Covenant Spirituality

Introduction

 

The Jewish people divide their Bible into three portions: Torah, prophets and writings. The Torah, or first five books, encompasses the story and terms of the covenant between God and God’s people, as these were understood over a 500-year span of time by several different scribal groups. The concept of covenant is central to both the Old and New Testaments. Why was covenant (or contract, treaty) chosen as the central image for spirituality in scripture? What is the relationship of faith and works?

Notes

 

Reading

• Scripture: Exodus 11-12; 15; 19-20, (2 Kings 22) Deuteronomy 1:1-5; 5-6
  
  
• Secondary: Bruegemann, The Covenanted Self, 1-47

 

Notes

Under construction.

Bibliography

 

Blenkinsopp, Joseph.  The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible.  New York: Doubleday, 1992.

 

Dubus, Andre.  "All the Time in the World."  In Dancing After Hours: Stories (New York: Vintage, 1996) 83-97.

 

Farley, Margaret A.  Personal Commitments: Beginning, Keeping, Changing.  San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986.

 

Girard, René.  Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977.

 

Knoppers, Gary N. and J. Gordon McConville, eds.  Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 8.  Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2000.

• Review

 

Miles, Jack.  God: A Biography.  New York: Vintage, 1995.

 

Nicholson, Ernest W.  God and His People: Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament.  New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

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