What is appropriate substitution for configurations.compile in newer gradle e.g. version 8.7?

Question

I am trying to build a jar from a java project based on an older version of gradle, and getting the following error:

Could not get unknown property 'compile' for configuration container of type org.gradle.api.internal.artifacts.configurations.DefaultConfigurationContainer.

This is due to the following jar configuration:

jar {
    from { configurations.compile.collect { it.isDirectory() ? it : zipTree(it) } }
    ...
}

So I tried to replace 'compile' with 'runtimeClasspath', but that generates a fat jar i.e. a jar which includes all dependencies, and I don't want that.

Would be grateful for your suggestions