Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Foreword by Samuel Greengus 1. Introduction 2. Cuneiform Law 3. Cuneiform Prologues and Epilogues to Legal Collections 4. The Problem of Prologue and Epilogue to the Book of the Covenant and Leading Features of Biblical Law 5. Annotations to the Laws of the Book of the Covenant 6. Summary Appendix I. Verse Arrangement of the Laws of the Book of the Covenant Appendix II. Cuneiform and Biblical Legal Formulations Bibliography Index of Sources
A fresh look at the earliest Christian movement reveals what made the new faith so compelling...and what we need to change today to make it so again. Once upon a time there was a version of the Christian faith that was practically irresistible. After all, what could be more so than the gospel that Jesus ushered in? Why, then, isn't it the same with Christianity today? Author and pastor Andy Stanley is deeply concerned with the present-day church and its future. He believes that many of the solutions to our issues can be found by investigating our roots. In Irresistible, Andy chronicles what made the early Jesus Movement so compelling, resilient, and irresistible by answering these questions: What did first-century Christians know that we don't—about God's Word, about their lives, about love? What did they do that we're not doing? What makes Christianity so resistible in today's culture? What needs to change in order to repeat the growth our faith had at its beginning? Many people who leave or disparage the faith cite reasons that have less to do with Jesus than with the conduct of his followers. It's time to hit pause and consider the faith modeled by our first-century brothers and sisters who had no official Bible, no status, and little chance of survival. It's time to embrace the version of faith that initiated—against all human odds—a chain of events resulting in the most significant and extensive cultural transformation the world has ever seen. This is a version of Christianity we must remember and re-embrace if we want to be salt and light in an increasingly savorless and dark world.
A study of Paul's theology in the Bible, focusing on his view of the old covenant God made with Israel and the new covenant Jesus announced at the Last Supper.
The now familiar new perspective asserts that the covenantal nomism characteristic of second-temple Judaism softened the Mosaic law s requirement of perfect obedience. Because of God s gracious covenant with Israel, manifested in election and the provision of atoning sacrifices, one could be righteous under the law despite occasional failures to obey the law perfectly. This view concludes that Paul, as a first-century Jew, could not have been troubled by the law s stringent demands, because it was generally understood that the gracious framework of the covenant provided a way of dealing with occasional lapses. Consequently, it is claimed, Paul s problem with the law must have to do with its misuse as a means of enforcing ethnic boundaries and excluding Gentile believers. However, as Das demonstrates in this book, whenever the gracious framework of covenantal nomism is called into question, the law s demands take on central importance. Das traces this development in a number of second-temple Jewish works and especially in the writings of Paul. Covenantal nomism is probably an apt characterization of Paul s opponents, and indeed of Paul s past life; thus he can assert that formerly he was blameless under the law. But now Paul sees God s grace as active only in Christ. He emphatically denies that God will show special grace in his judgment of Jews; to do so would be favoritism. Similarly, Paul sees no atoning benefit to the sacrificial system. In effect, Paul is no longer a covenantal nomist. Since the gracious framework of the covenant has collapsed, all that remains for Paul is the law, with its oppressive requirement of perfect obedience and ethnic exclusivism. Contra the "newperspective," the "works of the law" should not be construed so narrowly as only the law's ethnic exclusivity. Christ is "the end" of the law in general, both in the sense that he is the goal to which the law always pointed, and in that he is the sole agent of God's grace apart from which the law's demands would be impossible.
These two ideas are fundamental to the message of the Bible, and yet they are shockingly misunderstood and misapplied. Some take a literal approach to biblical law and adopt customs that make no sense in the modern world. Others think that the law has become irrelevant or, even worse, that it has been abolished and nailed to the cross. They hold this belief in spite of the plain statement by Jesus that the written law would remain as long as heaven and earth last. This suggests that we need to find a new way of looking at biblical law, one that makes sense, that actually helps make life work in the 21st century. Law is about understanding God and his purpose for man. Covenant is closely related because it is about knowing God, personally, intimately, and about being in a relationship with him. Nothing is more central to the Christian relationship with God than the covenant we have with Jesus. In this covenant, you actually carry his name-you are family, with all the rights, privileges and obligations of a brother or a son. Law & Covenant will untangle mysteries and bring simple, understandable insights. Ronald Dart will take you deeper into the Word of God than you've gone before-to a higher logic of the law. He will add an interesting worldview that will make it hard for you to put this book down.
Most scholars believe that the numerous similarities between the Covenant Code (Exodus 20:23-23:19) and Mesopotamian law collections, especially the Laws of Hammurabi, which date to around 1750 BCE, are due to oral tradition that extended from the second to the first millennium. This book offers a fundamentally new understanding of the Covenant Code, arguing that it depends directly and primarily upon the Laws of Hammurabi and that the use of this source text occurred during the Neo-Assyrian period, sometime between 740-640 BCE, when Mesopotamia exerted strong and continuous political and cultural influence over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and a time when the Laws of Hammurabi were actively copied in Mesopotamia as a literary-canonical text. The study offers significant new evidence demonstrating that a model of literary dependence is the only viable explanation for the work. It further examines the compositional logic used in transforming the source text to produce the Covenant Code, thus providing a commentary to the biblical composition from the new theoretical perspective. This analysis shows that the Covenant Code is primarily a creative academic work rather than a repository of laws practiced by Israelites or Judeans over the course of their history. The Covenant Code, too, is an ideological work, which transformed a paradigmatic and prestigious legal text of Israel's and Judah's imperial overlords into a statement symbolically countering foreign hegemony. The study goes further to study the relationship of the Covenant Code to the narrative of the book of Exodus and explores how this may relate to the development of the Pentateuch as a whole.
Building on the foundation of Kingdom through Covenant (Crossway, 2012), Stephen J. Wellum and Brent E. Parker have assembled a team of scholars who offer a fresh perspective regarding the interrelationship between the biblical covenants. Each chapter seeks to demonstrate how the covenants serve as the backbone to the grand narrative of Scripture. For example, New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner writes on the Sabbath command from the Old Testament and thinks through its applications to new covenant believers. Christopher Cowan wrestles with the warning passages of Scripture, texts which are often viewed by covenant theologians as evidence for a "mixed" view of the church. Jason DeRouchie provides a biblical theology of “seed” and demonstrates that the covenantal view is incorrect in some of its conclusions. Jason Meyer thinks through the role of law in both the old and new covenants. John Meade unpacks circumcision in the OT and how it is applied in the NT, providing further warrant to reject covenant theology's link of circumcision with (infant) baptism. Oren Martin tackles the issue of Israel and land over against a dispensational reading, and Richard Lucas offers an exegetical analysis of Romans 9-11, arguing that it does not require a dispensational understanding. From issues of ecclesiology to the warning passages in Hebrews, this book carefully navigates a mediating path between the dominant theological systems of covenant theology and dispensationalism to offer the reader a better way to understand God’s one plan of redemption.
A detailed examination of the passages central to the debate about Paul's christology and his view of Jewish Law. From meticulous exegesis makes some striking theological and historical conclusions.
Rev. Jordan examines the stories within the book of Judges, answering questions as to their theological and practical meaning; What has God commanded or promised and how do we respond? How do these stories reveal the work of Christ and His Church?
