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Kuzminer, Diana

English

2005

M.A.

This thesis is a study that examines the genealogy of the covenanting idea from its earliest sources in Near Eastern cultures gleaned from the texts of Genesis to the establishment of Israelite body politic in law, nation, and a divinely invested monarchy. Covenants, I have argued, do not simply attest to the contractual relationship between the divine and mankind, but that they make use of violence and displace violence elsewhere to build that relationship. From ritualized sacrifices of primeval communities to England's seventeenth century, covenantal discourse takes up the issue of communal development, of communal collective identity, of building nations, and of desperately seeking solutions to political and religious crises. In the wake of the English Revolution, of Cromwell's reign, and of the Stuart Restoration, social, religious and political upheavals brought writers of this period back to the covenants of the Hebrew Bible, to re-view models and find solutions. Since covenantal relationships are granted in times of crises, upheavals that require divine intervention, writers like Margaret Fell Fox and John Milton, place covenants at the center of their arguments as they imagine a different world from the one in which they live. From senseless violence of innocents, from religious persecutions, and tyranny, these writers hope to come to terms with their world and to impress upon their readers a different world that is vested in the power of the divine through covenants to eradicate all violence and bring justice.