berit

Where the word covenant comes from, and so what it most basically pictures.

• majorityIts origin is genuinely unknown and should not be used to fix its meaning; the sense must be read off how the word is actually used in the text. This is the position most current scholarship takes after James Barr's warning against reading a word's prehistory into its uses.; James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1961), 158-161; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. ברית; Stuart J. Foster, "A Prototypical Definition of berit, 'covenant' in Biblical Hebrew," OTE 19/1 (2006): 36-47
• minorityIt derives from an Akkadian word for a fetter, clasp, or bond, since neighboring cultures regularly spoke of treaty-making as binding; the core picture is therefore a binding tie.; Moshe Weinfeld, "berit," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 2:253-255
• minorityIt derives instead from a rare root meaning to see, observe, or select, with a path from determining to imposing a binding decree.; Ernst Kutsch, "Sehen und Bestimmen. Die Etymologie von berit," in Archaologie und Altes Testament: Festschrift Kurt Galling (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1970), 165-178

Whether covenant fundamentally means a two-sided agreement, a one-sided obligation, or an oath-bound relationship.

• majorityIt is a chosen relationship of mutual obligation that is sealed and made binding by an oath; even one-sided covenants still bind two parties together, and the word lives among the language of loyalty and love.; Moshe Weinfeld, "berit," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 2:253-279; Dennis J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant, 2nd ed., AnBib 21A (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1978); Gordon P. Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant, VTSup 52 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 168-215; Stuart J. Foster, "A Prototypical Definition of berit, 'covenant' in Biblical Hebrew," OTE 19/1 (2006): 36-47
• minorityIt does not mean an agreement at all; its basic sense is obligation or commitment, often one-sided, whether a promise God binds himself to or a duty he imposes on a people.; Ernst Kutsch, Verheissung und Gesetz: Untersuchungen zum sogenannten "Bund" im Alten Testament, BZAW 131 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973); Lothar Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament, WMANT 36 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1969)
• minorityIt is a two-sided compact between two parties, the older default rendering covenant, pact, or agreement.; Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961)
• minorityIt is best understood as the means of making non-kin into kin, the legal extension of family ties to outsiders, so the language of father, son, brother, and love around it is meant literally and not as borrowed political metaphor.; Frank Moore Cross, "Kinship and Covenant in Ancient Israel," in From Epic to Canon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998), 3-21; Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, AYBRL (New Haven: Yale UP, 2009)

Whether the biblical covenants were copied from Ancient Near Eastern state treaties, and from which.

• minorityThe Sinai and Deuteronomy covenants follow the late second-millennium Hittite suzerain-vassal treaty form, which anchors the covenant idea early rather than as a late invention.; George E. Mendenhall, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Pittsburgh: Biblical Colloquium, 1955); Kenneth A. Kitchen and Paul J. N. Lawrence, Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012)
• minorityDeuteronomy's form, especially its curses, depends instead on first-millennium Neo-Assyrian loyalty oaths such as the treaties of Esarhaddon, pointing to a seventh-century date for that literary shape.; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972); Bernard M. Levinson and Jeffrey Stackert, "Between the Covenant Code and Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty," Journal of Ancient Judaism 3 (2012): 123-140
• contestedThere was no direct dependence on any single treaty; the biblical writers drew on a diffuse, shared Ancient Near Eastern treaty culture, so the alleged exclusive parallels are too thin and scattered to prove borrowing.; C. L. Crouch, Israel and the Assyrians, ANEM 8 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014); Markus Zehnder, "Building on Stone? Deuteronomy and Esarhaddon's Loyalty Oaths," Bulletin for Biblical Research 19.3-4 (2009): 341-374, 511-535