The collection of Oracles to which that of the New Covenant belongs, Chs. XXX, XXXI, was not made till long after Jeremiah’s time; it includes, as we have seen, several of exilic or post-exilic origin.(814) But so do other chapters of the Book, in which nevertheless genuine prophecies of Jeremiah are recognised by virtually all modern critics. The context therefore offers no prejudice against the authenticity of the prophecy of the New Covenant, XXXI. 31-34. But the form and the substance of this have raised doubts, so honest and reluctant as to deserve our consideration. Duhm starts his usual objection that the passage is in prose and a style characteristic of the late expanders of the Book. We may let that go, as we have done before, as by itself inconclusive;(815) the prophecy may not have come directly from Jeremiah’s mouth but through the memory of a reporter of the Prophet, Baruch or another. More deserving of consideration is the criticism which Duhm, with great unwillingness, makes of the terms and substance of the prophecy. He objects to the term _covenant_: a _covenant_ is a legal contract and could hardly have been chosen for the frame of his ideal by so pronounced an anti-legalist as Jeremiah. The passage “promises a new Covenant—not a new Torah but only a more inward assimilation of the Torah by the people, and emphasises the good results which this will have for them but betrays no demand for a higher kind of religion. If one does not let himself be dazzled by the phrases _new covenant_ and _write it on the heart_ then the passage tells us of the relation of the individual no more than Deuteronomy has already regarded as possible, XXX. 11 ff., and desirable, VI. 6-8: namely, that every man should be at home in the Law and honestly follow it.” He continues: “it is impossible for me to hold any longer to the Jeremian origin of the passage. I find in it only the effusion of one learned in the Scriptures who regards as the highest ideal, that every one of the Jewish people should know the Law by heart.”