The ‘Book of the Covenant’: A Literary Approach
Overview
This volume offers a synchronic, literary reading of the final form of the laws of Exodus 20:22–23:19 (commonly, though inaccurately labeled "The Book of the Covenant"), in contrast with primarily source and form critical approaches commonly utilized in the past. The work seeks to demonstrate that this literary unit is much more coherent, more integrated into its narrative context, less in need of the positing of corruptions, secondary insertions, or rearrangements than has usually been recognized. The approach instead seeks to find authorial purpose in each case where scholars have often posited scribal misadventure seams between sources, disorder, contradiction, or corruption.
Key Features
- Expert contributors
- Includes detailed table of contents, indexes, and bibliographies to aid study
Top Highlights
“An answer lies in the narrative context: Exodus 21 begins with servitude, just as does the prologue to the Decalogue in 20:2, in order to develop the central theme of the book of Exodus, deliverance from bondage.” (Page 62)
“The data above suggests that what we have here is not a law code, but moral comments on some legal and non-legal subjects conveyed in a manner more appropriate for literary art than for adjudication.” (Page 206)
“This motif of the ear as the organ of obedience seems to be found elsewhere in Exod. 29:20 where the priests are consecrated by placing blood on their ears, thumbs, and big toes (‘hearing/obeying’ with ears, ‘doing’ with hands and ‘goings’ with feet) and 32:2–3 that ironically stresses that the golden rings used for making the Golden Calf come not from the fingers, wrists, necks or noses of the people, but from their ears: the symbol of obedience being used for disobedience.1 So here, the ear of the bondsman plays a role in this ritual because he must henceforth hear/obey his master.” (Page 55)
“The sense is thus: ‘When you choose to offer me sacrificial worship and call upon my name, it is not simply you who have chosen to worship me, but rather I who have chosen you, reaching out to you, making myself available to you, giving you a sense of my Presence, granting you permission to worship me.’ In short, this is a promise of continued divine Presence after Israel leaves Sinai.” (Page 46)
“The former is a ‘synopsis’, a summary statement, a ‘bottom line’ of the minimum principles of the covenant, while 20:22–23:33 is ‘expansive’, telling in more detail how some (not necessarily all) of those principles can be worked out in daily life.” (Page 25)
Product Details
- Title: The ‘Book of the Covenant’: A Literary Approach
- Author: Joe M. Sprinkle
- Publisher: Sheffield Academic Press
- Publication Date: 2009
- Pages: 224