It ought to be observed that the literal rendering of the words is not : ' This is my covenant-blood,' with the emphasis on the pronoun, but : ' This is my blood, covenant-blood.' The enclitic m"" is too weak to bear the stress the former ren- dering would put upon it. Accordingly, fiov be-
376
COVENANT
COVENANT
compound m ' blood '
longs neither to 5.a«i^•l; nor to tli idea ' eovenaut-blood,' but to the i only, as is also required by this, that ri al^a aov should be the exact correlate of -ri a^ixo. aov. The other construction, ' uiy covenant, could only mean either 'the covena.nt concluded with me,^ as in the original of Zee 9", or 'the covenant made by me as a contracting party, as in the LX.\ rendering of that passage, hardly 'the co\enant inaugurated by me between God and you. And vet the last it would have to mean here, if m"" went with SmSij^T,. By these considerations we are led to adopt the rendering ' this is my blood, covenant-blood ' ; and this rendering makes i appear at once, that our Lord does not in the hist place contrast His covenant-blood with the Mosaic covenant-blood, but simply speaks of His blood as partaking of the character of covenant^blood alter the analogy of that used by Moses. But even if the comparison with the Mosaic covenant bore more of an antithetical character than it does, it would still be rash to assert that such an antithesis between the relation to God inaugurated by Him- self and that prevailing under the Mosaic law coii d find no place in our Lord's consciousness, especially towards the close of His life. His attitude towards the Mosaic law, as reftected in the Gospels, presents a complicated problem. This much, however, is beyond doubt, tliat side by side with reverence for the Law there is, both in His teaching and eon duct, a note of sovereign freedom with regard to it. From the position expressed in such sayiii as Mk 2-'- '^ 7""^ to the conception of a new co "nant superseding the old there is but one step.
We take for granted that the words were actu- ally spoken by Jesus. In view of the fact that He uttered them in Aramaic, the question, w- letlier the rendering of Matthew and Mark or that of Paul and Luke more nearly reproduces the original, becomes difficult to decide and also of minor ini- portance. Zahn (Eoan. d. Matt. p. 6S6, note o2) suggests that from the Aramaic form sprm •on both renderings might, without material modifica,tion of the sense, have been derived. That the thouglit is in both forms essentially the same will appear later, after we have inquired into the content of Jesus' statement. . , ., • .•
The intricate problems connected witli the insti- tution of the Supper can here be touched upon in so far only as they bear upon the meaning of tlie words relating to the covenant. ^\ e give a briet survey of the various interpretations placed upon tliose words.
First we may mention the interpretation according to which the co%enant spoken of by Jesus stands m no real connexion with His death. Most modern writers who detach the oj-iginjil signiacance of the act of Jesus from His death,
the Supper was to Him a feast of joy, not a memonal of death. It was a sinele triumphant anticipation of the great feast of victory, not intended to be repeated as a rite. The present description of the covenant as a new covenant in the Pauline-Lukan record is according to Spitta, a later modification of the conception m an aViti-Judaistic direction. So far as its understanding of the term ?coveiianf is concerned, this hypothesis has a certain OT basis to rest upon. To be sure, the Davidio covenant, to which Spitta makes Jesus refer, is in the OT a past covenant, a covenant m.ade with David, the pledge and basis of future blessings, not a name for the blessings of the Messianic age themselves But this might easily become blended with the prophetic prediction of a new covenant in the Messianic time, and then actually the covenant of David could become equivalent to the Messianic blessedness (cf. Is 553 'the sure mercies of David ). 'There is, however no prophetic passage which joins together tne con- ceptions of the Messianic covenant and of a feast, so that no explanation is oflered of the association of the one with the other in the mind of Jesus. The account of Ex 24 far more plausibly explains the combination of these tw'O ideas «or here the covenant and the feast actually occur together. And if this be the more direct source of our Lord's reference to the coie- nant then it follows that the blood and the covenant stand in a nuioh more direct connexion with e.ich other than Spitta assumes. According W Spitta, it is the blood which represents the person- ality of Jesus, who is the Autlior and Centre of the covenant. Acdording to Ex 248 it is the blood directly inaugurating the co'^nant^ Apart from every reference to Ex 24, when the b ood is brou-ht into connexion with the covenant C this is my blood of the "covenant '), it becomes entirely impossible to think of anything else than a covenant based on sacriflcial blood : every other mode of joining these two terms is artificial Spitta a further assumption, that the eating of the bread and the drink- inc of the wine stand for a partaking of the Messiah s body and blSod, as a symbol of the eating of the Messiah, altogether apart from His death, is highly improbable. The feast as » "hole ■rht be the symbol of a participation in the Messiah, though