historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

00 BILHAH NITZAN
as a whole symbolizes the renewal of the covenant with the new
generation after the Exodus, while the ceremony of renewal, as commanded
in Deuteronomy 27, was performed by Joshua at Canaan
(Josh. 8:30-35). A public ceremony of covenant renewal for all generations
is commanded in Deut. 31:10-13, to be executed during
the festival of Tabernacles (Sukkot) every seventh year. 9 Public ceremonies
renewing the covenant between God and Israel were performed
in specific situations as well. The deuteronomic covenant
renewal became a model for a fixed ritual and for a specific situational
ritual in Israel during the First and Second Temple periods,
as follows.
Considered from a historical perspective, the idea of renewal throughout
the history of Israel was embodied in situations of constitutional
reform. The establishment of each constitutional reform was formally
constituted by a covenant renewal, expressing its continuity with the
first covenant made between God and earlier generations, on the
one hand, while stressing new stipulations adapted to new situations,
on the other. Such are, for example, the deuteronomic covenant,
which was considered the renewal of the Sinai covenant, although
this was actually another covenant made by Moses in the wilderness
of Moab, stressing cultic and monarchic reform; the covenant made
by Joshua at Shechem, which stressed the eradication of the idols
held by the Israelites (Josh. 24:14-40); 10 the covenant made by
Samuel to establish the kingdom (1 Sam. 12); and the covenant made
by josiah to establish the deuteronomic cultic reform (2 Kgs 23:1 3 =
2 Chron. 34:30—33). 11 The concept of presenting religious and social
Press, 1972), 59—157. According to Weinfeld's study, the pattern used in the deuteronomic
covenant is parallel not only to the pattern of the Hittite treaties, but also
to a traditional formulation of state treaties in Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.
Weinfeld demonstrated that this traditional formulation remained substantially
unchanged from the time of the Hittite Empire through the neo-Assyrian period,
when the book of Deuteronomy was composed. The contents of the deuteronomic
treaties, however, express the deuteronomic religious ideology, as may be clarified
by its typical phraseology (Weinfeld, Deuteronomy, 320-65).
9 Mendenhall, "Covenant," 718-21.
10 See Weinfeld, Deuteronomy, 66. M. Anbar, Josue et l'alliance de Sichem (Josue
24:1-28), Beitrage zur biblischen Exegese und Theologie 25 (Frankfurt am M.:
Peter Lang, 1992), 69-100; Hebrew version (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute,
1999), 59-104. According to Anbar's critical approach, as demonstrated by a close
reading of the phrases of the text, Joshua's covenant is based mainly on the deuteronomic
phraseology, but, on the other hand, it reflects later characteristics, linguistic
and ideological.
11 On the use of the concept of covenant renewal in the deuteronomic concept