The Wisdom Movement and Israel’s Covenant Faith

Abstract

Among the great gains in biblical scholarship in recent years has been the rediscovery of the importance of holy history. We have become increasingly aware that God's revelation centres in the record of His redemptive acts and in the inspired interpretation of them by prophets and apostles. Other approaches, like the study of Israel's faith as an expression of man's search for ethical order or as a chapter in the history of world religions, have given way to an emphasis on the unique-ness of Israel's role among the ancient peoples. Her election and the covenant which God made with her, her attitude towards her calling, her preoccupation with history more than nature, her non-mythological faith, her cultus whose moral demands took priority to ritual—these and many similar ideas have captured the attention of European and American scholars in the past three decades. Redemptive history has rightly become the mainline of Old Testament interpretation. Recent approaches to hermeneutics contentrate on the historical connection between the Testa-ments, rather than on the similarities in ethical instruction or spiritual values. Typology, the study of the orderly patterns which God has followed in steering the course of holy history, has become a dominant theme. Time and again we meet the phrase 'promise and fulfilment' in biblical studies.