Bøger i Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Reihe serien

In recent centuries critical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible has brought to light a large gap between biblical portrayals of the historical reality of ancient Israel (story) on the one hand, and historical-critical reconstructions of the actual past (history) on the other. The problems the so-called "minimalists" and "maximalists" struggled to solve still remain unsettled, and students as well as scholars of the Hebrew Bible cannot ignore or even remain indifferent to the gap and overlap between story and history. Could and should Hebrew Bible scholarship in the future move beyond the milieu of the debate between minimalists and maximalists? This volume, consisting of nine articles by authors with different institutional and religious backgrounds, articulates that there are ways to overcome the increasing gap between story and history.

Exile is a central concern in the Hebrew Bible. The fifteen essays in this volume, presented at an international conference in Copenhagen in May 2017, investigate and discuss images of exile in the prophetic books. Some deal with a specific passage or biblical book, while others approach the issue by comparing different books or by looking more closely at a particular metaphor or theme. A recurrent question is what role language and metaphors play in the prophets' attempts to express, structure, and cope with experiences of exile. Contributors:Sonja Ammann, Ulrich Berges, Göran Eidevall, Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor, Søren Holst, Else K. Holt, Jesper Høgenhaven, Paul M. Joyce, Hyun Chul Paul Kim, Anja Klein, Francis Landy, Frederik Poulsen, Cian Power, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

In the last two decades, increasing numbers of texts have been suggested as coming from or edited during the Persian period, but these discussions do not always reflect extensively on the assumptions used in making these claims or the implications on a broader scale. Earlier generations of scholars found it sufficient to categorize material in the biblical books simply as "late" or "postexilic" without adequately trying to determine when, by whom, and why the material was incorporated into the text at a fixed point in the Persian period. By grappling with these questions, the essays in this volume evince a greater degree of precision vis-à-vis dating and historical context. The authors introduce the designations early Persian, middle Persian, and late Persian in their textual analysis, and collectively they take significant steps toward developing criteria for locating a biblical text within the Persian period. Contributors:Reinhard Achenbach, Richard J. Bautch, Joseph Blenkinsopp, David M. Carr, Georg Fischer SJ, Raik Heckl, Yigal Levin, Jill Middlemas, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Konrad Schmid, Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer

In recent decades, the debate on monotheism and religious pluralism has been strongly influenced by the idea that monotheism originating in the Old Testament is the root of intolerance and violence. In this study, Daniela Scialabba investigates inclusive tendencies in Old Testament monotheism, in particular theological principles motivating and supporting the possibility of a positive relationship between non-Israelites and the God of Israel. Thus, she examines three texts thoroughly: the Book of Jonah, Psalm 33 (MT and LXX), and the novel "Joseph and Aseneth". Despite their difference concerning genre, date of origin and provenance, these texts have important ideas in common: the relationship between the God of Israel and non-Israelites as well as the concept of God as a universal creator who has pity with all his creatures.

In this study, Paavo N. Tucker considers the different models of formation for the Priestly literature of the Pentateuch through an analysis of the Priestly texts in Exodus and how they relate to the Holiness Code in Lev 17-26. The texts in Exodus that are traditionally assigned to the Priestly Grundschrift are not concerned with the priestly matters of Exod 25-Lev 16, but are better understood as relating to the language, theology, and concerns of Lev 17-26, and should be assigned to the same strata of H with Lev 17-26. The same applies to the Priestly narratives beginning in Gen 1. The Priestly literature in Gen 1-Lev 26 form a composition that develops the themes of creation, Sabbath, sanctuary, and covenant to their climactic expression and culmination in the legal promulgation and ethical paraenesis of H in Lev 17-26. The author shows that, rather than being a "Priestly composition" as Erhard Blum argues, it is more fitting to see this literature as an "H composition," which weaves narrative and law together in order to motivate obedience to the laws of Lev 17-26.

In this study, David Willgren attempts to provide answers to two fundamental questions in relation to the formation of the `Book' of Psalms: "how?" and "why?". The first relates to the diachronic growth of the collection (how are these processes to be reconstructed, and on what grounds?), while the second relates to questions of purpose (to what end are psalms being juxtaposed in a collection?).By conceptualizing the `Book' of Psalms as an anthology, and by inquiring into its poetics by means of paratextuality, David Willgren provides a fresh reconstruction of the formation of the `Book' of Psalms and concludes, in contrast to the canonical approach, that it does not primarily provide a literary context for individual psalms. Rather, it preserves a dynamic selection of psalms that is best seen not as a book of psalms, but as a canon of psalms.

The close relationship between Jeremiah and Deuteronomy has stood near the center of Jeremiah scholarship for over a century. Nathan Mastnjak brings new light to this phenomenon by subjecting every credible allusion to Deuteronomy in Jeremiah to detailed analysis with particular attention to interpretative processes and the dynamics of authority. By locating each allusion in the history of the composition of the book, the author traces a discernible shift in the perspective on Deuteronomy's authority. While early texts in Jeremiah allude to Deuteronomy as merely one prestigious literary work among others, it emerges as a religious textual authority in the later layers. These later layers construct and deploy Deuteronomy as an authority but are simultaneously constrained to transform it in the interest of religious innovation.

In this work, JiSeong James Kwon examines a variety of scholarly arguments concerning the distinctive literary and historical relationship between the book of Job and the second part of the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), so-called Deutero-Isaiah. The general methodology in a comparative study between biblical texts has been the author-oriented approach which traces the complex interrelationships between corresponding texts, considering many verbal and thematic similarities. But this approach often arises from the misleading concepts of literary dependence from an early source to a later one. Here, JiSeong James Kwon argues that scribes were writers of biblical materials and belonged to a group of the literate elite in Judahite society. Resemblances between the two books result from the production of a scribal culture. This view may shed a light on traditional researches influenced by form-criticism, which divides the literate groups in Israelite society into different professional groups-priests, sages, and prophets.

Covenant and election are two theological concepts that dominate the landscape of the Hebrew Bible. If they became the main structuring concepts of the Hebrew Bible, they were not so from the beginning. Their centrality was the result of their utilization by exilic and post-exilic scribes and tradents to focus Israel's traditions into a coherent structure as fitted the revelation of one God. The essays in this collection examine covenant and election across the biblical literature, from the priestly document through Deuteronomy to Jeremiah and the book of Chronicles. They show how the ideas were shaped and refined under the conditions of national disaster and rebuilding.

This study brings insights from character ethics in addition to the much discussed biblical scholarship on social justice in order to elucidate the concept of righteousness present in the book of Proverbs. The author's choice of Proverbs as a wisdom text in relation to the concept of righteousness reflects the realization that previous scholarship has not dealt with righteousness as a concept in its own right but as a corollary to the issue of social justice. Like character ethics, Proverbs use its depiction of the righteous person as its prominent pedagogic device of moral discourse. In other words, instead of offering abstract statements about morality, Sun Myung Lyu portrays the life of the righteous person as the paradigm of moral life, which is pregnant with numerous realizations into specific actions befitting diverse life situations. What the righteous person embodies is righteousness, the character in toto, which encompasses yet transcends specific virtues and actions. After presenting a comparative study of Proverbs with the Psalms and the ancient Egyptian wisdom texts, the author concludes that despite many similarities and parallels, Proverbs still stands out in its strong emphasis on character formation and internalization of virtues as foundations of morality in general and righteousness in particular.

Frederik Poulsen investigates the role of the Old Testament in biblical theology. Analyzing the works of Brevard Childs and Hans Hübner, he addresses main issues regarding the different versions of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint) and the significance of the New Testament's use of the Old. The author explores the interpretative implications of these issues by focusing extensively on Isaiah 42:1-9. The Hebrew version as such is ambiguous regarding the servant figure being portrayed, his identity, and his task. The Septuagint renders several key terms and statements differently and the reception of the passage in the New Testament reveals a manifold of diverse interpretations. Common to all versions is the servant's role as a mediator between God and the nations. Frederik Poulsen shows that this central task is constantly being reapplied to new servant figures.

William D. Barker analyzes a wide array of possible ancient Near Eastern backgrounds to Isaiah 24-27. He finds that there is a uniquely Ugaritic background to the chapters, with evidence of a literary framework and narrative progression that has been intentionally adopted and creatively adapted from either the Ba'al Myth (KTU 1.1-1.6) itself or a shared tradition between ancient Ugarit and ancient Israel. Barker also closely examines Isaiah 24-27 in the light of the Ugaritic material and thereby contributes to the resolution of some of the historic questions about the interpretation, genre, dating, and function of Isaiah 24-27. A new epithet for the chapters is also proposed.

The authors in this volume address a series of issues raised by the discovery and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, centered around the Hebrew Bible and its interpretations in the Dead Sea Scrolls and related ancient Jewish compositions. Among others, the problem of the Hebrew Bible process of canonization is discussed, the relationship between the biblical text and the works which rewrite the Bible found among the scrolls, and the links between the innerbiblical interpretation and later exegesis found in the scrolls and related texts. Some contributions examine the setting of the biblical interpretation of the scrolls, and others deal with the exegesis of the Qumranic Pesharim and the particular interpretation of the biblical prophets. Some of the articles analyze the Book of Tobit in the light of Qumran texts.With contributions by:Moshe Bar Asher, George Brooke, Devorah Dimant, Ariel Feldma, Liora Goldman, Jan Joosten, Reinhard G. Kratz, Anja Klein, Ingo Kottsieper, Peter Porzig, Annette Steudel