sixteen times in the whole of the New Testament outside the book of Hebrews, while the term appears seventeen times in Hebrews itself.1 As a consequence, Hebrews has fittingly been called, ‘The Epistle of the Diatheke,’2 marking it off as a distinctive work in the New Testament. Yet this statistical evidence cannot give the complete picture. The whole central section of the epistle, from Hebrews 7:1 to Hebrews 10:18, concentrates on the distinction between the old and new covenants.3 The covenant-idea