COVENANT
COVENANT
375
standing the so - called ' intensive universalism ' and the recognition of religion as a natural bond between God and man, antedating all positive forms of intercourse, our Lord was a thorough- going supernaturalist, who viewed both the past relationship of God to Israel and the future re- lationship to be established in the Kingdom not as the outcome of the natural religion of man, but as the product of a special, historic, supernatural approach of God to man, such as the OT calls ' covenant.' While probably the legalistic shade of meaning whicli the word liad obtained was less congenial to Him, He must have been in full accord with the genuine OT principle expressed in it. Mk 8^ and Mt li'-" speak of the Jews as an ' adulterous generation,' and probably the later prophetic representation of the covenant as a marriage-covenant lies at the basis of this mode of statement.
The words spoken at the Supper were, according to St. Matthew {26"-») and St. Mark (U^^), to0t6 icTiv Tt> alfia /lov Trjs SiadyK-ns (AD in Matthew and A in Mark riji KaivTji SiaBriKTi^) ■ according to St. Luke (22=") and St.Paul (1 Co Ips) touto t6 Tor^piov rj KatVTj dtad-rjKTj 4v ry aifxari fiov [in 1 Cor. i/xi^ a'ifjLaTt]. There is some doubt, liowever, about the genuine- ness of the context in St. Luke in which these words occur. In D and some other MSS, 22'^'' (be- ginning with tA Owip iiiiwv) and v.-" are lacking. The textual-critical problem is a very complicated one (cf. Westcott and Hort, Notes on Select Hem/- ings in the Appendix, pp. G3-64 ; Haupt, Ucbcr die ursprmigliche Form unci Bedeutung dor Abend- mahlsiuorte, pp. 6-10 ; Johannes Weiss, Das dlteste Evangelium, pp. 294-299; Johannes Hoffmann, Das Abendmahl im Urchristenthum, pp. 7, 8 [all of whom adopt the shorter text] ; Schultzen, Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament, pp. 5-19 ; R. A. HofI'mann, Die Abendmahlsgcdanken Jesu Christi, pp. 7-21 [who are in favour' of the TR]. It ought to be remembered, though it is sometimes over- looked, that the rejection of v v. ''■"■• ™ as not origin- ally belonging to the Gospel is by no means equivalent to declaring these words unliistorifal, i.e. not spoken by Jesus. Wendt, e.g. {l>n- /,.///, Jesu^, p. 496), assumestheoriginality of the ^lioitii- text in St. Luke, and yet believes, on the busis nf the other records, that Jesus spoke the words whicli St. Luke, for reasons arising out of his ' combina- tion-method,' omitted. (Similarly Haupt, p. 10). Still, as a matter of fact, with some writers the adoption of the shorter text is accompanied by the belief that it represents an older .-iiicl more accurate tradition of what actually took place. On the other hand, it remains possible, even in retaining the TR as originally Lukan, to believe that St. Luke's source supplied him with a highly peculiar version of the occurrence preserved in vv.'^'"", and that he assimilated this to the other more current representation by borrowing vv."''- =" from St. Paul. On the whole, however, the acceptance of the genuineness of the longer text naturally tends to strengthen the presumption that a statement in regard to which all the records agree must be his- torical. Contextual considerations also seem to speak in favour of the genuineness of the disputed words. If vv.'ib. 20 do not belong to the text, St. Luke must have looked upon the cup of v." as the cup of the Sacrament, for it would have been impossible for him to relate an institution sub una specie. But this assumption, viz. that the cup of v." meant for St. Luke the cup of the Sacra- ment, is impossible, because v." comes between this cup and the bread of v.'^. Further, v.'s so closely corresponds to v.'" as to set vv.i=->8 by themselves, a group of four verses with a care- fully constructed parallelism between the first and the thiid, the second and the fourth of its mem-
bers respectively; and inasmuch as v." belongs to this group, it cannot very well have been con- nected by the author with v.'' in such a close manner as the co-ordination of the cup and the bread in the Sacrament would require. In general, the advocates of the shorter text do not succeed in explaining how the author of the Third Gospel, who must have been familiar with the other accounts, and can hardly have differed from them in his belief that the Supper was instituted as celebrated in the Church at that time, could have regarded vv.'^-'"" as an adequate institution of the rite with which he was acquainted. It is much easier to believe that a later copyist found the cup of the Sacrament in v.", and therefore omitted v.^", than that a careful historian, such as St. Luke was, should have deliberately entertained this view, even if he had found a version to that efl'ect in one of his sources.
Altogether apart from the textual problem in St. Luke, the historicity of the words relating to the covenant-blood has been called in question. Just as the saying about the X&rpov in Mk 10" and Mt 20-*, so this utterance has been suspected since the time of Baur on account of its alleged Paulinizing char- acter. Recently this view has gained renewed advocacy by such writers as W. Brandt, Die Evan- gelische Gcsckichtc, pp. 289 ft'., 566; Bousset, Die 'Kniiu/rliniritate Justin des Mdrtyrers, p. 112 ff. ; A\ivil.., /NTW, 1900, pp. 69-74 ; Hollmann, Die i;.,/.„hnu, des Todes Jesu, p. 145ft'. The prin- cilial iuguuients on which these writers rest their contention are, that whilst to St. Paul the idea of the new covenant is familiar, no trace of it appears elsewhere in the teaching of Jesus ; that it is ex- pressive of an antithesis to the OT religion and its institutions out of harraonj' with Jesus' general attitude towards these; that in Justin Martyr's version of the institution the disputed words do not occur (so Bousset) ; that the structure of the sentence in Matthew and Mark still betrays the later addition of the genitive rri^ SiaBriKTis (.so Wrede). The mere fact, however, that a certain conception occurs with a degree of doctrinal lioiiitiMlncss in Paul, does not warrant us in sus- |i.rtiii;_: it when it occurs in the mouth of Jesus. With St. I'aul himself the shade of meaning of the word is not in every passage the same. It cannot be provetl that the Apostle read into what were to him the words of the institution an anti-Judaistic significance, such as belongs to the conception in Gal 42-' and 2 Co 3". Even the characterization of the 5i.a0T]K-q as Kaivi) does not require us to assume this. Even to St. Paul, we shall have to say, the phrase Kaivi] SiaB-fiK-q has in the present instance the more general soteriological associations, in view of which the antithesis of the new to the old and the superseding of the old by the new recede into the backs-round. The new io\-enant is the covenant wliirli fnllils I lie ( »'l' |ji..iiii^es, rather than the new c.n.ii^nii ul.i.h ■■ilirML-iir., the OT law. With still iiiiire a.^-iii:ni(e we nia\- allinii this of the words as a^jcribed tu Jesus in '.Mark and Matthew. Here (apart from the hardly original reading of A and D in Matthew and A in JIark) the explicit desig- nation of the SiaejjKv as Kamri is not found. While the thought of the substitution of one covenant for another is undoubtedly the logical correlate of the statement even in this form, yet such an inference, if present at all, can have lain in the periphery only, not in the centre of the consciousness of Him who thus spoke.