Karen Nelson, author of Ḥesed and the New Testament: An Intertextual Categorization Study, joined us for a Q&A about her current research and how she hopes it will shape the field of biblical research.

Can you tell us about your current research, and how you became interested in the topic?

In the Hebrew Bible, ḥesed is used to denote helpful activity, or a disposition to act in accordance with commitments, resulting from kinship and covenant relational ties or from mutual aid. Each party in the relationship is expected to assist the other when that party is in critical need. Thus, for example, I was intrigued to note that my biblical heroine Ruth demonstrates ḥesed, presumably by accompanying her bereft mother-in-law Naomi to Bethlehem and providing for Naomi there. But God alone demonstrates abundant and enduring ḥesed, and those in covenant relationship with God are expected to respond with covenant obedience.

My interest in the relationship between ḥesed and the New Testament in particular arose from the desire to show those who think there are different portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments that God’s “love” is consistent throughout the Bible. But in so doing, I discovered that ḥesed is a special kind of steadfast, loyal, or devoted love, never translated by agape (“love”) in the Septuagint, and that there has been some reluctance to address with rigor what appear to be gaps in scholars’ understanding of how New Testament writers engage with the concept originally denoted by ḥesed. I was enthused to undertake the task by such awe-inspiring initial discoveries as this: the incarnation, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus and the regeneration of believers into a living hope, an imperishable inheritance and salvation are almost certainly understood as demonstrations of God’s enduring ḥesed.

How do you anticipate your research will help inspire other research in the field?

Firstly, I offer enhanced readings of several New Testament pericopes, including the parable of the “Good Samaritan,” whose actions demonstrate not only compassion, but probably also ḥesed. Secondly, Bible translators could reconsider how some New Testament occurrences of eleos and hosios are translated in English, in light of the frequent Septuagintal use of these words to render the noun ḥesed or the adjective ḥāsîd. On the other hand, assertions about the “equivalence” of ḥesed and charis or agape could be reexamined in light of the different characteristic uses of those terms in the Septuagint. Thirdly, further consideration could be given to the subcategories of the category ḥsd and the category ḥsyd for Hebrew lexicons, to comparative analysis of the domains and subcategories associated with ḥesed, ḥāsîd, related Hebrew terms, and their Greek/other renderings in biblical and extrabiblical literature, and to the relationship between eleos, eleeō, eleaō, eleēmōn, and eleēmosynē in the New Testament in light of their distinctive nuances in the Septuagint. Lastly, the hybrid of methodological approaches that I have labelled Intertextual Categorization provides one option for biblical scholars to study the relationships between other monosemous Hebrew words and the New Testament.