God’s Covenants with Humans in the Old Testament

Building on previous research on a number of covenants in the Old Testament and the meaning of Hebrew בְּרִית, this project focuses on the stories about God’s covenant-making with Noah, Abraham, the people of Israel, Phinehas and David. It explores the role and function of these covenants and their making in their literary context, as parts of the unfolding story of God’s relationship with humans. In addition, it analyses prophetic texts about a covenant to be made after the Babylonian Exile.
By focusing on the exegesis of the stories about God’s covenant in their literary context, it supplements current studies, mainly by Anglo-Saxon scholars, that have preferred to analyse the covenants from a more dogmatic perspective or within a framework taken from Ancient Near Eastern treaties.