran covenant community and the Gentiles and other Jewish groups who were “outside” the covenant.[6]
Interestingly, while this sociological “grammar” of covenant appears to be unique to the Qumran sectarians in the Second Temple period, it finds many parallels in the covenantal grammar of the New Perspective.[7] Here is an example of this “sociological” use of covenantal grammar from Tom Wright, which is far more akin to the Qumran sectarians than to the use of the word ‘covenant’ in the Old Testament or other second-temple writings (italic emphasis original, bold emphasis mine):
The second element in justification is of course … that of the covenant. The question is … Who are the members of God’s single family, and how can you tell? … It is to recognize that this [covenantal theology] is part of the root meaning of the words Paul is using, that Torah itself was the covenant charter which left Israel with the puzzling question, how it could be fulfilled and thus do its job of designating God’s people and keeping them on track. ‘The works of Torah’ could not do it, partly because Israel failed lamentably to perform them (2:21-24) and partly because, to the extent that those “works” focused on the things which kept Jews separate from Gentiles, they would have prevented the establishment of the single family God always had in mind … But this “covenantal”, and hence “ecclesiological”, meaning of “justification” …[8]
For Wright, “covenantal theology” has sociological / ecclesiological distinctions at its heart. While this kind of strong association of sociological terms with the covenant is akin to the Qumran sectarians, it is quite different to the use of the word “covenant” in the Old Testament or in any of the other second temple texts we have examined. And, we shall argue, it is also quite different to Paul’s use of the word “covenant” as well.
[1] Craig A. Evans, “Covenant in the Qumran Literature”, in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. de Roo; Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 71; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 55–80.
[2] Evans, “Qumran Literature”, 79-80.
[3] David N. Freedman and David Miano, “People of the New Covenant”, in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. de Roo; Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 71; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 7–26 (22–23).
[4] Evans, “Qumran Literature”, 63.
[5] Martin G. Abegg, “The Covenant of the Qumran Sectarians”, in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. de Roo; Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 71; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 81–97 (esp. 85–86); Evans, “Qumran Literature”, 63.
[6] Stephen A. Reed, “The Role of Food as Related to Covenant in Qumran Literature”, in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. de Roo; Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 71; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 129–64.
[7] See also the quotations in Stephen Westerholm, “The ‘New Perspective’ at Twenty-Five”, in Justification and Variegated Nomism Volume 2: The Paradoxes of Paul (ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien and Mark A. Seifrid; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 1–38.
[8] Wright, Tom. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London: SPCK, 2009), 187-88.
Full bibliography
We have seen, in our series so far, the way that the word “covenant” is used in the Old Testament. A covenant is not a catch-all term for “relationship”, but it refers to a specific kind of relationship: “an elected relationship of obligation under oath”. Furthermore, although some of the covenants are made between God and a national entity (Israel, or Abraham’s seed), the word “covenant” itself is not a sociological term, and is not associated with sociological categories like “community”, “entry” or “boundary markers”. Hence the New Perspective’s emphasis on “covenant” as a “sociological” term is not supported by the Old Testament. Indeed, many of the important covenants are made with individuals rather than nations (e.g. Phineas and David). Can we detect a shift away from the Scriptural use of the word “covenant” towards a more sociological usage amongst Jews in the centuries around the writing of the New Testament? The answer is no, except for one rather striking example.
In this post we will look at the usages of the word “covenant” amongst second-temple Jews that conform closely to the Old Testament’s usage. In the next post we will look at the exception.
Many of the writings use διαθήκη in more or less the same way we find in the Old Testament, albeit with differing emphases. The close association between covenant and oath continues (e.g. Wis 18:22). The Psalms of Solomon refer to the covenant as a firm, binding promise made by God to the nation (Pss. Sol. 9:8–11, 10:4, 17:15). The books of the Maccabees concentrate on “the covenant of the fathers” (1 Macc 2:20, 2 Macc 8:15), which is associated particularly with circumcision (1 Macc 1:15) and the law (1 Macc 1:57, 63; 2:27, 50). Human loyalty to the covenant will be rewarded by divine loyalty in crushing Israel’s enemies (1 Macc 4:10). The “covenant of everlasting priesthood” with Phinehas is also mentioned (1 Macc 2:54), as a reward for Phineas’ ‘zeal’ (a key word in Maccabees). There are also references to non-divine covenants (e.g. Sir 11:20; Sir 14:12, 17; 1 Macc 1:11, 11:9).
The Wisdom of Ben Sira contains an extended treatise which mentions many of the covenants between God and glorious national heroes. Earlier in Sirach, διαθήκη refers mainly to the Mosaic law or commandments (Sir 24:23, 28:7, 39:8, 41:19, 42:2). But in chapters 44–45 there is a list of various “famous men” that are praised because “The Lord apportioned to them great glory” (Sir 44:1). The covenants with Noah (Sir 44:18), Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Sir 44:19–23), Aaron (Sir 45:6–22), Phinehas (Sir 45:23–24) and David (Sir 45:25–26) all get a notable mention. The covenantal ministries of Moses and Aaron, in particular, are depicted as ministries of fabulous God-given glory (Sir 45:2, 3, 7, 20) as they teach the law and offer sacrifices.
Jubilees (late 2nd Century BC) sees the covenant in similar terms to Genesis—a commitment or obligations by or between God and men under oath.[1] However, Jubilees stresses the human commitments more than does Genesis.[2] Jubilees 6:1–38 transforms the unilateral covenant that God makes with Noah into a bilateral covenant where human obligations are given prominence, explicitly linking it to the Mosaic covenant.[3] The same trend can be seen with Jubilees’ interpretation of the patriarchal covenants. “The ultimate goal of Jubilees is to show that there is only a single covenant” in which human obligation is emphasised—in effect, Jubilees universalises the Sinai covenant.[4]
Philo uses covenantal concepts sparingly. “He has no choice but to deal with it because it is a part of the Septuagint text”.[5] He generally interprets the word according to its legal usage, “will”, using it as an allegorical symbol to describe the gracious bequest by God of certain graces: wisdom, law, word, justice, even himself (Sacrifices 57; Worse 67–68; Names 51–53, 58; Dreams 2.223–24, 2.237).[6] Nevertheless, Philo does share some of the concerns of the ot that we noted above. He discusses the question of the identity of the seed of Abraham, concluding that it is the wise man (Heir 313). He understands that the covenant with Abraham brings blessing to the nations, not by the nations joining the covenant, but by the nations learning from Israel’s wisdom (Names 263, cf. Deut 4:4–8).
Every reference to διαθήκη in Josephus is to a human will (Ant. 17.p, 17.53, 17.78, 17.146, 17.188, 17.195, 17.202, 17.224, 17.226, 17.228, 17.238, 17.244, 17.246, 17.249, 17.321, 17.322, 18.156; J.W. 1.451, 1.573, 1.588, 1.600, 1.625, 1.646, 1.664, 1.668, 1.669, 2.3, 2.20, 2.21, 2.31, 2.35, 2.38, 2.98, 2.99.). Mason observes that Josephus “systematically removed the stronger covenantal statements from his paraphrase of the Bible (Ant. 1.183–185, 191–193) in his attempt to avoid angering his Roman opponents (who, in fact, possessed the land along with their ‘gods’)”.[7] Hence “[t]he only advantage the Jews have is their association with Moses, who in his extreme sagacity discovered the truth about God and formulated laws in keeping with God’s will”.[8]
We have seen that none of these texts import sociological categories (such as “boundary markers” or “badges of membership” or “entry into a community”) into their use of the word “covenant”. This fact makes it less likely that we will find Paul himself using sociological categories when he used the word. However, there is one community in the second temple period which does use sociological categories in speaking of the “covenant”: the Qumran sectarians. We will look at the Qumran use of the word “covenant” in the next post.
[1] Jacques Van Ruiten, “The Covenant of Noah in Jubilees 6.1–38”, in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. de Roo; Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 71; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 167–90.
[2] Van Ruiten, “Covenant of Noah”, 170.
[3] Van Ruiten, “Covenant of Noah”.
[4] Van Ruiten, “Covenant of Noah”, 190.
[5] Lester L. Grabbe, “Did All Jews Think Alike? ‘Covenant’ in Philo and Josephus in the Context of Second Temple Judaic Religion”, in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. de Roo; Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 71; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 251–66 (256).
[6] Grabbe, “Philo and Josephus”, 257.
[7] Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1992), 70.
[8] Paul Spilsbury, “Josephus”, in Justification and Variegated Nomism Volume 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien and Mark A. Seifrid; Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, 2001), 241–60 (258).
Full bibliography
While Paul is explicitly dependent upon the ot and the Christian gospel for his theological argument, he is clearly writing about questions and issues that arose in his time. While we may wish to postpone judgment on the nature of the connection between Paul’s theology and that of his contemporaries, a consideration of the concerns and questions of various intertestamental writings may shed light on the issues Paul faced. We will look at a number of the intertestamental writings to see what they have to say about the covenants.
Many of the writings use diaqh,kh in more or less the same way we find in the ot, albeit with differing emphases. The close association between covenant and oath continues (e.g. Wis 18:22). The Psalms of Solomon refer to the covenant as a firm, binding promise made by God to the nation (Pss. Sol. 9:8–11, 10:4, 17:15). The books of the Maccabees concentrate on “the covenant of the fathers” (1 Macc 2:20, 2 Macc 8:15), which is associated particularly with circumcision (1 Macc 1:15) and the law (1 Macc 1:57, 63; 2:27, 50). Human loyalty to the covenant will be rewarded by divine loyalty in crushing Israel’s enemies (1 Macc 4:10). The “covenant of everlasting priesthood” with Phinehas is also mentioned (1 Macc 2:54) [as a reward for Phineas’ ‘zeal’ (a key word in Maccabees)]. There are also references to non-divine covenants (e.g. Sir 11:20; Sir 14:12, 17; 1 Macc 1:11, 11:9).
Sirach contains an extended treatise on the various covenants between God and glorious national heroes. Earlier in Sirach, diaqh,kh refers mainly to the Mosaic law or commandments (Sir 24:23, 28:7, 39:8, 41:19, 42:2). But in chapters 44–45 there is a list of various “famous men” that are praised because “The Lord apportioned to them great glory” (Sir 44:1). The covenants with Noah (Sir 44:18), Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Sir 44:19–23), Aaron (Sir 45:6–22), Phinehas (Sir 45:23–24) and David (Sir 45:25–26) all get a notable mention. The covenantal ministries of Moses and Aaron, in particular, are depicted as ministries of fabulous God-given glory (Sir 45:2, 3, 7, 20) as they teach the law and offer sacrifices.
Jubilees (late 2nd Century BC) sees the covenant in similar terms to Genesis—a commitment or obligations by or between God and men under oath. However, Jubilees stresses the human commitments more than does Genesis. Jubilees 6:1–38 transforms the unilateral covenant that God makes with Noah into a bilateral covenant where human obligations are given prominence, explicitly linking it to the Mosaic covenant. The same trend can be seen with Jubilees’ interpretation of the patriarchal covenants. “The ultimate goal of Jubilees is to show that there is only a single covenant” in which human obligation is emphasised—in effect, Jubilees universalises the Sinai covenant.
Philo uses covenantal concepts sparingly. “He has no choice but to deal with it because it is a part of the Septuagint text”. He generally interprets the word according to its legal usage, “will”, using it as an allegorical symbol to describe the gracious bequest by God of certain graces: wisdom, law, word, justice, even himself (Sacrifices 57; Worse 67–68; Names 51–53, 58; Dreams 2.223–24, 2.237). Nevertheless, Philo does share some of the concerns of the ot that we noted above. He discusses the question of the identity of the seed of Abraham, concluding that it is the wise man (Heir 313). He understands that the covenant with Abraham brings blessing to the nations, not by the nations joining the covenant, but by the nations learning from Israel’s wisdom (Names 263, cf. Deut 4:4–8).
Every reference to diaqh,kh in Josephus is to a human will (Ant. 17.p, 17.53, 17.78, 17.146, 17.188, 17.195, 17.202, 17.224, 17.226, 17.228, 17.238, 17.244, 17.246, 17.249, 17.321, 17.322, 18.156; J.W. 1.451, 1.573, 1.588, 1.600, 1.625, 1.646, 1.664, 1.668, 1.669, 2.3, 2.20, 2.21, 2.31, 2.35, 2.38, 2.98, 2.99.). Mason observes that Josephus “systematically removed the stronger covenantal statements from his paraphrase of the Bible (Ant. 1.183–185, 191–193) in his attempt to avoid angering his Roman opponents (who, in fact, possessed the land along with their ‘gods’)”. Hence “[t]he only advantage the Jews have is their association with Moses, who in his extreme sagacity discovered the truth about God and formulated laws in keeping with God’s will”.
This was originally published on the Biblical Theology Briefings website (beginningwithmoses.org) in 2006. The Biblical Theology Briefings aim to provide worked examples of sermons that apply the insights of evangelical biblical theology.
As part of a series on the Lord’s Prayer, I was charged with preaching a sermon on this line: ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One’ (Matthew 6:13). In Matthew, the Lord’s Prayer occurs in the midst of Jesus’ teaching about prayer (6:5-15) which in turn is part of Jesus’ famous ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (Matthew 5-7). Even a brief glance at the Sermon on the Mount reveals that Old Testament forms a significant part of the background for Jesus’ discourse (5:12, 17, 21, 27, etc.). Indeed, the whole Gospel of Matthew presents Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham (1:1), as the one who fulfils Old Testament categories and expectations [1]. At some points, Jesus recapitulates significant events in Israel’s history—e.g. the Exodus (2:15) and the exile and return (2:17). Jesus is also depicted as succeeding where Israel failed—e.g. the temptation in the wilderness (4:1-11) and the restoration of the far reaches of the promised land overrun by Gentiles (4:15, cf. Isa 9:1). When, in 5:1-2, Jesus sits and begins to teach his disciples on ‘the mountain’, there are strong echoes of the two great mountains of Old Testament revelation: the historical Sinai (e.g. Exo 19:3) and the eschatological Zion (e.g. Isa 2:3). It soon becomes apparent that in this ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (5:1-7:29), Jesus is forming his disciples into a new eschatological people. The Sermon’s unifying theme is ‘the kingdom of heaven’, a phrase which occurs at significant points in the Sermon (5:3, 10, 17; 6:10, 33; 7:12, 21-23; cf. 4:17, 23) [2]. The Sermon ‘provides ethical guidelines for life in the kingdom, but does so within an explanation of the place of the contemporary setting within redemption history and Jesus’ relation to the OT.’ [3] Hence the identification of Old Testament background, and the nature in which Jesus’ disciples are to ‘fulfil’ the Old Testament, are primary interpretive questions for the Sermon on the Mount and its constituent parts. The primary difference between the eschatological ‘kingdom of heaven’ and the Old Testament kingdom of Israel is the nature of the relationship between God and his people. ‘[T]he emphasis in the Gospels on God as “Father” rests directly upon the announcement of the eschatological salvation that brings about this new relationship between God and his people. The expression “Father in heaven” is remarkable in that it combines the personal, or immanent, element of fatherhood with the transcendental element of God’s otherness, “in heaven.”’ [4] Hence the Lord’s Prayer, which begins, ‘Our Father in Heaven’ (6:9), is the prayer of the new people of God—a people who are the fulfilment of the expectations of the Old Testament people of Israel but who go far beyond Old Testament Israel in their relationship to God as both universal Lord and personal Father.
Inadequate trails
Suggestions that I received from others about how to apply the text, ‘Lead us not into temptation’ were mainly along the lines of advice about avoiding various temptations (e.g. install Internet blocking software to avoid Internet pornography). Unfortunately, this advice by itself wasn’t very helpful given that Matthew 6:13 is found in a prayer rather than in a piece of ethical exhortation. It’s about asking God to not lead you into temptation—not about how to avoid temptation yourself per se. Furthermore, when people in our society (Sydney) use the word ‘temptation’, they’re generally thinking about relatively trivial things. There’s the game-show ‘temptation’ that tempts contestants with various materialistic prizes like internet fridges and Volvos. ‘Temptation’ is also used of things like food and sex. But if this is what ‘temptation’ is all about, then it doesn’t seem important enough to explain why ‘lead us not into temptation’ is the sole negative request in the Lord’s Prayer, up there alongside such cosmic and theological concerns as ‘your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ and ‘forgive us our sins’. What is ‘temptation’ anyway? Carson comments that the word for ‘temptation’ (peirasmos) almost always outside the NT means ‘testing’ rather than ‘temptation’ [5]. He goes on to suggest that in the light of James 1:13-14, which says that God cannot ‘tempt’ anyone or be ‘tempted’ himself (assuming that the word here means ‘tempt’ and not ‘test’), it is hard to see that peirasmos means ‘temptation’ in Matthew 6:13, for then it would be asking God not to do something that is impossible for him to do anyway. On the other hand, Carson continues, if the word means ‘testing’ there is another problem, because the Bible promises that we will face testings of various kinds and we should consider them pure joy (James 1:2). Carson suggests that we read it more expansively, ‘trial or temptation that results in fall’, and that we simply run with the tension between asking God to spare us testing but rejoicing when such testing comes anyway. A large part of the problem, of course, is that we are dealing with a Greek word (peirasmos) that has a different semantic range to any of our English equivalents (e.g. ‘trial’, ‘test’, ‘temptation’). In answer to the question, ‘What does peirasmos mean?’ we could answer that sometimes it comes close to the English words ‘trial’ and ‘test’ (e.g. James 1:2, 12) and sometimes it has the same meaning as the English word ‘tempt’ (e.g. James 1:13-14). Or, we could answer, it means both. Or we could answer that it is ambiguous. However, in this case there is a better way. We don’t have to import our own preconceived notions about what ‘temptation’ or even ‘testing’ might mean from the English usage of these words. Instead, we can look at what the Bible itself says about the word peirasmos. Who was ‘tested / tempted’ in the Old Testament, by whom, how, where, when and why?
Understanding the Old Testament Background
I began with a word study on the word peirasmos as it appears throughout the Bible [6]. Of course, it’s important to realise that word studies by themselves can be misleading. This is because there is never a perfect overlap between a word and a concept. A word study can fail to pick up other words associated with the same concept, and can pick up usages of the word that are extraneous to the concept under investigation. The main way to guard against this is to look at the context of every instance of the word to check out how it is being used; and to follow up on other words that consistently appear in these contexts. Nevertheless, in this case there seemed to be a very close relationship between the word peirasmos and the concept of ‘testing’. This is mainly because the word peirasmos in the Old Testament is most commonly the name of a place, ‘Massah’. This place is named in Exodus 17:7. ‘Massah’ is simply the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek word peirasmos; it seems to be derived from the piel feminine singular participle of nasah, to test or ‘put to the test’, hence ‘place of putting to the test’. The Greek verb equivalent is peiraz?. Although in later references the name has the definite article (e.g. Deut 6:16, 9:22, Psa 94:8) when originally introduced it has no article (Exo 17:7; as here in Matt 6:13). ‘Massah’ was a place named after an event. In my sermon, I explained this by reference to a few place names in Australia. When Captain James Cook was exploring the East Coast of Australia in the 1700’s, his boat the Endeavour struck a reef, and nearly sank. He wasn’t a very happy sailor at the time. The first thing next morning he looked out and saw a Cape. He called it ‘Cape Tribulation’. Behind it was a mountain. He called it ‘Mount Sorrow’. Up the coast, the place where they finally rested for repairs was called ‘Weary Bay’. They’re all places with stories attached to them, and ‘Massah’ is the same. In the OT, Massah was the paradigmatic place where Israel’s relationship with God was fractured and God became somewhat distant from them, despite his covenantal commitment just recently demonstrated in their deliverance from Egypt. In Exodus 14-15, God had saved the nation of Israel from slavery in Egypt, taking them through the Red Sea into the wilderness of Sin. This great event is summed up in the word rhuomai, ‘to deliver’ (cf Matt 6:13, ‘deliver us from the evil one’):
Exodus 14:30 Thus the LORD delivered (errusato) Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.
But no sooner had God delivered Israel from the Egyptians, then they began to grumble and complain against God their deliverer. They had been delivered through two walls of water ‘into the wilderness’, and their first act on being delivered was to complain about the lack of water (Exod 15:24). They seemed to think that the God who had just parted the Red Sea couldn’t give them a few mouthfuls of water in the desert! From that time on, God’s relationship with the Israelites was a relationship characterised by ‘testing’. God gave them water, but in doing so he ‘tested’ Israel to see if they would obey his commandments (Exod 15:25). Next, they complained about food, so he gave them bread, but even the bread-giving included a ‘test’ from God, a command not to gather too much (Exod 16:4)—which many failed (Exod 16:20). Then, once again, in Exodus 17 the people complained about lack of water. Moses ominously describes this complaint as ‘putting the Lord to the test’, that is, ‘testing’ God to see if he really loved them and cared for them (Exod 17:2). God again gives them water, but the place is named from that time on ‘Massah’, the place of testing (Exod 17:7):
Exodus 17:7 And he called the name of the place Massah (peirasmos) and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested (peirazein) the LORD by saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”
God had delivered them from Egypt because of his love. But he had then led them into ‘testing’ in the wilderness, the place where God tested their commitment to him and where the people tested God’s love for them. I suggested that God and Israel are like a newlywed husband and wife; on the honeymoon, the wife complains that her husband doesn’t love her and wishes she were back home as a single woman and the husband sets up surveillance cameras and hires a Private Eye to make sure she’s going to be faithful. Like any relationship that begins on such a rocky start, the prognosis was not good. Sure enough, the ‘testing’ continued. Later on, just before the people are about to enter the Promised Land, they again ‘tested’ God. God had promised them the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, to be theirs. But the people didn’t believe him. They were afraid of the previous inhabitants of the land, they suspected that God didn’t love them and they didn’t trust God. They didn’t enter the land. As a result, God told them they would not inherit the land for forty years. This ‘test’ was the final straw for God; his people didn’t trust him and so he banished them to forty years’ wandering in the wilderness (Num 14:22-23). Throughout the rest of the OT, ‘Massah’ is referred to as that terrible place of testing, the place where mutual suspicion entered into the relationship between God and his people (which was not God’s fault, of course for he was always faithful to his promises. They had no right to test God). The law and the prophets began to refer to Massah, the ‘place of testing’, as if it applied to the whole wilderness experience, from the crossing of the Red Sea until the entry into the Promised Land 40 years later. (Deut 6:16, 8:2, 9:22, 33:8; Psa 78:18, 78:41, 78:56, 95:8-9, 106:14) In the end, Israel emerged chastened and humbled by the whole ‘testing’ experience (Deut 8:16). But even then, the people still had a problem: they did not fully trust God, and so the testing continued throughout Israel’s history. God tested them to see if they would obey him (Deut 13:3; Judg 2:22, 3:1, 3:4; 2 Chron 32:31) and they generally failed; for their part, the people tested God to see if he really cared for them and loved them and would keep his promises (Judges 6:39). In the light of the OT, Matthew 6:13 literally means ‘Don’t lead us into Massah’. That is, it is a prayer asking God to make sure that we don’t relive that desert experience of Israel, where they suspected God of foul play, and God (quite rightly) suspected them of ungrateful and disobedient hearts.
Jesus: the ultimate test
One of the first acts of Jesus is to go out into the wilderness after emerging from the waters of baptism. He is led into the wilderness by the Spirit of God, but he is not actually tested by God. Instead, he is tested by Satan (Matt 4:1, 3; Heb 4:15). And instead of failing the test, like the people of Israel did, Jesus passes. He proves that he completely trusts God as God’s loving and faithful Son. He is hungry, but trusts God’s Word to sustain him (Matt 4:4). He isn’t suspicious of God his Father; he completely trusts his Father to give him whatever he needs – whether it is food in the wilderness or authority over the world. He doesn’t ‘put God to the test’ (Matt 4:7).
From then on, there are two types of people. There are those who continue the pattern of the old Israel, people who ‘test’ God and Jesus, people who don’t trust God but are suspicious of his love and care for them. In Matthew’s Gospel, the Pharisees and associated hangers-on are like this (16:1, 19:3, 22:18, 22:35). But those who follow Jesus, his disciples, must be characterised by trust in God and Jesus. They mustn’t go by the way of Massah, they mustn’t have an attitude of ‘testing’ but of ‘trusting’ (1 Cor 10:9, Heb 3:8-9).
In the Garden of Gethsemane, that place of great fear and anxiety before Jesus is arrested and taken to die on the cross, Jesus tells his disciples to ‘watch and pray that you may not enter into testing.’ The cross of Jesus is the ultimate act of deliverance, where we are saved from our sins, where we can have confidence that our debts are forgiven (Matt 6:12). But it looked like the ultimate disaster, where God’s Son Jesus seemed defeated by the world and all the authorities. In the midst of this greatest trial of all, the disciples are urged to pray that they will not enter into testing – suspecting God of reneging on his word, and so turning away from Jesus.
Testing and God’s redeemed people
God never tests his people in the NT like he did in the OT. Christians certainly do undergo ‘tests’ in the NT, but these ‘tests’ are not an act of God ‘testing’ us to see if we will obey him, like a distant examiner or a suspicious husband. Christians never undergo special ‘tests’ such as God gave his people in the wilderness, but simply the ‘trials’ that are common to humanity (1 Cor 10:13), or the temptations of Satan (1 Thess 3:5). God always provides a way of escape from these type of trials (1 Cor 10:13, 2 Pet 2:9). They are described like a refiner’s fire, proving our trust in God and our willingness to follow Jesus (1 Pet 1:6, 4:12). In all these things, God’s attitude to us is always as a loving heavenly father, never as a ‘suspicious heavenly examiner’.
The book of James provides an extended commentary on the theme of testing, applying the ‘testing’ that Jesus mentions in his prayer to a Christian’s everyday life with all of its economic inequalities—(modified ESV):
James 1:2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet testings (peirasmois) of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. 12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under testing (peirasmon), for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tested (peirazomenos), ‘I am being tested (peirazomai) by God,’ for God cannot be tested (apeirastos) with evil, and he himself tests (peirazei) no one. 14 But each person is tested (peirazetai) when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Exposition of Matthew 6:13
Here, then, is the text of the first part of my sermon. I began with popular contemporary definitions of the word, ‘temptation’:
Our world is just full of temptation. Turn on the TV at 7 PM each weeknight, and you’ll have half an hour of ‘Temptation’. Here’s what the Channel 9 promo has to say:
“Be tempted beyond your wildest dreams with Australia’s most successful quiz show, Temptation, the new Sale Of The Century … Temptation has new twists to the format that will increase the pace of the show and add more temptation for contestants. Fabulous prizes will include trips to Hawaii, Paris and Vanuatu, Volvo cars, Louis Vuitton luggage, plasma televisions, Versace watches, Internet fridges, jewellery, Bang and Olufsen and Pioneer home entertainment packages, Harley Davidson motorbikes and giant cash jackpots!’
And it’s not just the TV is it? All around us there are temptations of the senses: food, chocolate, alcohol, internet pornography. Temptation is everywhere
I then tried to help people realise that the Bible is not necessarily talking directly about the things we care about—it often has far more important things to teach us:
Now when we read the Bible, sometimes we can read it as if it’s talking directly about our own issues. So we might read this line, ‘lead us not into temptation’, and we think it’s a prayer asking God to miraculously guide our steps away from internet fridges and Harleys and hi-fat chocolate ice cream.
Of course the Bible is deeply relevant to our personal lives. But sometimes we need to just pause and ask ‘What exactly is the Bible saying?’ before we presume we know what’s it’s all about. You see; what, exactly what does Jesus mean by this word ‘temptation’? And what is so bad about it?
Do you notice that ‘lead us not into temptation’ is the only negative request in the Lord’s Prayer? All the others are positive, asking God to do something. ‘Give us our daily bread’, ‘Forgive us our sins’. But ‘lead us not into temptation’ is the only thing in this prayer that we specifically ask God not to do. It’s a serious thing. Surely it’s not just about game shows and chocolate?
I spent some time talking about the Old Testament background, because I wanted to define the word ‘temptation’ using the concrete biblical story rather than define it according to abstract terms or contemporary usage.
Well if you looked up any decent Bible Dictionary you’d soon find that the word ‘temptation’ is the same as the word ‘testing’ in the original language of Jesus’ day. A ‘test’ is something you do to somebody to see what they’re made of, to check out their performance. So another way of saying this line of the prayer is, ‘Lead us not into testing’.
NB I mentioned the Bible Dictionary to help people to see that the original languages are not actually beyond the reach of the ordinary lay person who attends church each week. Even if they can’t read Greek, they can all read a Bible Dictionary! They don’t have to rely on me to tell them what the word ‘temptation’ actually means.
But more than that, the word ‘testing’ is actually the name of a place in the Bible. There’s a place called ‘Massah’ in the Bible—and ‘Massah’ means ‘place of testing’. Massah is one of those places with a story behind it. There’s places like that in Australia. When Captain James Cook was exploring the East Coast of Australia in the 1700’s, his boat the Endeavour struck a reef, and nearly sank. He wasn’t a very happy sailor at the time. Now Cook was in the business of naming places. So first thing next morning he looked out and saw a Cape. He called it ‘Cape Tribulation’. Behind it was a mountain. He called it ‘Mount Sorrow’. Up the coast, the place where they finally rested for repairs was called ‘Weary Bay’. They’re all places with stories attached to them
And it’s the same with Massah (Exodus 16-17). Just to set the scene—God had just delivered his special people Israel, from slavery in Egypt. God parted the waters of the Red Sea, and the Israelites escaped from the Egyptians:
(Let’s read Exodus 14:30-31)
Now you’d think Israel would be grateful and would trust God after that amazing miraculous rescue. But no! The first thing Israel did on being rescued was to whinge! You see, on the other side of the Red Sea was wilderness, desert, and as soon as Israel got into the desert, they whinged that they were thirsty! Even though God had just parted the Red Sea, even though God had just shown them his awesome power over walls of water, they whinged that God couldn’t give them a few mouthfuls of water in the desert! God gave them water—he was faithful. But next, they whinged about food. So God gave them bread, bread from heaven—he was faithful. But when he gave them the bread, he also gave them a test:
(Let’s read Exodus 16:4)
In the interests of time I compressed the story of Exodus and Numbers somewhat, just bringing out the salient points:
Then again, in the very next chapter, the people complained about being thirsty.
(Let’s read Exodus 17:2)
Again, they get their water—God was faithful. But Moses was fed up.
(Let’s read Exodus 17:7)
This is bad, this testing of God. Can you see why it is so horrible? God had saved this people. He had shown his unconditional, undying love for them. He’d carved up the ocean for them, for goodness sake! But there in the wilderness, the people wouldn’t trust him. They wouldn’t trust that God cared for them, that he would give them little things like food and water. They complained, they tested. And God knew their hearts weren’t right. So instead of a relationship of love and trust it became a relationship of testing, of suspicion. It’s like God and Israel are a newlywed husband and wife, and on the honeymoon, the wife complains that her husband doesn’t love her and wishes she were back home, single again and the husband suspects something, so he sets up surveillance cameras and hires a Private Eye just to check up on her. On the honeymoon! At Massah, Israel tested God. God tested Israel. Mutual love turned into mutual suspicion.
And it didn’t end there. The whole Bible is full of references to Massah, to the place where the relationship between Israel and God turned sour as soon as it started. Look at Psalm 95, for example:
(Let’s read Psalm 95:7-11)
An explanation of Jesus’ successful recapitulation of the ‘story’ of Israel was needed before moving to application:
But when Jesus came, more than 1,000 years later, something wonderful happened. You see, Jesus succeeded where Israel had failed. In Matthew chapter 4, after Jesus is baptized (chapter 3), he comes out of the water. Let’s read from verse 1:
(Let’s read Matthew 4:1-11)
Jesus is sort of reliving the experience of Israel. God’s Spirit led him into the desert to be tempted. It’s as if God led Jesus back into Massah. He didn’t eat for forty days. And he was hungry, starving. But Jesus didn’t do what Israel did in the desert. Jesus did the opposite of Israel. No complaining, no whingeing
The evil one came, the devil, Satan. He ‘tested’ Jesus. He lied. He tried to capitalise on Jesus’ weakness and hunger. He quoted the Bible at Jesus, verses out of context, trying to get Jesus to stop trusting his Father. And what did Jesus do? He refused to test God. He trusted God, he served God, he worshiped God, even in this most extreme situation. He proved through his obedience that the relationship between him and God his Father is one of pure love. No suspicion. No testing required on either side.
Then we move on to talk about the relevance of Jesus for us and our situation, through his death on the cross:
What has that got to do with us? When Jesus died on the cross for us, he brought us into a perfect relationship with God. He brought complete forgiveness by his death. And he rose from the dead, to bring us life. He gives us a relationship with God as dearly loved children. The kind of relationship where God is pleased with us—because he is pleased with Jesus. A relationship with God where there is love, not suspicion; trusting, not testing.
And you can see that by the kind of prayer Jesus gives his disciples to pray. The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer of trust in God our Father. It begins ‘Our Father in Heaven’. You can only pray the Lord’s Prayer if you trust God as your heavenly Father, like Jesus did. You can only pray this prayer if you trust that God’s name is wonderful and holy (‘hallowed by your name’), that his kingdom and his will is the best thing for us, that he will give us our daily bread, that he will forgive us our sins.
And so when you pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation’, you’re asking God to keep you trusting him, to stop you from doubting his loving care for you, to form you more and more as his child, just like Jesus.
Applying Matthew 6:13
Hence the prayer of Matthew 6:13 is a prayer of confident trust, asking God to keep us trusting his loving care for us. It is a prayer that God our Father will keep our focus firmly on his ultimate act of care and provision for us: the deliverance from sin provided by Jesus’ death on the cross. It is a prayer that, in the midst of the common trials of this life, God will help us remember that he is not distant from us, he is not standing back and testing us to see if we will obey, he is not inflicting these things on us as a test; but that he is lovingly refining us and making us more like his Son Jesus Christ. It is a prayer asking God to ‘give us our daily bread’, not to test us to see if we will obey him (as he did when he gave bread to the people in the wilderness), but simply to provide us with what we need as a loving heavenly Father. It is a prayer to deliver us out of the clutches of Satan, who lies to us, who tells us that God does not have our best interests at heart in the midst of these trials, who wants us to become suspicious of our Father and forget how much he loves us. The evil one wants us to think that we know best, and that God doesn’t love us as much as we love ourselves. We may not know exactly why we are suffering; like Job, we may never find out the precise reason for until the Lord returns – all we may know is that God is compassionate and merciful in our suffering (James 5:11). But that is enough.
The application part of my sermon, therefore, was along these lines:
Of course, when life is easy it’s easier to trust God’s care for you, isn’t it? But how do you react when things are tough? When it looks like God’s abandoned you?
You see, in our life, things can sometimes look a lot like they did for Israel back at Massah. The Israelites passed through the Red Sea—they were saved from slavery and mortal danger. But out in the desert, they were thirsty. They were hungry. They knew God had saved them. But they felt that had to test God to see if he was really still with them. They suspected that God had just brought them out into the desert to starve to death. You might be tempted to think the same thing. You might be confident that God has done the big things for you—saved you, died on the cross for you, given you eternal life. But you might start to think—that’s all very well, but does God actually care about me day to day? Especially when I’m hungry or thirsty or in pain, grieving, abandoned, used, persecuted, ripped off, depressed. You might start to think that God is testing you. That he’s fiddling with your life. Up there in heaven with his computer watching you on the screen, and putting various tests in your way to see how you’ll react. Tempting you.
James has a lot to say about testing, trials and temptation (James 1:12-15). James tells us that God never tempts us. God is quite simply not like that. He is our heavenly Father, not our heavenly examiner. There are trials in our lives. But these trials aren’t tests from God to see if we’re worthy, as if he didn’t know already. No, they’re simply there to show to us and the world that we are God’s children. To make us more like Jesus.
But Satan, the evil One, is still hanging around, waiting to lie to us. Wanting to tell us that God doesn’t really care about us. That God doesn’t really know what’s best for us. Or if he does he doesn’t care, that he’s a meany who’s giving us these tests just to see what we’ll do. The greatest lie we can ever hear from the Evil One is that God doesn’t care for the people he saved, that God has saved us through the precious blood of Jesus … only to bring us in the desert to starve to death. Satan wants us to believe that we really should give in to the trial and just, well, just do what’s easiest, just sin, just give in to our own evil desires. And when we do that, when we suspect God’s goodness and stop trusting him, that is temptation. That’s why we need to pray: ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one’.
When would you need to pray, ‘Lead me not into temptation’?
Maybe you have accepted that Jesus died for you and brought you into heaven … But you still think your life is a desert wilderness, and you need stuff to fill up the void. You suspect God because you don’t trust that he will give you what you need. So instead of generosity and love, your life is about greed and holding on to things that you don’t really need. Satan is just as active in material things as he is in spiritual things. You need to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one’
Maybe you are tempted when it comes to your relationships. Maybe you’re unhappy with whatever relationships you have, or unhappy because you don’t have a relationship that you long for. You may be single, widowed, divorced, married, friendless, unappreciated, just tired of giving. And you know that God has saved you from sin, and given you eternal life. But you suspect that he doesn’t really have your best interests at heart when it comes to these human relationships. And you think he’s being mean; he’s saved you from the greatest enemy of all—sin and death—but he’s just brought you into a dry desert wilderness and he’s not going to give you anything to drink.
Of course, that can lead to disaster, can’t it? You are tempted to look for other ways to gratify your desires, ways that God hates. You join in with your mates when they drink too much so you’ll be accepted by them. Or you look for cheap thrills. But you don’t care because God doesn’t seem to care for you. You need to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one’, trusting God’s goodness, even in the desert.
Addiction can be a form of temptation too, can’t it? When you start to feel that some thing can look after you, or ease the pain, because you think that God doesn’t care. Whether it’s alcohol or pornography or sex or even food.
Of course, it might be helpful to take some active steps to remove these temptations from your life. Don’t watch the TV shows that provoke you to greed or lust. Put blocking software on your computer. Whatever. But the most important thing you can do is to pray.
And do you know, this is quite an amazing prayer? Because the act of praying is itself part of the answer to the prayer! If you ask God to not lead you into temptation, to help you to trust him, that prayer is itself an act of trust. When you talk to God, you trust him. And the more you trust, the less you suspect him of being mean, and the less you are tempted; because you know that God is good to you, even in the hard times.
You may not know why your life seems like a desert now. You may never know until the end of time. But we do know that God is our Father. And God is our Father because Jesus has died for us and made us God’s children.
As Paul says in Romans,
(Read Romans 8:34-39)
Resources
Carson, D. A.. ‘Matthew’. Pages 1-599 in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Vol. 8. Edited by Frank E. Gæbelein. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.
Hagner, Donald A. Matthew 1-13. Word Biblical Commentary 33A. Dallas: Word, 1993.
Packer, J. I. ‘Temptation’. Pages 1532-33 in The Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Edited by J. D. Douglas. Leicester: IVP, 1980.
The New Bible Dictionary article by Packer was very informative and a helpful synthesis of the data of both testaments. However, it did not bring out the biblical theological movement—the way that Jesus’ ‘testing’ is the lynchpin of the idea of testing in the whole Bible.
The two commentaries I consulted (Carson and Hagner) both (quite helpfully) cross-referenced a number of other NT and texts (Matthew 4:1-11; James 1; 2 Peter 2:9; 1 Cor 7:5; 1 Thess 3:5; Rev 2:10) and also Sirach 2:1, 33:1 to aid in their discussion of the verse. The main hermeneutical issue they discussed was whether the ‘testing’ was a future time of severe apostasy and trial (which they both rejected). However, neither commentary looked in any detail at the Old Testament background. This meant that there was very little to say positively about the verse. After reading these commentaries I could tell the congregation what the verse doesn’t mean, but not much about what it actually does mean.
ENDNOTES
[1] D. A. Carson, ‘Matthew’, in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Vol. 8 (ed. Frank E. Gæbelein; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 1-599 (28-29).
[2] Carson, ‘Matthew’, 127-28.
[3] Carson, ‘Matthew’, 128.
[4] Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (Word Biblical Commentary 33A; Dallas: Word, 1993), 101.
[5] Carson, ‘Matthew’, 173-74.
[6] Using the computer program Bibleworks, I performed a search on all words with roots beginning with the letters peira in the LXX (Greek Old Testament) and in New Testament. I confirmed this with a search on the equivalent Hebrew root N-S-H in the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament, and cross-checked with the article by J. I. Packer, ‘Temptation’ in The Illustrated Bible Dictionary (ed. J. D. Douglas; Leicester: IVP, 1980), 1532-33.
We have seen, in our series so far, the way that the word “covenant” is used in the Old Testament. How did the Hebrew word for covenant (בְּרִית) come to be translated by the Greek word διαθήκη? A good case can be made that there is a specific use of the Greek word διαθήκη that corresponds almost exactly with the definition of the word that we have confirmed by our study of the Old Testament: “an elected relationship of obligation under oath”. This usage of διαθήκη confirms our assertion that a biblical “covenant” is not just any kind of relationship, and nor is it inherently sociological or ecclesiological. Rather, a covenant a very specific kind of relationship between two well-defined parties.
A covenant is not just a ‘will’
The fact that translators of the LXX chose to translate בְּרִית with the Greek word διαθήκη is a little surprising given that by far the most common use of διαθήκη in the extant Greek literature is not a “covenant” in the Old Testament sense (“elected relationship of obligation under oath”), but a written document drawn up to distribute property after a person’s death, a “disposition”, “testament” or “will”.[1] Prior to the 3rd century BC, there are about 240 instances of διαθήκη.[2] It occurs most abundantly in orators arguing legal cases and in Plato’s Laws (e.g. 922.c, 923.c, 923.e, 924.a, 926.b). Often the plural is used to refer to a will, since the various “dispositions” (διαθήκαι) collectively form a will (Isocrates, Aeginet. 1, 12, 15, 34; Isaeus, Cleonymus, 3). By contrast, the plural of διαθήκη never occurs in the Old Testament. The testator could make or leave a will (διατίθεμαι [Isaeus, Cleonymus 3, 11, 15, 20, 48], ποιέω [Isaeus, Cleonymus 10, 30–31], καταλείπω [Isocrates, Aeginet. 5, 15, 34]), confirm a will (βεβαίω [Isaeus, Cleonymus 18–19]), alter a will by codicil (ἐπανορθόω [Isaeus, Cleonymus 26]), and revoke a will (ἀναιρέω [Isaeus, Cleonymus 14, 18, 21; Philoctemon 30], λύω [Isaeus, Cleonymus 3, 18, 50]). After the death of the testator, a court could declare his will invalid (ποιέω ἄκυρον [Isocrates, Aeginet. 3, 15; Isaeus, Cleonymus 21, Philoctemon 4], καθίστημι ἄκυρον [Isaeus, Aristarchus 22]). By contrast, Old Testament covenants are “broken” (הֵפֵר, διασκεδάζω) by negligence or wilful disobedience (e.g. Gen 17:14; Lev 26:15; Deut 31:16, 20; Isa 24:5, 33:8; Jer 11:10, 31:32; Ezek 16:59), never simply invalidated.
One feature common to Old Testament covenants and some Greek wills is the creation of kinship bonds by “election”. A διαθήκη could be used to bestow legal rights upon people who naturally did not have these rights (e.g. Isaeus, Philoctemon 28). A διαθήκη was a possible means for adopting a son and thus allowing him to inherit property (Isaeus, Aristarchus 9; Astyphilus 5, cf. 10–11; Ciron 40). However, there is evidence that this process was fraught with complications. For example, “I was adopted by Menecles with the strictest possible legality, and [. . .] the form of adoption was not merely verbal or by will [διαθήκῃ] but by very act and deed” (Isaeus, Menecles 44 [Forster, LCL]; see also Isaeus, Hagnias 8–9). By contrast, an ot covenant is a much stronger means of creating kinship bonds.
A covenant is more than just a ‘pact’
The choice of διαθήκη is even more surprising when one considers that there was a Greek word for “pact”: συνθήκη.[3] Demosthenes (1 Steph. 41.9) mentions both συνθήκαι (articles of agreement) and διαθήκαι (articles of disposition) in parallel, showing that they are not synonyms. The translators of the LXX clearly knew the former word; they used it for political pacts between humans (1 Macc 10:26; 2 Macc 12:1, 13:25, 14:20, 14:26–27; Isa 30:1; Dan 11:6, 17) and metaphorical pacts between humans and “death” (Wis 1:16, Isa 28:15). Once, it is used of an agreement between God and humans (Wis 12:21). Nevertheless, 270 times, διαθήκη translates בְּרִית in the Septuagint.[4] Why did the Greek translators of the Old Testament consider the word commonly used for “will” to be more appropriate than the word for “pact” for translating the Old Testament word “covenant”?
The covenant in Cloudcuckooland
The answer, quite literally, may be found in Cloudcuckooland. The ancient comic Aristophanes (c. 445–385 bc), although familiar with the meaning “will” for διαθήκη (Wasps, 584, 589), and also with the word συνθήκη (“pact”, Peace, 1065; Lysistrata, 1268–69), uses διαθήκη in one passage in a way that is identical with our inductive definition of the OT word בְּרִית: “an elected, as opposed to natural, relationship of obligation under oath”.[5] In his fantastic play Birds the hero, Peisetaerus, wants to convince the bird community to establish a carefree hedonistic utopia called “Cloudcuckooland”. The birds gather and ask Peisetaerus to disclose his plan to them. But they are armed and look a little too dangerous, so Peisetaerus says (lines 438–42, my translation):
By Apollo! I will not / unless (and not otherwise) they make a covenant with me [διάθωνται, … διαθήκην ἐμοι] / the very same one that the ape made [διέθετο] with the woman[6] / (the knifemaker): that they neither bite me / nor yank [my] testicles nor dig…
After some brief innuendo, the play continues (lines 444–47, my translation):
Leader of the birds: I make [a covenant] [διατίθεμαι ’γώ]
Peisetaerus: “Now swear these things to me”
Leader of the birds: I swear to prevail in [the opinion of] these: all the judges / and all the spectators [. . .] But if I should transgress, to prevail in [the opinion of] one judge only.
The result of this sworn oath is that Peisetaerus now has a claim over the birds, and is able to order them to dispose of their arms. While the details of the oath are obscure, the meaning of διαθήκη is clear. The birds choose to enter into a new relationship with a human by oath, whereby they are obliged not to hurt him. While the covenantal obligation is unilateral, the covenant established a “truce” (τὰς σπονδάς, line 461), a relationship which enables Peisetaerus to get on with his original task of explaining his idea about Cloudcuckooland to the birds.[7]
The significance of this reference is that it shows a popular usage of διαθήκη, quite distinct from the legal usage, which overlaps significantly with the semantic range of the Hebrew word בְּרִית as we have defined it. This both strengthens our inductive definition of בְּרִית (not merely “pact” but “an elected relationship of obligation under oath”) and also enables us to allow that the Septuagint translators (who undoubtedly influenced Pauline usage of the term more than anyone else) could have easily had this concept in mind when they used διαθήκη.[8]
Although it is only one instance among hundreds, it is a much more significant instance than the statistics would appear to suggest. Firstly, the statistics are already skewed in favour of the legal usage, since there are far more extant legal texts than comic texts.[9] Secondly, Aristophanes himself was being critically studied and copied by scholars at around the same place and time as the Septuagint was being translated (i.e. Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd century bc).[10] Hence there are good reasons to suppose that the translators of the Septuagint would have been familiar with the sort of usage we find here in Aristophanes. In any case, our definition of διαθήκη in the Septuagint, “elected relationship of obligation under oath”, has arisen from the inductive semantic study of Hugenberger and others and does not rely on Aristophanes’ usage. This instance in Aristophanes merely helps to confirm a definition arrived at independently.
[1] W. Danker, “διαθήκη”, BDAG 228–29;
[2] This is based on an exhaustive search of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. For details of the TLG see Luci Berkowitz and Karl A. Squitier, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Canon of Greek Authors and Works (3rd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
[3] J. Behm and G. Quell, “διαθήκη”, TDNT 2:106–34 (126).
[4] John J. Hughes, “Hebrews IX 15ff. and Galatians III 15ff: A Study in Covenant Practice and Procedure”, Novum Testamentum 21 (1979): 27–96 (30).
[5] Hugenberger, Marriage, 11.
[6] “The various guesses in the scholia show that not even ancient scholars could explain this allusion” (Jeffrey Henderson, “Birds”, in Aristophanes [4 vols.; Loeb Classical Library 178, 488, 179, 180; Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1998–2002], 3:1–251 [3:77 fn 30]).
[7] William L. Lane, “Covenant: The Key to Paul’s Conflict with Corinth”, Tyndale Bulletin 33 (1982): 3–29 (22).
[8] See also the definition in Behm and Quell, TDNT 2:112: “a legal fellowship under sacral guarantees”.
[9] Henderson, “Introduction”, 1:33.
[10] Henderson, “Introduction”, 1:33.
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