STUDY QUESTIONS

HUMANITIES CORE COURSE

FALL QUARTER, WEEK 4

18-19 OCTOBER

“Christianity: The Covenant Fulfilled and Extended”

In the Gospel of Matthew 1:1, the first verse in the New Testament, Jesus is announced as the Son of
David and the Son of Abraham. What does each designation indicate about him”

The epigraph (“quote of the day”) in the Lecture Notes painstakingly re-states God's covenant with mankind as an extension of God's covenant with Abraham and his descendants.Why not just start from scratch plainly and announce a new God-mankind covenant without laboriously working through and with the Abrahamic covenant? (Hints: 1) the identity of the writer. 2) the word “fulfilled” in the title of the lecture.)

What do Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Sarah, the mother of Isaac, have in common? How is what they have in common religiously significant?

“Testament” is another word for “covenant.” Do God's successive covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David each abolish its predecessor(s)? How does this consideration bear on the birth of a “new covenant” through Jesus as Son of David?

Read Hebrews 8:8-12. Where, earlier in the “Course Guide and Reader” have you seen these words? Comment on the implications of their inclusion in this New Testament letter from a Jew to his fellow Jews.

What story previously considered in our course does Matthew 2:16 evoke?

“Who is a Jew?” is a question that Jews themselves endlessly debate down to this day. How did Christianity begin as a Jewish answer to that question?

How did Roman oppression make finding a new answer to this question, the question of the Jews and their “others” (cf. subtitle of this course), particularly pressing?

How does the pacifism of Jesus, who does not resist even his own death, bear on that question?

In the the Gospel of John, Chapter 8, Jesus “trumps” his opponents' arguments against him by claiming to be God Incarnate. How might his pacifism constitute a plausible and powerful refutation of that claim?

King David, God's anointed king, personifies his nation and represents it in conversation with God. Thus, what is promised to David and his successors is promised to Israel and is progeny for all time. But through the prophet Isaiah, writing centuries after David's death, Israel and/or a figure who seems to stand for Israel is given a new identity and task in the world. What is that task, and how do Jesus and his leading disciple, Peter (Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 3) embrace this task or vocation?