The "new covenant" in 2 Cor 3 and Jeremiah 31

[rgprice]

I found this quite interesting, but not sure what to make of it:

Jeremiah 31:27 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. 28 And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. 29 In those days they shall no longer say:

“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

30 But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of the one who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

2 Cor 3:1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, 3 and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts.

4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God, 6 who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

7 Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’s face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, 8 how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! 10 Indeed, what once had glory has in this respect lost its glory because of the greater glory, 11 for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

[Peter Kirby]

To me, it looks like 2 Cor 3 is using Jeremiah here.

[MrMacSon]

Other references to covenant in Paul https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearc ... spanend=60

1 Cor 11:25 in context:

23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 27 So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.

Romans 9:4:

3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

Romans 11:

25 ... Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:

“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”
.......[Isaiah 59:20,21; 27:9 (LXX); Jer. 31:33,34]

28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may [now] receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.

Galatians 3:

13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole [Deut. 21:23]. 14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

15 Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. 16 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. 17 What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18 For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

• Galatians 3:16 : Gen. 12:7; 13:15; 24:7

Galatians 4:

23 His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise. 24 These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother.27 For it is written:

“Be glad, barren woman,
you who never bore a child;
shout for joy and cry aloud,
you who were never in labor;
because more are the children of the desolate woman
than of her who has a husband.” [Isaiah 54.1]

28 Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 At that time the son born according to the flesh persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. 30 But what does Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.” [Gen. 21:10] 31 Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.

[rgprice]

To me, it looks like 2 Cor 3 is using Jeremiah here.

I'm not fully convinced. But assuming Paul was influenced by Jeremiah here, what does this imply? How was Pauling using Jeremiah? Is Paul's new covenant supposed to be what is described in Jeremiah? Doesn't seem to align. Does this indicate that Paul identifies the Jewish God as God the Father? Is Paul merely reflecting concepts from Jeremiah, without the intention of directly referring to Jeremiah, or indicating that Jeremiah is a "prophecy" for his new covenant?

Jeremiah appears to be a case of God himself saying in the Jewish scriptures that he's going to initiate a new covenant that is not based on the written law, however, unlike what Paul says, God in Jeremiah does not say that he's going to abolish the law, only that he's going to write the law on the hearts of the people is Israel. Also, Jeremiah says that the new covenant apply only to the people of Israel. Obviously that is not the case for Paul.

[robert j]

To me, it looks like 2 Cor 3 is using Jeremiah here.

I'm not fully convinced.

I agree with Peter here, Paul used the concept of the "new covenant" from Jeremiah for his 2 Corinthians 3:6. And Paul also alluded to Ezekiel 36:26 (LXX) for 2 Corinthians 3:2 with fleshy hearts replacing stone.

For those interested in sorting out Paul's complex use of the several passages in the Jewish scriptures in the wider passage of 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:6, Richard Hays spends 31 pages with his analysis in his Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, 1989, pp. 122-153. I don't necessarily agree will every one of his conclusions in that section, but Hays provides a very detailed analyses with good examples of Paul's inventive use of the scriptures.

I'm not fully convinced. But assuming Paul was influenced by Jeremiah here, what does this imply? How was Pauling using Jeremiah? Is Paul's new covenant supposed to be what is described in Jeremiah? Doesn't seem to align. Does this indicate that Paul identifies the Jewish God as God the Father? Is Paul merely reflecting concepts from Jeremiah, without the intention of directly referring to Jeremiah, or indicating that Jeremiah is a "prophecy" for his new covenant?

Jeremiah appears to be a case of God himself saying in the Jewish scriptures that he's going to initiate a new covenant that is not based on the written law, however, unlike what Paul says, God in Jeremiah does not say that he's going to abolish the law, only that he's going to write the law on the hearts of the people is Israel. Also, Jeremiah says that the new covenant apply only to the people of Israel. Obviously that is not the case for Paul.

I think you are approaching Paul's creative and generative use of the scriptures from the wrong perspective. Here are just a couple of statements from Hays about Paul's use of the scriptures ---

“In Paul we encounter a first-century Jewish thinker who, while undergoing a profound disjuncture with his own religious tradition, grappled his way through to a vigorous and theologically generative reappropriation of Israel’s Scriptures.” (Hays, p. 2)

“… the issues raised by his (Paul’s) readings are fundamentally hermeneutical issues, because of the undeniable gap between the “original sense” of the Old Testament texts and Paul’s interpretation ..." (Hays, p. 6)

In most of his book, I think Hays provides a brave and steely-eyed evaluation of the evidence in terms of Paul’s very creative and generative use of the Scriptures. But in the last chapter Hays reassures his Christian readers ---

"Does Paul offer a good model of how to interpret the Bible?" (Hays, p. 179)

"The question of appropriateness of Paul’s readings of Scripture can be considered more precisely if the issue is broken into three components:
1. Are Paul’s specific interpretations of scripture materially normative?
2. Are Paul’s interpretive methods formally exemplary? …." (p. 180)

"… I would argue that the only theologically appropriate response to our study of Pauline hermeneutics is to answer “yes” to both questions 1 and 2 … His letters help us to understand both what the Old Testament means and how it should be read … Paul exhorted his readers to become imitators of him (1 Cor, 4:16, 11:1, Phil. 3:17). Surely to imitate him faithfully we must learn from him the art of reading and proclaiming Scripture" (p. 183).

I certainly part ways with Hays here.


From a Jewish perspective, Paul's use of the scriptures can be seen as rather outlandish, even as "howlers". From Reinventing Paul, by John G. Gager, Oxford Univ. Press, 2000, page 149 ---

"Paul’s mode of argumentation was consistently biblical … At virtually every turn he cites a biblical text, often several. Many have seen his interpretations of these texts as willful, even perverse. The literary critic Harold Bloom is beside himself. “Paul is so careless, hasty, and inattentive a reader of the Hebrew Bible that he rarely gets any text right.” He speaks of Paul’s “will to power over a text”, of “weird exegesis” and of “plain howlers.” **

[** Gager’s citation of Bloom is from, Bloom, Poetics of Influence, New Haven, 1988.]

But I certainly disagree with Bloom's claims that Paul's use of the scriptures were "careless, hasty, and inattentive." Far from it.



A "New Covenant" Passage in the Preaching of Peter

"Peter says in his Preaching ... For we have found in the Scriptures, how the Lord said, 'Behold, I make with you a new covenant, not as the covenant with your fathers in mount Horeb”

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 6.5

[MrMacSon]

... Hays provides a very detailed analyses with good examples of Paul's inventive use of the scriptures.

imo, Paul seems to be very 'inventive' in his use (and perhaps misuse) of the Hebrew scriptures, as you note with:

Paul's creative and generative use of the scriptures

WRT -

“In Paul we encounter a first-century Jewish thinker who, while undergoing a profound disjuncture with his own religious tradition, grappled his way through to a vigorous and theologically generative reappropriation of Israel’s Scriptures.” (Hays, p. 2)

- I really wonder if Paul was in fact a "Jewish thinker", ie. whether he really was Jewish, or whether he was a 'non-Jewish thinker' using Jewish scriptures to [try to] create a new 'philosophy' or new midrashim or both, (as Hays sort-of notes; in another sense, of course) -

“… the undeniable gap between the “original sense” of the Old Testament texts and Paul’s interpretation ..." (Hays, p. 6)

In most of his book, I think Hays provides a brave and steely-eyed evaluation of the evidence in terms of Paul’s very creative and generative use of the Scriptures. But in the last chapter Hays reassures his Christian readers ---

"Does Paul offer a good model of how to interpret the Bible?" (Hays, p. 179)

"The question of appropriateness of Paul’s readings of Scripture can be considered more precisely if the issue is broken into three components:
1. Are Paul’s specific interpretations of scripture materially normative?
2. Are Paul’s interpretive methods formally exemplary? …." (p. 180)

"… I would argue that the only theologically appropriate response to our study of Pauline hermeneutics is to answer “yes” to both questions 1 and 2 …
His letters help us to understand both what the Old Testament means and how it should be read … Paul exhorted his readers to become imitators of him (1 Cor, 4:16, 11:1, Phil. 3:17). Surely to imitate him faithfully we must learn from him the art of reading and proclaiming Scripture" (p. 183).

I certainly part ways with Hays here.

I agree.

I hereby re-use and expand Hays to emphasise a slightly different view of Hays' point, ie. -

to imitate [Paul] faithfully we must learn from him the art of reading and proclaiming [a new covenant from Hebrew] Scripture"

ie., Paul could well have been primarily or part of a group who were seeking to re-interpret the Hebrew scriptures for nefarious purposes

(Hays saying that Paul's letters "help us to understand both what the Old Testament means and how it should be read" is laughable (and apologetic)).

From a Jewish perspective, Paul's use of the scriptures can be seen as rather outlandish, even as "howlers". From Reinventing Paul, by John G. Gager, Oxford Univ. Press, 2000, page 149 ---

"...Many have seen his interpretations of these texts as wilful, even perverse.

The literary critic Harold Bloom is beside himself. “Paul ...rarely gets any text right.” He speaks of Paul’s “will to power over a text”, of “weird exegesis” and of “plain howlers.” **

[** Gager’s citation of Bloom is from, Bloom, Poetics of Influence, New Haven, 1988.]

But I certainly disagree with Bloom's claims that Paul's use of the scriptures were "careless, hasty, and inattentive." Far from it.

I agree, so omitted "careless, hasty, and inattentive" to give the effect to the quote that I agree with.