Old Testament Theology, Volume I

A Commentary

Horst Dietrich Preuss

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 1995
• Print ISBN:
  9780664228019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611645019
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

In this work, a part of the Old Testament Library series, Horst Preuss provides a comprehensive analysis of the theology of the Old Testament. He focuses on a detailed assessment of Israel's responses to God's acts of election and covenant with them as a people.

The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

Chapter 1. Setting the Stage: The History, Methodology, and Structure of a “Theology of the Old Testament”¹

1.1 The Posing of the Question

A course of lectures, even more a book, on the “theology of the Old Testament,”² on the one hand, is the most desirable and important undertaking in the study of the Old Testament. On the other hand, it is also the most difficult. In spite of this, the attempt should be made to offer an overview of the world of faith and witness of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a collection of writings, a library of various texts that originated over the course of eight hundred to a thousand years. Not only does it contain many layers of materials but it also is a wide-ranging book from a distant time with much that conceptually is rather foreign to us. As a result, who can say: “I know and understand the Old Testament”? In addition, each effort to set forth an overview carries with it some of the personal idiosyncrasies or peculiarities of the author. This means that the present investigation contains my own peculiarities and weaknesses and reflects both the character and the limits of my knowledge.³

When Old Testament scholars propose or, for that matter, write a “theology of the Old Testament” they provide an account of their own and others’ understanding of “the theological problems posed by the multiplicity of the Old Testament witnesses in their context.”⁴ At the same time, the “Theology of the Old Testament” is understood to be that theology which the Old Testament itself contains and presents, and not a theology that has the Old Testament as a subject of study.⁵ This latter understanding belongs more to contemporary hermeneutics or fundamental theology. Finally, an “Old Testament theology” should be distinguished from a “history of ancient Israelite religion.” These initial issues, only here lightly touched upon, give rise to important problems that call for a more detailed examination.

1.2 The History of Scholarship

a. From Gabler to de Wette

Whenever an inquiry is made into the origins of the critical discipline of “Old Testament Theology” and to discover the most important works within its history,⁶ one points to the inaugural address of the theologian from Altdorf, Johann Philipp Gabler.⁷ This is true also for the fields of New Testament Theology and Biblical Theology. This address, delivered on March 30, 1787, has the theme: “Oratio de justo discrimine theologiae biblicae et dogmaticae regundisque recte utriusque finibus” (“On the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each”).⁸ Gabler frees biblical theology from its single purpose of serving as the dicta probantia for dogmatic theology. While he does not contest the necessity of dogmatic theology, Gabler argues that the primary purpose of biblical theology is to address historical questions, while dogmatic theology seeks to instruct believers in the faith. The language, understanding, uniqueness, and chronological setting of the biblical text are considerations in order to assemble, arrange, compare, and describe “true biblical theology.” In this way, Gabler also made more distinct the difference between religion and theology. Gabler distinguished between “true” and “pure” biblical theology: “true” biblical theology was more concerned with the time-bound statements of the biblical authors, while “pure” biblical theology was more interested in discovering “eternal truths” that are valid for all times. This distinction prepared the way for distinguishing between biblical theology that seeks only to be descriptive and biblical theology that evaluates and renders critical judgments about statements of faith.

While these considerations should be taken seriously, it is also necessary to make a distinction between Old Testament theology and New Testament theology, a distinction that Gabler himself did not make. The first effort in this direction⁹ was undertaken by Georg Lorenz Bauer in 1796.¹⁰ He wanted to read the Old Testament and its religious ideas (e.g., those about God, angels, demons, and the relationship of human beings to God) in the spirit of the era of the ancient scriptures. He divided this era into five periods and used this temporal framework for comparing the Old Testament with the religions of Israel’s environment. He argued that one should read the Old Testament as preparatory for the New Testament, and not as a Christian text or as a reservoir in which to discover only New Testament ideas. However, neither Gabler nor Bauer was able to provide the first actual explanation of how to go about presenting a completely historical interpretation of the Old Testament. Their suggestions, especially those of Gabler, would come to fruition at a later time.

Two scholars, Gottlieb Philipp Christian Kaiser (1813, 1814, 1821)¹¹ and in particular Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette (1813; 3d ed., 1831),¹² set forth their views on how a historical interpretation of the Old Testament should be carried out. De Wette’s title demonstrates that he not only made a clear and complete separation of the Old and New Testaments but also examined two troubling concerns that had emerged since the time of Gabler: the historical interpretation of biblical results and, at the same time, their presentation in a systematic summary. Stated in another way, the concerns are the presentation of the results, on the one hand, and their evaluation on the other. In connection with this, it is clear, especially for de Wette, that the effort should be made in general to determine the relationship of Old Testament religion to both the history of revelation and the New Testament. This effort is necessary, for example, when one is pursuing such questions as the relationship between preexilic and postexilic religion in Israel (i.e., Hebrew religion and Judaism) and between particularity and universalism.¹³ At the same time, the critical response¹⁴ that de Wette provoked shows that even by then it was not an easy matter to keep out of the descriptions of biblical theology the interpreter’s own problems, prior decisions, philosophical influences (de Wette was especially influenced by J. F. Fries), and valuations. De Wette also sought to locate a kind of “center” for the Old Testament, since he thought God as “holy will” was its “fundamental idea.”

b. From Vatke to König

The influence of philosophy, particularly the work of Hegel, on Wilhelm Vatke is rather clear. Vatke’s work, Die biblische Theologie wissenschaftlich dargestellt, vol. 1: Die Religion des Alten Testaments, appeared in 1835.¹⁵ Following his introduction and basic foundation, which sets forth his philosophical and terminological understandings, Vatke sought to use the three features of the Hegelian dialectic (thesis, antithesis, and synthesis) to describe the stages of religion as stages of the development of human consciousness and to see history as the self-realization of pure “Spirit.” Of course, it is not an easy matter to derive from the Old Testament Hegel’s dialectic which, additionally, does not really conform to Vatke’s own historical findings. Anticipating Julius Wellhausen, Vatke placed the law, including its theocratic institutions, and everything else that belongs to this category, in antithesis to the prophets. What he meant by the law is today referred to as the Priestly document. After wisdom literature, seen by Vatke in a positive light, had vanished into that which was specifically Jewish, Christianity offered the crowning synthesis. Old Testament theology would then be presented predominantly as the historical development of Israelite religion from lower to higher forms. His distinction between “idea” and “form of appearance” in the matter of religion expresses once again the tension between pure description and the evaluation of what is described.

A series of additional, preponderantly posthumous¹⁶ works in Old Testament theology then began to appear. Written under the influence of the critical studies of both Wellhausen and the history of religions school (Gunkel, Gressmann, et al.), these works could scarcely set forth a systematic presentation of Old Testament theology. Rather, they appeared much more as descriptions of Israelite-Jewish religious history. Indeed, the senior R. Smend expressly emphasized that he wished to set forth his description in a historical, and not a systematic, form.¹⁷ In 1903, K. Marti edited the third and fourth editions of A. Kayser’s Theologie des Alten Testaments (2d ed., 1894) and renamed the work Geschichte der israelitischen Religion. A biblical theology of the Old Testament that is organized following a pattern of historical sequence and development is the exhaustive, fundamental, two-volume work of B. Stade (vol. 1)¹⁸ and A. Bertholet (vol. 2), appearing in 1905 and 1911 respectively. Similar is the Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments by E. Kautzsch that appeared posthumously in 1911. Such works, oriented to the history of Israelite-Jewish religion, continue to have their successors and to retain their legitimacy unto the present as one form of approaching the world of Old Testament faith.¹⁹

Of more interest for the history of research than for their significance for contemporary questions concerning a “theology of the Old Testament” are the works of G. F. Oehler (1845, 1873, etc., representing a distinctive salvation history and historical-genetic perspective),²⁰ E. Riehm (1889), A. Dillman (1895), and even H. Ewald (1871–1876).²¹

Quite different is the assessment of the Alttestamentliche Theologie of H. Schultz, appearing first in 1869 and bearing the subtitle Die Offenbarungsreligion auf ihrer vorchristlichen Entwicklungsstufe. This book underwent several new editions and frequent revisions by its author (5th ed., 1896) and was a favorite textbook for students of the time. Yet the book also has significance for us. Seeing he was in the position to do so, the author felt compelled to take up in the sequence of his new editions the questions and results that came from the scholarly works of J. Wellhausen and B. Duhm concerning the law and the prophets.²² It should be noted that in the fourth and especially the fifth edition Schultz presented as the first main section (5th ed., pp. 59–309) a history of the religion of Israel under the title “Die Entwicklung der Religion und Sitte Israels bis zur Aufrichtung des Hasmonäerstaates.” This was followed by the second main section that sought to describe in a “purely historical” (5th ed., p. 4) manner the themes of God and world, humanity and sin, and the hope of Israel. He entitled this section “Das Heilsbewusstsein der Gemeine des zweiten (!) Tempels.” Just as much as the two divisions, the subthemes of the second part would also have their consequences. In addition to discussions about the Old Testament, the history of religions, and the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament, it should be noted that Schultz prefaced his presentation with an important chapter dealing with “literary forms in the writings of the Old Testament.” In this chapter, for example, he not only examined myth and legend but even set forth the programmatic statement that Genesis may be a book of sacred legends (p. 22). This is a point that H. Gunkel later modified somewhat. According to Schultz, it was the kingdom of God that gave unity not only to the Old Testament but also to the Old and New Testaments.²³ From the remaining members of the closely knit circle of students and friends gathered around Wellhausen, there appeared, in addition to the historically oriented descriptions of the history of Israelite religion already mentioned, only the Theologie der Propheten by Duhm (1875). He also asked historical questions in order to provide the theology of the prophets a “foundation for the inner development of the history of Israelite religion.”

The first person after Schultz to undertake the effort to present not only a historical but also a systematic²⁴ description of the data and ideas that have proven to be vital to Old Testament salvation history was E. König in 1922 (3d and 4th eds., 1923). However, owing to many rather opinionated theses and, particularly in part two, to a strongly dogmatic emphasis in the posing of questions, his work, Theologie des Alten Testaments kritisch und vergleichend dargestellt, has not had much influence.

c. The Change since 1920

More important for the further development of Old Testament theology were three brief contributions that once more came from the circle of German Old Testament scholars. The year 1921 witnessed the appearance of R. Kittel’s address, “Die Zukunft der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft.”²⁵ According to Kittel, Old Testament scholarship should be engaged not only in archaeology and, especially up to this point, literary criticism and the history of literature but also in the presentation of the “history of Israel’s ideas” and “specifically religious information” such as worship and the ethics that special personalities display. This presentation would describe the heights of Old Testament religion. One can see in Kittel’s Gestalten und Gedanken in Israel (1925) that he was especially interested in personalities and the history of ideas that were associated with them.

In 1926 Otto Eissfeldt distinguished between two different fields of inquiry.²⁶ The history of religion is a field that proceeds along the lines of intellectual understanding or knowing. In this field, the effort is made to comprehend as a historical entity the religion of Israel as one religion among others. A second field, theology, is concerned with faith. Here the religion of Israel is regarded as the true religion that witnesses to God’s revelation, and the effort is made to assess its veracity. Accordingly, the first field proceeds in a more historical fashion, while the second sets forth a more systematic presentation. Both have methods of inquiry that stimulate each other as they carry out their respective tasks and objectives. However, thes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translator’s Preface
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Setting the Stage: The History, Methodology, and Structure of a “Theology of the Old Testament”
• Part One. Laying the Foundation
• Part Two. Yahweh as the Subject of the Historical Acts of Election
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Index of Hebrew Words
• Select Index of Biblical Citations
• Index of Subjects