474 TRANSLATION, NOTES, AND COMMENTS(IQS 2:1-18). The Manual reads much like Deuteronomy. The main differ-
ence between the two is that in the Manual the older corporate sense is gone;
the blessings and curses, for example, now fall upon individuals. The Manual
does not foresee any abrogation of the covenant as a whole, nor does it imagine
that noncompliance might lead to the whole community being destroyed. The
same can also be said of the Church (see Excursus V). On the other hand, the
individual responsibility presupposed in the Manual appears not to result from
any inner motivation, at least not of the sort that Jeremiah envisioned in his
new covenant prophecy. God is said to have placed a holy spirit in the people
of Qumran (lQS 3:7), but they still need admonitions to obey, as both the
Manual and the Damascus Document make clear.
The new covenant idea undergoes no further development in Judaism. The
Midrashim contain merely a few citations of J er 31: 3 3 for purposes of focusing
on the old problem of remembering the Torah. Midrash Song of Songs 8: 14
interprets the phrase about God writing the Torah on the people's hearts to
mean that God recalls for the people what they themselves have forgotten and
what has led them into error. More often in the midrashic literature, the Jere-
miah verse is given a meaning closer to the one it had originally: that forget-
ting the Torah can be expected in the Present World, and only in the World to
Come, when the Torah is (truly) written on the heart, will people no longer
forget it (Midrashim Ecclesiastes 2:1; Song of Songs 1:2; Pesiqta 107a; Yalqut
on Jer 31:33; cf. St.-B. 3: 89-90, 704). Medieval Jewish writers cited the Jer
31: 31-34 passage largely to refute Christological interpretations, e.g., arguing
that the Mosaic Torah was not abrogated by Jesus and the Christian Gospel,
but that in the Messianic Age it will be renewed and internalized in a new
covenant lasting forever (Sarason 1988: I 03-9). In the modern Encyclopaedia
Judaica (1971-73), there are no articles on "new covenant" or "eternal cove-
nant," and in the article on "covenant" (M. Weinfeld), neither of these cove-
nants is mentioned.
EXCURSUS V: THE NEW COVENANT IN THE NEW TES-
TAMENT AND PATRISTIC LITERATURE TO A.D. 325A. New Testament
The Christian Church, from earliest times, claimed the promise of J er 31: 31-
34 and understood itself to be the people of the new covenant. It also thought
of itself as a new people (I Pet 2: 1-10): Israel reborn-but a more inclusive Is-
rael to which Gentiles now belong. It comes as somewhat of a surprise then to
find so little said in the NT about a new covenant. G. E. Wright ( 1971: 986) at-
tributes the paucity of references to legalistic connotations that the term "cove-
nant" had in the NT period. He says that "covenant" had come to mean almost