that Old Testament religion is a ‘self-contained entity’ with ‘a constant basic tendency and character’.11 Moreover, this character was displayed in the Old Testament concept of the covenant, which Eichrodt saw to be an antidote to the ‘bloodless abstraction of “ethical monotheism” ’ and to the ‘bloodless abstractions of a rationalist individualism’.12 After fielding twenty-four years of criticism, Eichrodt retained the ‘covenant’ as the central concept of the Old Testament, ‘by which to illuminate