New take on the New Covenant: a reconsideration of the 'New Covenant' and Jeremiah 31:31-34 in the Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract

The majority opinion in scholarship holds that the Essene use of the term ברית חדש ה (‘new covenant’) in the DSS was intended as an appropriation of the ‘new covenant’ prophecy of Jer 31:31–34, as this is the only passage in the entire HB to contain this term. This study seeks to question the validity of this assumption, and, in light of the contribution of the (relatively) recently published 4QD Fragments, will argue that despite the presence of the term ברית חדש ה in Jer 31:31 and the DSS, there are solid grounds to suggest that the Essenes did not in fact conceive of their ‘new covenant (in the land of Damascus)’ as an appropriation and/or fulfillment of Jer 31:31–34. Rather, the Essene use of the term ברית חדש ה is more adequately explained on other grounds.

The present study is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction wherein the research questions, research context (historical review of scholarship), course of analysis, and methodology will be discussed. Chapter 2 is devoted to an exegesis of the text of Jer 31:31–34, wherein the LXX and MT versions of this passage (and their relation to one another) will be evaluated. The conclusions reached in this chapter will serve to inform our discussion in Chapter 3, which is itself devoted to four separate but related tasks: (1) an in-depth study of the Essene concept of the ‘new covenant’ in the two DSS texts in which this term appears: the Damascus Document (D) and Pesher Habakkuk (1QpHab); (2) a synthesis of key Essene ‘new covenant’ concepts based on the aforementioned study; (3) a comparison of these Essene ‘new covenant’ concepts with the concepts of the Jeremian ‘new covenant’ obtained from Chapter 2; (4) an examination of the research questions in light of our findings. Chapter 4 serves to conclude this study by summarizing key points from each chapter and exploring additional questions of interest prompted by the results of this study.