Volume 30, Number 14 · September 29, 1983
Taking it on Faith
By J.M. Cameron
The Story of the Stories: The Chosen People and Its God
by Dan Jacobson
Harper and Row, 211 pp., $11.95
The Covenant: A Reading
by Jonathan Bishop
Templegate (Springfield, Illinois), 458 pp., $9.95 (paper)
The articles constituting the League of Nations were called the Covenant of the League; Protestant piety was then more of a force in the world than it is now, and the history of 'covenant' must have been present to many of those who took their seats as delegates in the city of Calvin. The idiom to which 'covenant' belongs is falling out of common use, but it may still have some energy, as consoling or slightly disturbing, carrying with it suggestions of Sinai, or Deuteronomy, or the blessing of the cup ('This is my blood of the new covenant') at the Last Supper, depicted by the writers of the Gospels as a fateful Passover meal in which the history of Israel is recapitulated and what is eaten is, proleptically, the paschal lamb to be slaughtered on the next day.
Review, 3623 words
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