The Abrahamic Land Promise in Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy as a Meta-Hermeneutic to Understand the Land Promise in the Abrahamic Covenant

Alan Leonard Schafer

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9798385289516
  9798385289523
• eBook ISBN:
  9798385289530
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This book examines the land promise in the Abrahamic covenant as described in Deuteronomy. Most approaches to this topic begin with one's theological-eschatological system (e.g., dispensationalism, covenantalism), then work backward to the land. This approach allows the land to be seen considering one's eschatological or theological system, which results in a wide divergence in which the land is viewed as literal, allegorical, typological, or figurative. This also allows one's approach to the priority of the New Testament over the Old, and the New Testament's use of the Old Testament to define hermeneutical factors in interpreting the land promise to Abraham in Genesis 12.

This book takes a different approach. It establishes the understanding of the land, as described in Deuteronomy, in terms of progressive revelation--that is, how one would understand the land just prior to the conquest under Joshua c. 1406 BC. This understanding is then argued to form a meta-hermeneutic, informing the rest of Scripture that the land is to be seen as a tangible, identifiable land with defined borders, the fulfillment of which is yet future, and which must be taken into consideration in any theological-eschatological system.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Abstract
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Contemporary Views of the Land
• Chapter 3: The Provenance of Deuteronomy
• Chapter 4: The Land in Genesis
• Chapter 5: The Boundaries of the Land
• Chapter 6: The Character of the Land in Deuteronomy
• Chapter 7: The Future of the Land in Deuteronomy
• Chapter 8: Conclusion
• Bibliography