000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

The Gospel reading for today does not echo Genesis 9. The letter for
today, 1 Peter 3:18–22, directly recalls the flood story (though 1 Peter has
in mind Genesis 6–8 more than Genesis 9). For Peter, the experience of
baptism is a means to salvation similar to passing through the flood.
Jewish theologians in the Hellenistic age and later pondered the question
of how to interpret the fact of faithful people among Gentiles who
do not convert to Judaism. In the Hellenistic age, some Jewish thinkers
derived the “Noahide laws” from this passage (and from wider reflection).
These laws identified qualities through which Gentiles manifest the spirit
of Judaism and live faithfully. These seven laws are: (1) avoiding idolatry,
(2) not profaning the name of God, (3) not shedding blood, (4) establishing
courts of justice, (5) not robbing, (6) not engaging in perverse sexual
behavior, and (7) not eating meat from a live animal (b. Sanhedrin 56a; cf.
Jubilees 7:20–33; t. Abodah Zarah 8:4–8; Genesis Rabbah 34:8). While the
Noahide laws probably were not fully formulated by the first century CE,
Luke picks up on prescient impulses in the report of the Apostolic Council
in Acts 15:19–21 and 28–30.
Second Sunday in Lent/Year B
Genesis 17:1–7, 15–16
Second Sunday in Lent/Year B 143
God cut covenant with Sarai and Abram in Genesis 15 (Second Sunday in
Lent/Year C). By omitting Genesis 17:9–14, the lectionary cuts the heart
out of Genesis 17, whose fundamental point is to explain the origin and
meaning of the distinctive Jewish male sign of the covenant: circumcision.
Scholars often point out that Genesis 17:1–27 is similar in language and
theology to Genesis 9:1–17, thus indicating that the covenant with the
ancestral couple takes place (and sets the mission of Israel) within the larger
covenant that God made through Noah with the whole human race.
Like the covenant itself, the sign of circumcision is an act of grace. Neither
Sarai nor Abram do anything to earn the covenant. The promises of
the covenant are the same as in Genesis 15:1–6: a great community and
the land in perpetuity (Gen. 17:3–7, 8). God now changes the name of the
central male character from Abram (“exalted ancestor”) to Abraham
(“ancestor of a multitude”), for the name Abraham better embodies the
content of the covenant.
In Genesis 17:9–14, God gives circumcision as a sign of the covenant.
The great Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna interprets the theological