Reinhard Gregor Kratz

The book offers an up-to-date and readable introduction to the manifold literary and historical problems of biblical prophecy. Reinhard Gregor Kratz provides the reader with a clear analysis of the development of the institution of prophecy in ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism. Through a close reading of the prophetic corpus he demonstrates that in biblical tradition we have to distinguish between the historical and the literary prophet. The historical prophet is a representative of ancient Israelite religion while the literary prophet - as presented in the biblical books--is part of the tradition of emerging Judaism. This development from historical representative to literary figure guides the analysis and it becomes clear that the special character of biblical prophecy as encountered in the books of the Bible is the result of a long process of tradition during which older material is reworked, restructured, and applied to new situations. The book takes the distinction between the historical and the literary phenomenon of prophecy seriously and, therefore, will focus primarily on the literary tradition. This tradition will be recognized as such and should not be confused with the historical prophet and his words. After an overview of various models of interpretation of biblical prophecy, Kratz will consider first the broader historical background and the phenomenology of prophecy in the ancient Near East and ancient Israel. Then he moves on to the literary evidence of prophecy in biblical tradition and its historical context, including the earliest commentaries on prophetic books, the Pesharim from Qumran. The study concludes with an appendix that will introduce the reader to the scholarship on the prophets and provide some suggestions for further reading.

The Prophets of Israel

Prophetie in Israel

Joachim Schaper

In recent years, an interest in empire(s) has emerged in Assyriology, Old Testament/Hebrew Bible Studies and in other areas of the study of the ancient world. Collaborative research projects are devoted to questions of empire and imperialism, and the prophets of Israel and Judah and the books named after them are explored as agents in the contexts of the empires of their times. To some degree, all of this may be seen as a revival of the intense interest which the works of Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee and Karl Wittfogel generated in the twentieth century, in historical situations very different from our own age. But then we too live in an age of transition characterized by insecurity and a lack of orientation and are driven to study the rise and fall of empires through the ages. The present volume, containing essays which are the fruits of the fifth meeting of the Aberdeen Prophecy Network, at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg of the University of Göttingen in October 2015, provides a distinctive perspective on prophecy in the context of empire. It is inspired by the fact that the book of Isaiah enables us to follow the vagaries of a particular prophetic tradition through five centuries under three different empires. The essays in the present volume focus on the history of composition of the constituent parts of the book of Isaiah as well as their correlations with the political and cultural histories of the empires under which they were produced. The volume thus navigates some of the key points of the history of Isaiah and the book named after him.

The Prophet and the Book of Isaiah in an Age of Empires

Imperial Visions

English summary: The third collection of Reinhard G. Kratz's Selected Essays is devoted to "myth" in the Hebrew Bible and contains material dealing with the tense relationship between biblical tradition and historical reality. While the first part (Myth and History in Biblical Scholarship) takes a research-history approach and introduces renowned scholars who have subjected the difference between tradition and history to a critical analysis, the two following parts offer examples from two areas of the Hebrew Bible. The second section is devoted to the Myth of God's Kingship and its transformation within the Psalms and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Myth of God's People forms the third part. Here the essays concentrate on the background to the grasp of history and stories in the North-West Semitic inscriptions which illuminate the emergence of sacred history in the Hebrew Bible. German description: Der dritte Band der Kleinen Schriften von Reinhard G. Kratz ist dem Thema des Mythos in der Hebraischen Bibel gewidmet und enthalt Aufsatze, die um das spannungsvolle Verhaltnis zwischen biblischer Uberlieferung und historischer Realitat kreisen. Wahrend der erste ( Mythos und Geschichte in der Bibelwissenschaft ) forschungsgeschichtlich orientiert ist und namhafte Gelehrte vorstellt, die den Unterschied zwischen Uberlieferung und Geschichte einer kritischen Analyse unterzogen haben, bieten die beiden folgenden Teile Fallbeispiele aus zwei Bereichen der Hebraischen Bibel: Der zweite Teil ist dem Mythos vom Konigtum Gottes und seiner Transformation im Rahmen der Psalmen und der Schriften vom Toten Meer gewidmet. Im dritten Teil sind Beitrage zum Mythos vom Volk Gottes versammelt, die auf dem Hintergrund des Verstandnisses von Geschichte und Geschichten in nordwestsemitischen Inschriften die Konstruktion der heiligen Geschichte in der Hebraischen Bibel beleuchten.

Kleine Schriften III

Mythos und Geschichte

Hans M. Barstad

This volume contains the proceedings of a Symposium Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah, arranged by the Edinburgh Prophecy Network in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, 11 12 May 2007. Prophetic studies are undergoing radical changes at the moment. Whereas it was formerly believed that the historical Jeremiah was hidden under countless additions and reinterpretations, and thus changed beyond recognition, it was still assumed that it would be possible to recover the real prophet with the tools of historical critical methods. However, according to a majority of scholars today, the recovery of the historical Jeremiah is no longer possible. For this reason, the meeting in Edinburgh gathered specialists from Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and the USA, in order to find new and different approaches to the study of prophecy. "

Prophecy in the Book of Jeremiah

Hermann Spieckermann

The volume contains the papers from an international symposium held in 2007 by the Gottingen Graduate School on Images of Gods Images of God World Views: Polytheism and Monotheism in the Antique World. Working from the topic of Time and Eternity as Places of Divine Action, the contributors examine differing conceptions of time and eternity in a cultural region with intensive exchange. The papers deal with the Ancient Orient (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran), ancient philosophy (Aristotle, Plato, Stoa) and the three world religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam. "

religionsgeschichtliche, theologische und philosophische Perspektiven

Zeit und Ewigkeit als Raum göttlichen Handelns

Explaining their sources and the nature of their composition, Reinhard Kratz provides an introduction to the narrative books of the Old Testament (Genesis to Nehemiah). He seeks to do this as far as possible without presupposing any hypotheses and on the basis of a few undisputed basic assumptions: a distinction between Priestly and non-Priestly text in the Pentateuch, the special position of Deuteronomy, a Deuteronomistic revision of Joshua-2 Kings, and the literary use of the books of Samuel and Kings by Chronicles. Any further distinctions are based on observations of the text which are well established and not on literary-critical or redaction-critical distinctions. Kratz argues that what is important is how the text is read.This is the first study of its kind since Martin Noth's classic studies of thePentateuch and Deuteronomic history. It will be an invaluable resource for allscholars and students in the field.

The Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament

Götterbilder, Gottesbilder, Weltbilder: Ägypten, Mesopotamien, Persien, Kleinasien, Syrien, Palästina

Wrath and mercy of the gods were some of the significant religious features in antiquity. They interpret human experiences of suffering and affliction as well as those of protection and welfare. Due to the different characters and responsibilities of the deities, a remarkable range of constellations of divine benevolence and malevolence becomes evident, sometimes without allowing insight into the motives of the decisions made. This is why the actions of the gods are often viewed as emotional and arbitrary, lacking any degree of transparency. Consequently, the gods are subjected to philosophical and theological criticism. They are regarded by some as unreliable and obscure in any case, while others launch an attack on them, questioning their existence. The relationship between divine wrath and mercy requires a great deal of perception in the monotheistic religions, as it is no longer possible to attribute wrath and mercy to different deities. Wrath and mercy become characteristic features of one god only. In all monotheistic religions, it is a matter of theological concern to question the relationship between wrath and mercy on the basis of authoritative texts and religious experience. The comparison of these approaches provides valuable information on the very essence of the religions investigated from this central perspective.

Reinhard Gregor Kratz

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