Wheaton College Document Delivery ttoiea Tw: 151638 IMEEM Journal Title: From Astruc to Zimmerii : Old ‘Testament scholarship in three centuries / Month/Year: Pages: Article Author: Article Tit Imprint: Gerhiad von Rad (1901-1971) Call #: BS1161.A1 $4313 2007 Location: Buswell Library B Circ Book Available ILLiad TN: 151638 Notice: Warning concerning copyright restrictions. The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of Photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted. ‘material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, lIbraries and archives are authorized to furnish photocopy or other reproduction. One of these Specific conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship or research. Ifa user ‘makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of Falr Use that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This Institution reserves the right to refuse @ copying order in Its judgment, fulfillment of the order would Involve violation of copyright law.Rudolf Smend From Astruc to Zimmerli Old Testament Scholarship in three Centuries Translated by Margaret Koht ‘Buswel amoral Library Wheaton College Wheaton, 60187 Mohr SiebeckRuvour Sexo, born 1932: studied Theology in Tubingen, Gattingen and Base: taught (Old Testament in Bonn, Berlin, Munster and Gottingen, ISBN 978-3:16-149338-6 ‘The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbiblio graphio: detailed bibliographic data are available inthe Internet at iupdnhc-nhe, © 2007 by Mohr Sicheck, Tubingen, Germany, “This book may not be reproduced in whole ori part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publishers writtea permission. This applies particularly to reproductions translations microfilms and storage and pracessing in electronic systems “The book was printed by Gulde-Druck in Tubingen on non-aging paper and bound by [Buchbinderes Held in Rottenburs. Printed in Germany.Gerhard von Rad 1901-1971 Soon after the Second World War, interest in the Old Testament, dormant for many years, was reawakened, not only in academic theology but far beyond its frontiers. Even Gerhard Ebeling, whose attitude to the Old Testament was a lit Ue detached, atributed to the Old Testament studies of that time “a leading role in the concert of theological disciplines’.' This was a kairos. No kairos comes. about by chance, and every kairos needs the people who take advantage of it In those years no one was better equipped to do so than Gerhard von Rad, and no ‘one had a wider and deeper influence. His lectures in Gottingen and Heidelberg were places of pilgrimage. Some of his books were bestsellers in their field What he said and what he wrote was for many people spellbinding. A British scholar, well versed in the subject, wrote almost warningly: °So brilliant and persuasive isthe writing, that one can be pardoned if at times one’s critical Fae ulty is lulled to sleep.” In von Rad — and in this respect he differed trom Albrecht Alt the magic was not due to any particular cleverness in argumenta- tion, His style was to observe rather than (© enter into methodological discus- sion, Much of what he said was tentative and questioning. It was compelling Just because it did not coerce. He was not the typical German professor, and was somewhat of an exception among his colleagues. As far as historical eriti- cis was concerned, he largely subordinated himself, as a matter of course, to his admired master Alt, but also to Alt’s first star pupil, Martin Noth, He saw his own task, in large part, as being to think through the results of their research as the theologian which he himself was. more than either of the others. He too arrived at brilliant exegetical observations, but some of his theories. and espe- cially the theories which came to be most widely accepted, were hardly based (on solid arguments, and today count as, at best, fruitful misunderstandings, ‘To say that from boyhood onwards von Rad lived with Goethe's works, and kknew their every corner, does not merely indicate the breadth of his horizon: ‘what he learned from Goethe also had consequences for his dealings with the life of the mind, and therefore for his hermeneutics in the widest sense. In what he wrote, the workmanlike aspect was everywhere shot through by the aesthetic category, and it was not by chance that it was with words of Holderlin that he ‘most succinctly described the special character of his life"s work, and probably summed it up: ".G. Ebeling, Stdium der Mhcologte (1975). 266 2X. W.Ponteous in H. W, Wolf (e,). Prubleme hibicher Thotagie.G.v. Rad sum 70. Geburtvag 971). 518,nm Gerhard von Rad Near ‘And hard to grasp the God, ‘The real reason for his influence may well have been his evident awareness of the mysterious closeness ofthe subject, and subjects, of his work. That aware- ness moulded him and sustained him, but also made him curiously restless. En ddowed (and cursed) with extreme sensitivity, he was always and everywhere ‘open for perceptions and experiences, even when they were mutually contac tory or seemed to be so. He was never finished, not even atthe end of what was in many respects ich and fulilled lite That life lasted exactly the seventy years ofthe 90th psalm, a psalm which he often treated but had no love for. He was born on 21 October 1901 in Nur- cemberg and died on 31 October 1971 in Heidelberg. As these place names indi- cate, south Germany was his country and the space where he could live and fee! at home, He had a highly reflective and yet, in the south German way, a direct relationship to Fife in all ts aspects. "Tt was his very sensitivity which enabled him to enjoy even the earthiness of Franconian humour, and let him feet at home in the Franconian cuisine." The twenty central yeats of his life spent in Leipzig, Jena and even in coolly rational Giitingen did nothing to change these roots ~ only made them stronger and von Rad more conscious of them. It was & painful disappointment when the possibilities of a chai in Erlangen while he ‘was in Jena, and another in Tubingen while he was in Gottingen, came 10 noth- ing. Although he himself was Franconian in origin, his mother Was the daughter ‘of a droll and eccentric Tubingen professor of philosophy, and contributed strongly Swabian element. His father, a psychiatrist in Nuremberg, came from a patrician Augsburg family, and von Rad noted later that it was to this that gave him his “feeling for tradition and for conservation."* He took this feeling into his scholarly work as well, Later, and not wholly without his influence, the terms ‘tradition’ and ‘traditions’ were used to such an inflated degree that a col- league once jestingly proposed that their use should be forbidden for a time, ‘under threat of punishment; bt it was only in part that von Rad needed 10 fel this as a home thrust. For he had an elemental sense of what continuity over the generations means, a lifelong awareness which he never lost. It went beyond the technical use of the terms in scholarship, but there too was always at the ‘back of his mind. Admittedly he was inclined to find tradition where there was none, and to view as ancient, texts, ideas or institutions that were relatively late, drawing apparently on Jacob Burckhardt's dictum that “the mind was early on complet In spite of his sense for tradition, snobbery was foreign to him ~ as professor {00 incidentally ~ and in this respect, as in others, he was atone with his wile, ‘who came from a similar Nuremberg family. This background, basically con- " W, Talaas.Aufgehobene Vergangenheit (1976), 214 * Gowes Wirken in Fuel (1974), 317FGerard 0 Rad 3 servative though it was, did not confine him to right-wing political positions. This is sufficiently evidenced by his late friendship with the Social Democrat Gustay Heinemann, the third president of the German Federal Republic, a friendship which was certainly not politically based, but nevertheless included a large measure of understanding in this sector. ‘The central figure of his early years was his mother, a Vivacious woman with fund of wisdom, talented with her pen and a gifted musician. Von Rad also liked to talk about his godfather, Hermann Abert, bis mother’s cousin, who was the author of a standard Mozart biography. It is impossible to conjure up a pic ture of von Rad himself without his music, either as violinist or as concentrated listener. He seems to have been a reflective, somewhat dreamy child From early on he charmed those round him with original turns of speech and, increas- ingly, through his gift of characterizing things, people and processes by way of ames, comparisons and quotations ~ a gift he never lost, AC school he had a difficult time, especially because of his aversion (o arithmetic and mathematics. ‘When he seemed to be making no progress, he was sent at the age of thirteen to Coburg, to attend the high school there as a boarder, until he should have passed his final examination, the Abitur. At first the change did not seem to bear much fruit, but in his last ewo years he was fired by a new headmaster and German teacher, who prophesied 0 his mother: “He will surprise you yet!” It ‘was probably this teacher who introduced his pupil tothe literature of the day, taking him beyond the confines of the classical and romantic writers. Even as a theologian, von Rad had German literature at his finger tips almost as much as the Bibie. ‘As far as outward circumstances were concerned, he seemed by no means predestined to study theology. With only slight qualification, it can be said of hhim what he himself said of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whom had had known well since childhood), that it was extremely rare for a young man belonging to this "upper academic class to decide for theology’.* His real wish was to study medi- ine, but his father did not think him suited to stand up to the demands of the ‘medical profession, But even for the theologian it remained a far-off ideal. ‘After briefly hesitating as to whether he should choose classies, he decided for theology. a decision which must be put down to Wilhelm Stiblin, Stablin was a man of many talents, with wide interests, especially in religious psychol- ogy and liturgy. He became professor for practical theology in Minster in 1926, and bishop in Oldenburg in 1945. In 1916 he had been appointed pastor in St Lorenz in Nuremberg. Von Rad got to know him better in a “Wednesday ‘group’, which was studying Barth's newly published Epistle 10 the Romans of 1919, He later called himself emphatically & memiber of “the Episite ro the Ro ‘man generation’, and smilingly remembered the curious paradox that it was through Stihlin of all people that he first got to know Barth's book, although In W-D. Zimmermann (ed) Begegnangen mit Dietrich Bonboefer W964), 1408 Gerhard vom Red Stalin ~ by no means inclined to play second fiddle anywhere ~ was Forced to suffer severely in his frst Minster years from Barth's simultaneous presence. ‘Von Rad's relationship to Stihlin endured, even if it was not unproblematical, Since, at latest from 1933 onwards, their political differences were greater than their common ground theologically, ecclesiologically and politically, more or less balanced out Von Rad studied theology from 1921 to 1925, spending his frst wo and last {wo semesters in Erlangen, and the four intervening semesters in Tubingen. Itis possible 10 find traces of 19th century Erlangen salvation-history theology in von Ras later work, especially via Hofmann and Delizsch, but it is question- able if he picked them up in the lecture room, Traditional Franconian piety and ecclesiology were undoubtedly part of hin all his fife. But his ministry in his hhome church as curate and locum tenens in several places was soon interrupted by his work on his Old Testament dissertation, There was a particular reason at that time for turning to the Old Testament: the need for well-founded argu- ‘ments in the dispute with the antisemitic agitation of the Bund jar Dewische Kirche, which had been founded in 1921. Von Rad never made much oF it, but itis clear that his tance in this question led him to his ater work, During the free study year von Rad was granted from 1927/28, his thoughts turned from the outset not only to his doctoral thesis but also tothe possibilty ofa subse- quent postdoctoral thesis. But the path he thereby chose ~ a choice long ac- ‘companied by doubts ~ did not lead to a theorization remote from church and World; the fateful rise to power only a few years later ofthe ideas cherished by the above-mentioned Burd saw to that only too soon Tt was Otto Procksch who gave von Rad the subject for his dissertation, This Old Testament scholar, who had just come to Erlangen trom Greifswald, come bined in a creditable way modern historical research and a salvation-history theology of Erlangen provenance. But he indirectly achieved further influence by sending “all his promising pupils’ to his Leipzig friend Albrecht Alt “be- cause they would be able to learn more there." A further reason for bis influ- ence, however, was that it was trom Procksch’s lectures that Walther Eichrodt ‘00k over the plan for his widely-read theology of the Old Testament ~ the plan ‘being undoubscdly the most important feature of his book.” The subject that Procksch proposed. “The People of God in Deuteronomy". was a happy choice. In the 1920s there was “a struggle for Deuteronomy” which mainly had to do with de Wettes famous theory about the Tink between the Deuteronamic law and King Josiah’s reform,’ Von Rad took up another po- * Tathaas, Le. (see. 3), 85 On Prockseh's life and Work sce R, Smend in A.D, Mayes and RB. Salters (eds), Coxenant as Contes. Essays in Honour of EW. Nihon (2003). 371 So the tle of W, Baumaarines review “Der Sst um day Deuteronominin’, THANE 1 1929) 78h See above 4Gerhard vm Rd us sition. trying “to explain Deuteronomy from within" and “to interpret it theo- logically asa whol, in its original totality. without apy backwards or sideways lances at other connections’. To this undertaking he started from the form: on the one hand the style of Moses's speech to the whole people, on the other the characteristic phrases and words. The result was ‘the idea of the people of God", as “Deuteronomy's quintessence and greatness’ It was salutary for Deuteronomy research to e recalled 10 theology inthis way. On every page the book shows the writer's resolute wish to arrive ata theological understanding, ‘while remaining strictly within the framework of the subject, and only in pass: ing pointing explicitly o tangential contacts with systematic theology. He nev ertheless considers the possible significance of his subject for the religious his- tory of srl, or for Old Testament theology as a whole: “From the angle ofthis perception ~ that different theologumena have been welded into a unity through 4 over-arching common denominator [ie., the people of God and its relation- ship to Yahweh] - it would be tempting just 1o cast a glance beyond the boundaries of Deuteronomy. In unwavering allegiance to de Wettes, Deuteron- ‘omy has been called the Archimedean point of all Pentateuchal criticism. Could this statement perhaps be divested both of its restrition to the sphere of literary criticism, and of its limitation to the Pentateuch? That isto say, should we not rather see Deuteronomy in general as & burning glass Iying atthe centre of Isra- elite religious history, which draws to itself the individual rays of neafly all theologumena, bringing into a balance, never before and never afterwards achieved, themes that had often earlier run side by side as highly heterogencous clements? Then, after a fleeting moment of convergence, karly historically de- terminable, they part company inorder to mature separately, without ever again coming together to such a unity. However, this problem goes far heyond the ‘question we are considering here." But it was a problem which von Rad never lost sight of. There are readers for whom this first of his variations on the Deuteronomy theme is the most pre- ferred, simply because of that understanding “from within’; later on, hypotheses were added which were very different from those of de Wettes and which only seemingly fostered the historical and theological understanding of Deuteron- omy." ‘Von Rad's second book, his postdoctoral thesis on the picture of history in the Chronicle. is similar in character. It was published only a year ater his dis- sertation, and was dedicated to Otto Procksch ‘in enduring gratitude’. One rea- son for his indebtedness was undoubtedly the fac that Procksch, a man of great as Gotesslk im Deuteronomiam (1929), 2 Tid. 73 "ti 99 Bi 58 CF the remarks of E. Otto, G, Brak, T. Veijla and U. RUterswérden in BM. Levin Son. Otto (008), Recht und Bahk Aten Testament (2004), If, 294, 17, SE176 Gerhard von Rad nobility. was prepared to accept something different from what he had ex pected. He had had in mind the discovery of liturgies in the Chronicler — anything of the kind was not yet en vogue at this time ~ and von Rad had modi fied the alternative he had been offered, “The Chronicler’s View of History” because it seemed to him too subjectively formulated: his theme was now “The Picture of History in the Chronicler's Work’, Like almost all research into Chronicles, the work is really, largely speaking, a dispute with Wellhausen, whose view of the Chronicler’s work as a midrash, which like ivy ‘winds the green of an alien life round the dead tree-trunk"® seemed to Rad unhappy, com sidering ‘how the Chronicle seeks at all costs to Tink up with the promises of the primal period, and how it forms and processes the ancient stock of faith into new theological syntheses’. Above all, when faced with this work one should “stand aloof from subjective value judgments, which have been in large part nothing more than the prejudices of a modern Weltanschauung’. “A well- founded theological judgment ~ which is undoubtedly of serious concern for the church ~ can only be attempted if we gain an insight into the innermost thoughts and intentions of this work. After that, we might also perhaps arrive at criticism of its real content; for itis only over against what it [the Chronicle] aimed to say ~ the theological ideas by which it was guided — that we can evaluate what it did say, and whether it succeeded in finding an adequate ex- pression forthe ideas at its disposal." This thesis, or anti-thesis, really antici- ates what « good quarter of a century later was to be the real concern of his Old Testament Theology. 1 also, incidentally, anticipates it in that von Rad ini lial set himself the ‘more modest task’ of preparing the ground: he wanted “to take a step along a path as yet litle trodden, and to discover the fundamental ideas which moved the Chronicler and to which he gave expression in his work’.!” This fundamental concern is just as important as the factual results of the analysis, a striking example of which is the proof (confuting Wellhausen and his successors) that the Chronicler was influenced not so much by the Priestly Writing as by the whole Pentateuch, and especially Deuteronomy. This post-doctoral thesis was submitted in Leipzig, not in Erlangen. As one ‘of the “promising pupils’ whom Procksch was accustomed to send to Alt, von Rad had several times spent some time in Leipzig from the spring of 1928 on- wards, and after Alt’s assistant Martin Noth had been invited to @ chair in KGnigsberg for the summer of 1930, Alt offered him the position Noth's depar- ture had left open. He accepted, because Alt and Leipzig attracted him more than Procksch and Erlangen ~ and more than a Bavarian parish, which was in Prospect. Where Alt was concerned too he had no reason to regret his decision: “1 count it as one of the most fortunate leadings of my’ life that this scholar and ' Protegomena sar Geschichte [ras 6th od (1905), 223, "Das Gesehichishild des chronistschen Werkes (1929). 132, Ibid, 13,Gerhard vom Rast 7 incomparable teacher put up with me for four years as his assistant and lecturer, never ceasing fo encourage me; and that L was permitted (0 retain my ties with hhim, professionally and personally, until his death,” Its important to add to this grateful acknowledgment his description ~ not merely modest but also accurate = of the sense in which he was ‘permitted to be AI pupil’ It was “not in the narrower sense of being able to say that I carried on his particular life's work; but I was nevertheless able t0 absorb much of this incomparably stimulating mind’. The two men were completely different in nature and gift, in spite of their common Franconian origin, and in spite of their cordial familiarity, their relationship never lacked a certain formality. That was characteristic of the academic culture of the day. and was probably indispensible. What attracted vyon Rad to Alt professionally. indeed fascinated him, was probably Alt's su- premacy in fields where he himself felt uncertain: Al's sovereign mastery of ‘material and methods in the ancillary and neighbouring disciplines, phlolo cal, geographical and historical, but above all in the sphere of the history of an- cient Israel itself. AIL was @ historian of inherent talent and infectious passion, For him, “history” was not just the object of research it was also an active power, indeed an authority."” Von Rad was not a historian in this sense. Never- theless, by the time he came to know Alt well he had already discovered history for himself as Old Testament theme. His post-doctoral thesis begins as follows “The rapt atention to the progress of history, the ability to see init the hand of God and to draw conclusions from the fact. is one of the most important par- ticularities of Israclite religion, Men, nations, and humanity as @ whole expei cence themselves as set down ina time that slips relentlessly away. and in Israel this pave rise 10 what was recognized as being a fundamentally religious ques: tion. I is a changeable not a linear path, which runs from the time when men ‘began to historicize the myths down to the end of the Old Testaments cano cal historiography: Chronicles. Changeable almost to the point of mutual exclu- siveness in its individual forms, but one in the conviction that itis only on the foundation of real history that Yahweh can come to be known and his will ful- filled." For those who know what was to come, these sentences read almost like a working agenda, even if they were hardly meant as such, and even if, later, much took very different form, terminologically as well. During von Rad’s years in Leipzig, Alt made his assistant as well versed in the foundation of real history” as he could. Highlights in tis respect were two periods spent in the Holy Land during the late summers of 1930 and 1932. On the second occasion von Rad lectured in Jerusalem on the struggles between the Kingdom of Israel and the Philistines. and especially on the situation of the "Gites Wirken in Israel (See 1.4), 318 Soe ahove 145 © Dus Geschichtsbld des chranistichen Weekes,178 Gertar von Rad place Gibbethon ~ a subject which was a rarity in his work, and clearly betrays AI’ influence in its layout and exposition. He had more to give that was his own, For it was not that he lived only from the “incomparably stimulating mind” of his teacher. His main interest remained and increasingly became ~ the theology of the biblical writings. He had al- ready made this plain in two important monographs, and in Leipzig he added third: Die Priestersehrifiim Hexateuch. Literarisch untersucht und theologisch zewertet, which appeared in 1934. The literary criticism of the frst part, which postulated the separation of the Priestly Writing’s narrative into two parallel sources, convinced only a few (notably Orto EiBfeldt) and Al tried to talk him Cou of it before publication. He himself did not insist on his theory later and admitted that “it certainly provided no grounds for his reputation’. Iwas at Jeast a reminder that the literary relationships within the Priestly Writing are ‘more complicated than for a long time seemed to be the case. His charisma emerged incomparably more in the theological interpretation, which bere (00 tried to trace the ‘picture of history’ and to explain it, in deviation from Deuter- fonomy, as 3 positively exoteric “dogmatic outline” in whose language “the essence of the priestly lore of many generations was concentrated’. ts loca tion isthe ‘Abrahamitie sphere", outside which is the “Noachie sphere’ and, as the outermost circle of all, “the sphere of the world’, It is with the last ofthese that the narrative in Genesis | begins. ‘The work was wrung from his double commitment in Leipzig as the assistant responsible for the Hebrew course, and as non-stipendiary lectucer, who had to lecture and hold classes. Even people more robust than von Rad cannot always cope successfully with these multiple tasks. I is all the more astonishing that 2 somewhat mixed bunch of substantial publications was added to them: in 1930 4 brief essay on the dévOpenor eaidoriag of the Christmas story, against the background of the Old Testament:"* in 1931 an essay on the tradition- and theo- logical history of the tabernacle and the Ark.* in 1933, as well as “Gibbethon’, a biblical investigation (extending from Deuteronomy to Hebrews) of the con” cept "There remains a rest for the people of God” as well as his bref essay on the false prophets. Two important contributions in the same year to Kittel's Theological Dietionary of the New: Testament should not be forgotten: the Old ‘Testament sections of the articles feryehos and fluot es, In 1934 he published 7329 1930, ® Die Prieserchrit im Hesateuch, TE Sid 167 2d 167K ® ZNW 29.1930) 18h 2G. Rad. Gesammelie Suen sim Alen Testament (1971). 105 Mpa 10 ~ Eng. wan... Rad, From Genesis 1 Chronites, Exploraions in Old Tegomert Thcologso by KC, Hasan (2005), 21 Gesammele Shin um Aten Testament Hi (1973), 212Gerhard von Rad 179 his study on the Levitic homily in the books of Chronicles." which was both a cast back to his post-doctoral thesis and an earnest of what was to come. It was fiting that an author who had so proved himself should soon be given a4 professorial chair, in spite of his youth, and in 1934 von Rad was invited to Jena ~ in normal circumstances the entry into what from then on should have been an unproblematical, perhaps greai career. But circumstances were not ‘normal. In his new home the young professor found himself ‘on the foundation of real history’ in a highly unwelcome way. The Protestant church in Thuringia ‘was a stronghold of the pro-Nazi, so-called German Christians, and the theo- logical faculty in Jena gradually fel into their hands as well. Here von Rad was almost on his own, The National Socialists were in the majority, not only among the professors but among the students too. A resolution passed in the ‘winter semester of 1939/40 sheds light on what this meant for the Old Testa- ‘ment scholar: “In these days our people is engaged in the decisive battle against the Eternal Jew. In all sectors of German life we see that a rigorous separation from the Jewish demon is taking place. In the universities, the strongholds of the German spirit, there is no longer any room for Jewish parasites. Yet in their examinations theological faculties are still demanding knowledge of the lan- ‘guage of Canaan. For us students of theology at the university of Jena, con- scious as we are of our German heritage, the only yardstick for our work is the people. We are not willing against our inclination and instinets to waste valu- able strength on Hebrew. Let the study of Hebrew remain the preserve solely of ‘men pursuing an academic career! In this we are in full agreement with those teaching us, We ask that the way be cleared for us through the appropriate ‘measures and regulations.” These students did not only have behind them “their” teachers, and of course the party and the state; they were also backed by the authorities in the regional church who, after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, when the synagogues went up in flames, had already declared that “the Evangelical church in Thuringia attaches no value to a knowledge of Hebrew’. Tt was quite specifically the inberitance of the ‘German churchmen’ of the 1920s which lived on in Nazi Thuringia ~ the group, that is to say. which had brought the Old Testament to von Rad’s attention when he was still a curate. Whether his opposition to National Socialism plays a role worth mentioning in his early publications ~ whether, for example, the picture of the Deuteronomic people of God in his dissertation is dravwn against this background — can hardly be determined with any certainty. But now the paradox was practically always. present, even where work on the Old Testament went forward ‘as if nothing had occurred’. It was precisely this situation which illuminated biblical theological insights, for example the relation between law and gospel ~ insights ® Gesamimete Studien 1 24817. ~ Eng. wa "Cf, 8. Bohm in U, Becker and I, van schihtsbuci?! 2008), 220. From Genesis to Chronicles. 2321, orschot (eds). Das Alke Testament — ein Ge180 Gerhart von Rad ‘which were perhaps one-sided but which could, where necessary, be retified in quieter times." The Leipzig Old Testament scholars Alt, Begrich and von Rad ‘made their attitude unequivocally clear when in February 1934 they held three lectures on “The Old Testament as Leading to Christianity’ following lectures siven in the same place on “The Path of the Germans’, This position was made ‘equally plain when, at the 1935 Old Testament congress in Gaittingen, organ- ized by the Nazi sympathizer Johannes Hempel, von Rad maintained the thesis “that within the Yahweh faith, belief in creation did not arrive at any independ- ence or topical force’ In the following ten years the most important locality for the dispute and for acknowledgment of the Old Testament was the Confessing Church (Beken: rnende Kirche). Even though von Rad formally joined it only in 1939, he took an active part from the beginning within its context. He preached in the illegal church hall of the Lutheran Confessing community in Jena, and spoke year out, ‘year in, up and down the country, holding innumerable lectures to students, 10 Clergy meetings to illegal courses for further education, and to individual eon- gtegations, lectures which were often Followed by discussion. Some of these lectures were printed at the time, others later: in 1934 Der Gort Abrahams, Isaaks wid Jakobs: in 1937 Das Alte Testament ~ Gottes Wort fir die Deut- schen! and Die bleibende Bedeutung des Alten Testaments; in 1938 Fragen der Schriftauslegung im Alten Testament and Alttestamentliche Glaubensaussagen tom Leben und vom Tod; in 1939 Die Wahrheit der Geschichte vom Siindenfall and Warum unterrichter die Kirche im Alten Testament?; in 1940 Mose and (posthumously printed) Das Wort Gottes und die Geschichte im Alten Testa- ‘ment and Die Wege Gortes in der Weltgeschichte nach dem Zeugnis der Pro- pheten.® Other work was absorbed into lectures and essays belonging (0 the years after 1945. The titles speak for themselves. What is not always clear from them is von Rad’s attempt to let the Old Testament itself speak: the lectures ‘were Bible study inthe best sense. For the lecturer himself, it offen seemed as ifthe time-consuming journeys (which were even more difficult in wartime) annoyingly kept him from the scholarly work he was really supposed to be doing. But on the one hand these Jectures submitted his scholarly work to something like an ordcal by fire. which certainly made it more mature and convincing, and on the other, it can be cer- tainly not be said that his work was set on one side in the meantime. Indeed ut that time von Rad defended scholarly historical-critical exegesis in @ frontal at << See below 250. (W. Zimmer) and BM Levinson/D. Dance, “The Metamerphosis of Law into Gospel. Gerhard von Ra's Attomp 10 Reclaim the Old Testament forthe Church’, i Levinsoa/Ore (sce note 19), 37 © See above 132, © Gesammelte Studien |, 146, © Bg. teas, Mores (1960), ° Ges Wirken in Tsacl, 19K, 21318Gerhard von Rad 181 tack which disconcerted many in some quarters of the Confessing Church itself For the object of his attack was not just Emanuel Hirsch, the most important intellect among the German Christians, who wanted to subsume the whole of the Old Testament under the concept of the Law: von Rad also mounted an at tack, conversely, against Karl Barth's friend Wilhelm Vischer, whose Chris- tusceugnis des Alten Testaments" seemed to him to ‘cut short a scholarly un- dertaking which faces the most varying obligations, both historical and theo- logical. Old Testament scholarship. he maintained, was working today “with a basic stock of historical lterary-historical and religio-historical results which are quite simply obligatory. and from which it is no longer possible. humanly speaking, to recede". According to Viseher, we have to read ‘what is written’ ‘Von Rad commented: ‘Well, what is written is text which owes its form to the combination of very different sources. If we put the question in its bluntest form: when is it permissible for the theological interpretation of the Okt Testa- ‘ment to leave out of account the fact of such a striking complexity inthe text? Apparently only if this redactional fusion of the sources means not only a con- Clusion, in the sense of literary history. but also theologically contains a test- mony of faith which outbids the actuality of testimonies of faith in their sepa rate character. Vischer would definitely have had to offer this proof if he wished to retain the trust of the conscientious reader in such a literary harmoni- zation, But as long as we are unable t0 detect the final binding testimony in the present shapeless form of the Pentateuch, but are rather faced with corrupting editorial work, it must be of the greatest concern to the theologian to discern as precisely as possible the theological profile of the individual sources.""” ‘At that time Vischer had just been driven out of his teaching position in Be- thel, and he was hurt by this attack, which was undoubtedly approved by Alt, \whose pupil he also felt himself 0 be. The periodical Evangetische Theologie, edited by Ernst Wolf (which means along Barth's lines) refused to print it. To- day, after over sixty years, Old Testament scholarship knows more about the redactions than it did then, and the canon also enjoys increased interest, so that Vischer. if he were writing in today’s different circumstances, could probably ‘expect a more postive response among scholars. But for that very reason von Rad's reservations should also be reconsidered, the more so because he did not find it easy to express himself in such sharp terms, since he understood Vischer’s fundamental concern better than did many others. ‘At that time the example he used against Vischer was the Pentateuch or ~ ‘and here the disagreement is already indicated ~ the Hexateuch, which is a modern scholarly term. The reason was not just that Viseher’s first volume was devoted 10 “the Law’, but because he himself was working in this field. Al though the demands of the day kept him in particular suspense at that time, he "ng a, Te Wines of the OW Testament Chri. as, by AB, Cre (1949) "TABI 14 (1935), 2494.182 Gerhard von Rad did not forget his main undertaking, which had begun with the trilogy on Deu- teronomy, Chronicles and the Priestly Writing. This went hand in hand for a time with an attractive literary project, even if from the outset it was somewhat turopian. The publisher Giinther Ruprecht succeeded in persuading von Rad to translate and explain the Hexateuch for his Neues Gétinger Bibelwerk, Das Alte Testament Deutsch. That is, his assignment was to cover the books Genesis ‘o Joshua, astonishingly enough with the exception of Deuteronomy. The con- tract, signed after extensive consultations, was in so far fulfilled as in 1949, 1952. and 1953 Das Ersie Buch Mose. Genesis, appeared in three part- volumes," and in 1953 — that is, immediately after the completion of the third part-volume — a new contract was signed over Das Fiinfie Buck Mose. Deuter ‘onomiun®, which bad initially been excluded. It was. 1964, however, before this appeated. The rest of the Hexateuch had meanwhile passed into other hhands. This did not accord with the ideas with which von Rad had begun the He wanted the arrangement to be dictated, not by the canon, but by the division in real substance. or by the great source writings, that is the Yahwist, the Elohist and the Priestly Writing, which all point forward to the narrative about the settlement, that i, to the book of Joshua. But this proved to be difficult to implement in detail, even with the modification suggested to him by Alt, which was to treat history and law separately. So in the end the ar- rangement of the canonical books was retained, and even within Genesis the accustomed sequence was almost preserved ‘Von Rad, however, preceded his Genesis exegesis with programmatic expo- sitions of ‘Genesis in the Hexateuch’. These contained the quintessence of his ‘work on the subject, which in 1949 already lay some time back. For his reflec tions on the Hexateuch as a whole had already led as early as 1938 to @ fourth ‘monograph, under the title Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs.** ‘This was intended to end the standstill in theological research into the Hexateuch to which he pointed in the opening sentences. ‘This standstill the monograph surmounted, whatever view one may take of its theses. Von Rad himself always believed that this was his greatest discovery, and his opinion was endorsed by the assent of AIK and Noth. He started from the fact that there are a few texts which sum up the main content of the Hexateuch in the most succinct confessional or parenetic form (Deut. 621ff 26.58: Josh. 24.218), ‘Von Rad called these the “lttle historical creed’, which had its Sit: im Leben in the early Israelite cult, and out of which the Hexateuch then finally developed in its ever-increasing content and extent, As home of the main section of the ancient tradition, which points forward to the settlement, he postulated the sanctuary in Gilgal, where it served as legend for the Feast of Pentecost: ™ Genesis: a Commentary, wns, LM, Marks (1961); revised ed. on the basis of the th German ed. 1972) ™ Deaternoms: a Commentas. ras. DM. Bart (1966). Bog trans. in: From Genesis Chronicles, Ut.Gerhart von Rad 183 ‘whereas the Sinai tition, which is not included in the eredal formulations. reflects a Feast of the Renewal ofthe Covenant, celebrated in Sichem, a festival ‘which tll determines the structure of Deuteronomy. The profoundest breach in the history of the material was its transformation into literature, and with that the renunciation of jts roots in cutic, saral institutions. This was the work of the Yahwist, who incorporated the Sinai tradition, enlarged the history ofthe patriarchs, and prefixed to this the primal history, so as to narrate the whole ina new form, now as “a history of divine guidance and providence’ In this way Cone ofthe most important entities of classie Pentateuch criticism aequired deci sive importance. in this conception too, indeed here especially. AAs far as he could, von Rad picked up the threads of his predecessors, but he did so inthe framework of the attempt, which he had already announced a few years previously, “nevertheless also to proceed continually from today’s recog- nition of the Kimitations of “literary eiicism”, and wo avoid its self-assured at tude to the texts. and its positively embarrassing poverty of problems’. The 1938 book lent the Hexateuch an astonishing depth dimension. It is only in awareness of this depth that the work can be properly understood: this was his counter-position to Vischer. “For no single stage in the endlessly long devel ‘opment of this work i really superseded: something of every phase has been preserved, and is passed on as an enduring concer, right down to the Final form of the Hexateuch."* With this inerim clatfiation of the Hexateuch problem, von Rad was not nearly finished with the historiography. Having initially devoted himself to its late tages. in Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuchs be pressed for ‘ward to its beginnings. In the process he had already cast brief glance from the angle of the Yalist at the so-called Court History of David (II Sam, 7; 9- 20:1 Kings If), the main work of narrative atin the early period of the mone chy. He was ineidentally not the fist in this Feld Inthe most influential mono- raph on the subject. the author of the narrative had been described as ‘a mem- ber of the court’ “who shows a certain reserve towards cult life, and sees God at work in the normal course of history’. The judgment came from Al's pupil Leonhard Rost and his other pup, von Rad, developed it following his stu ies on the Hexateuch. In so doing he stressed the ‘curiously secular mode of presentation in this historiography", and assigned it w the era of Solomon, Which was “an epoch of Enlightenment, when the ancient patriarchal orders of living were abruptly broken off, In this first historical work we can “every ‘where trace the cool breeze of a modern, free and quite uncultic spirituality’. tn spite of that, its author was ‘not a proponent of Enlightment, inthe usual sense of the word: it was rather that he too saw history as brought about by God, but Sesame Suen 78. © Die Presterschfim Hesatewh, Gesamte Staion 85 * Die Uberlerang von der hronnachfoge Davids (1920), 13,184 Gerhard von Rad this divine activity was “hidden in the whole of secular life, interpenetrating simply every sector’ For the theological aspect, von Rad based his views on three passages (today viewed by most scholars as additions): I Sam. 11.27: 12.24: 17.14. Like Alt, he thought these had received 109 Title attention in Edu- ar Meyer's impressive appraisal of the history.#® In_von Rad's own work on the subject. Meyer was not his only silent interlocutor in classical scholarship. He was stimulated most ofall by Eduard Schwartz's lectures on the Greek view of history and historiography. but also by Otto Regenbogen's studies on Thu- eydides. So it is not by chance that it was especially with the Anfang der Geschichtsschreibung im Alten Israel ("The Beginning of Historiography in Ancient Israel") that his influence spread beyond the confines of his own fac- uty ‘The Second World War brought no fundamental change to conditions in the Jena faculty, but the number of students shrank so drastically that the Old Tes- tament lectures were olten held before only one or two listeners, or had 0 be cancelled altogether. Von Rad was then “very downeast hut it also gave him time for his own work, I¢ was at this time that he put on paper the greater part of his Genesis interpretation, Depressing though his isolation inthe faculty was, there were nevertheless a number of compensating relationships, for example with the writer Ricarda Huch, who lived in Jena, and with like-minded people in Jena and elsewhere, both theologians and non-theologians. What was very important was the close proximity to Leipzig. where Alt was always ready with advice and help, in spite of his own unduly heavy work-toad, and although the city increasingly became the target of bombing raids. Jena too suffered terrible destruction cowards the end of the war. For someone who was at home in the German classical and Romantic writers, it had always been a continually simu- Jating environment, as had near-by Weimar. Another compensation was that the landscape along the river Saale was a reminder of South Germany. and Franco- nia was not far off. ‘A heart condition saved von Rad from military service until the late summer of 1944, but then he was called up, and — having long been an enthusiastic driver ~ was trained to drive heavy trucks, which seemed to him like “the tam- ing of dinosaurs’. While he was stationed in barracks near Jena, his family was evacuated to his mother-in-law’s house on the Chiemsee, in Bavaria, In Febru- ary 1945 he wrote to them: “Everything on which our lives used to be based ~ at least externally — will almost certainly be swept away ... 1 can only fall back on the very simple resignation of Paul Gerhardt's hymn: “leh hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn mein Herz und Sinn ergeben’ ['T have put my heart and mind in * Gesamncle Studie I 186. Td ISOM cf. AM KS L351 © Doers ins ARG 32 1944, 1M later in Gesamte Studien f 148A. (From Genesis to Chronicles. 12500), * Ricarda Huch, Briefe an die Freunde (1986). 365.Gerhard von Rad 185 the hear and mind of God’), For after all tha is unshakeable, OF eourse I don"t snean to say that I am not continually plagued by a great despair. For instance it is impossible to express my pain over {the destruction of | Nurembere [April he was taken prisoner by the Americans, but was released in June. Afier many years he wrote an account of this dreadful time which was pub- lished from among his posthumous papers.” He describes what it was Tike ‘when food was doled out 10 the prisoners, and goes on: “Twas often reminded then of the old pictures which show the downfall of the damned ~ the falling bodies, the distorted faces and convulsed arms and hands, which reach out to find support from others, and yet, because none of them can stand, only pull cach other further into the depths. Here the dimension of true God-forsakenness ‘opened up, and we were all already clearly on the way whose end isthe apoca Iyptic vision of the Bible and those old masters. For me, one ofthe most impor- tant experiences ofthat time in the camp was to see confirmed as naked reality these extremest and ultimate possibilities of the human path, which the Bible talks about quite openly. but which we theoogians have allways somewhat, avoided.’ Much later, von Rad once wrote that the life of a German university teacher ‘was normally peaceful and without any outward excitements’, and ap- plied this to himself" But for all that, there are generations which as such are forced ino limit situations which other generations are spared; and it was to just such a generation that he belonged. Incidentally he was able (0 interpret Genesis for his fllow-prisoners in the camp, ‘armed with a tiny pencil and a cardboard lid’. on which he wrote down his notes “beside holes dug on the earth heaps with tin cans’. Gottingen, the first German university to open its doors again after the war. offered von Rad a new beginning. Even today, there are still poople who ex- perienced those first postwar semesters and who can testify that it was a very special time. The shared experience of having survived by the skin of their teeth was an unforgetable bond between teachers and learners. What students relurning home from the war lacked in “school” knowledge they more than ‘compensated for through their maturity and their enger and critical receptivity. For those teaching them, provided they had something to offer, it was a delight to tlk to this generation. And in Gottingen at that time there Were many teache ing who had indeed something to offer. The faculties were for the most pact stalfed by excellent scholars, not least the theological faculty. which was joined bby prominent scholars from the Confessing Church. None of them made a ‘deeper impression on the students than Gerhard von Rad. The opportunites to communicate wich hod been denied him in his Fena years were now given in * Brinmerangen au der Rriesgengenscuf Frid 1945 (1976), Far he ove ques tog rm hiner of Febraey 1985 cep. 8 hid 32 Gants Wirken in Ira, 322. © Erimerungen.186 Gerhard von Rad ‘abundance, He began his working day with a lecture at seven o'elock in the sumimer, in winter at eight, so that afterwards he had time to read and write. He too had a great deal to catch up with, not least in foreign Titerature, which was gradually making its way t© Germany. Apart from his four-hour lecture, he generally lectured for another two other hours on subjects such as Job, or “the ‘ministry and proclamation of the Old Testament prophets’. In addition there ‘was intensive work with students in his seminar and in events (often lasting several days) organized by the student congregation, which at that time pro- vided a home for very many students and probably for all the theologians. Von Rad, never of robust health and, like most people, weakened by the deprivation ‘of those years, was stretched (0 the limits of his strength. Gottingen’s second ‘Old Testament chair had been abolished during the Third Reich, and von Rad now moved heaven and earth to have it reinstated, his dream being that Alt might be persuaded to take i¢ up. Official negotiations in that direction were ac- tually begun, but Alt did not give way to the temptation, feeling in duty bound to continue to man his post in East German Leipzig. ‘Von Rad was very conscious that in Gottingen he was in the place that had ‘once been Wellhausen’s. On the way to his lectures he passed Wellhausen’s house, where the great name could still be read in faded letters on a stone pillar, and he was often tempted ‘to raise his hat, but said to those accompanying him: *That was a long time ago.” His relationship to Wellhausen was ambiva- lent. He was thoroughly familiar with his books and continually re-read pars of them for his own pleasure. Once. in a doctoral viva, he was greatly shocked when he discovered that one of his (later best-known) pupils had never read Wellhausen's Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Like Gunkel, Alt or Mow- inckel, he worked not to detract from Wellhausen’s fundamental insights, but to supplement them from different standpoints, in the process of which of course a ‘good many corrections had (0 be made. According to his own view, form criti- ccism should go hand in hand with a continued literary-critical approach, since “these two criteria complement each other most happily”. In saying this he by no means overlooked the fact that work on genres, form criticism and tradition history is from the outset a more delicate and hypothetical affair than literary criticism in its traditional sense, so that it has not only its particular attraction but also its particular dangers: "Admittedly, this younger sister of Pentateuch criticism is methodically more difficult to bring under control; and its results, Sometimes, are still somewhat unprovable, ultimately speaking. Moreover they provide evidence only for the person who has some degree of historical imagi- nation. OF course the method must not be pursued so far thatthe door is opened for every fantayy, or that the impression is given that with its help every late text can be assigned at will 10 a much earlier date.’ Von Rad was not only fundamentally aware of this but also tried to take it to heart in individual cases 7 VE 9TH, 174,hard von Rad 187 ‘Among his successors, however, it could happen that he was read, contrary to his intention, without Wellhausen, and then form criticism faces the same ques- tion that has been asked in connection with typological exegesis: “But what happens when this delicate instrument slips out of von Rad’s artiste hands into clunsier fingers?” ‘Von Rad pinned down his rea difference from Wellhausen when, in an inc dental note, he described as ‘impossible, even theologically” Wellhausen's statement that in ancient Israel “the divine law was not inthe institution, but in the Creator Spiritus, in individuals’ Here the Lutheran, the member of the Confessing Church, took his stnd against the 19th century individualist, for whom the church had bevome alien. He called Wellhausen’s position “impossi- ble, even theologically’ ~ that is, not onl theologically. Von Rad's opposition was also based on exegetical scholarship. He believed that in the ancient east the ‘I’ eludes us, and certainly escapes our grasp in the psalms and related po- ‘ems. In these, much sounds “uncannily modern, and yet the interpreter is lost if he lets himself be guided by his modern questions. An ancient oriental poet. @ psalms is speaking as someone deeply rooted — for us to an inconceivable de- sree — in blood ties and social and cultic orders: and it rust be very much doubted whether, when he says “I", he means the same thing as a modern poot."* Von Rad's preference for the institution, and especially the culic insti {ution, as Sit im Leben of the text therefore certainly did not mean, even in the light of his own theology, that he thereby wanted 9 make them more directly aveessible and easier to understand, On the contrary: he thought it very impor- ‘ant that they should not lose ther strange and alien character. Cult phenomena as such, or as the background to biblical concepts, phra- seology and traditions, were the main subject of von Rad’s work during his Giuingen years. apart from the Genesis interpretation. A. few titles make this evident: Das juddische K@nigsritual (1947), “Gerechigheit” und ‘Leben’ in der Kulsprache der Psalmen (1950), Die Anrechnung des Glaubens zur Gerechtigkett (1951)" and, above all, the Deuteronomiun-Studien (1947), which maintain that Deuteronomy belongs “within the tradition of the ancient Israelite Yahweh amphictyony” and “aims in its own later period 10 restore this ancient cule institution and to present tas being for Israel the obligatory form ofits existence before Yahweh In 1949 von Rad expanded the section on ‘Das Deuteronomiurs und der Heilige Krieg" in a leture forthe Society for Old Tes- tament Study, and Der Heilige Krieg im Alten Israel, one of his most influential monographs, appeared in 1951.” Here too the Yahweh amphictyony offered Ph. Viethauer, Dikadome (1979), 226, © J, Wellhasen, Prolegomena sur Geschictte Israels 6th ed. (1908). 410, % Gottes Wirken in Israel, 209, 5 Allin Geseommelte Studien and From Genesis to Chronicles ° Studies in Demteronom, W308. DNLG. Stalker (1953), © Hole War in Avcient Irae, ans, MJ. Daven (1991).188 Gerhard von Rad the key to an understanding: the ‘holy wars’ were sacral happenings, supported by the institution. This was brilliantly, but certainly hypothetically, deduced by Noth in 1930," and the theory cast a kind of spell over a whole series of schol- ars in the postwar years, The picture of earliest Israel they increasingly devel- ‘oped stood in sharp contrast to the picture that Wellhausen had drawn earlier. I ‘was not determined by free individuals but, to use the catchword provided by Martin Buber, by a “primitive pan-sacrlity’ which was embodied in eultic in- stitutional form. With the move to Heidelberg in 1949 von Rad arrived in a place and a fac ulty and university which exactly suited him. From his study in the Heidelberg quarter of Handschuhsheim he could see Speyer cathedral, the beautiful Bergstrabie was at his door, Franconia and Bavaria were not far off. The Gottin- zen theological faculty had been interesting, but anything but a harmonious en- semble. In Heidelberg not only were personal relationships in the faculty good but there was also co-operation over work, and that of high quality. The faculty tracted many students both from Germany and abroad, not a few of them for the sake of the Old Testament. A goodly number already changed at once from Gottingen to Heidelberg in 1949/50, Von Rad soon felt at home, not justin the faculty but in the university and the Akademie der Wissenschaften to. ‘The Heidelberg atmosphere did not distract von Rad ftom maintaining the subject and style of his research and teaching but rather encouraged him. He worked hard, 3s he had always done. And soon the foreground was filled up by ‘what was to be his main work: the theology of the Old Testament, Everything he had done up to then was, consciously or not, the preparation for this. As we have seen, even his doctoral and post-doctoral theses had) unmistakeably in view his tater work as a whole and, conversely, the first volume of his Theolo- sie dey Alten Testaments (1957) reads in part like a compendium of his earlier work. It was not merely most of the details which had long been the subject of reilection, but the overall concept ‘An essay written in 1943 on Grundprobleme einer biblischen Theologie des Alten Testaments ("Basic Problems for a Biblical Theology of the Old Testa- ‘ment?)® had offered the first balance sheet. There von Rad started from the shift in the 1920s from the histories of religion written inthe 19th century to the theology: but he made it clear that he was notin agreement with the systemic ‘mode of presentation in the works of Eichtodt (1933-39) and Kohler (1936), fi: reason being that they ignored the prime theological fact about the Old Testament’, the close correspondence between the statements of faith and the history. The Old Testament is the book of a history: a history of God's with ‘human beings. And this characterizes it so exclusively, and is so determinative of its whole content, that no account of the substance of its witness can pass it See below 206 Old Testament Theology, tans, DMG. Stalker (1962/58) fessued 1975 and 2005 © THLZ 68. 25H.Gerhard von Rad 189 bby.’ To take the Erlangen 19th century term, which had a venerable pedigree, this was @ Heilsgeschichre, ‘salvation history”, and von Rad had no hesitation in describing what he had in mind as a ‘salvation-history theology of the Old Tes- tament’ “A salvation-history theology of the Old Testament will have the task of presenting in its varying forms this correspondence between the Word of God and history: for according to the Old Testament view. this is what salva- tion history is: a history set on the move by God's Word, and shaped and sided to its goals by an ever-new divine Word."® The important point is "to ‘work out the Old Testament’s testimony precisely and above all in its unique character, and in the conceptuality which is exclusively its own’. In this process ‘we have (0 “surrender ourselves completely to its particular weight and its spe- cific contours’ and “read it much more intensively until an overall view is cor ferred on us, a view which isnot purchased by violent theological short cuts’. ‘The interim balance of 1943 already indicated dangers in this direction: “It is true that the whole of the Old Testament witnesses to God’s continual acts in history’, but there are “books which do not share in this testimony", namely Job and Ecclesiastes, which occupy a non-historical space, For that very reason they have to be interpreted “inthe light of the salvation-history testimony of the Old Testament as a whole’, In view of the often equivocal Kerygmata, which stand in tension to each other, and are also obscured by the human character of the witnesses, the “view of Scripture as 2 whole’ is, recommended as clarifying, according to the old Erlangen recipe. It is important to avoid painting a one- sided Old Testament theology based on the history of its devotional content; that would inevitably pass by groups of witnesses centering on particular i Pensations, such as the land or the king.® The relation to the New Testament takes up considerable space. Since the New Testament witnesses “without ex- ception place the coming of Jesus Christin the context of Old Testament salva- tion history’. they confirm that the 1wo testaments belong together. Theologi cally, therefore, we are by no means free to detach Jesus Christ from this cor text ~ ‘even supposing it to be more problematic for us’. Ways of grasping and presenting the connection are typology and the pattern of promise and fulf iment, the latter being for von Rad of fundamental importance, within the Old ‘Testament as well. Before his Theology was completed and published, parts of its programme ‘were discussed with a few of von Rad's colleagues in Gottingen and with most of them in Heidelberg. Above all, the group of scholars involved the Neukirchen series of biblical commentaries were drawn into the discussion, At their frst meeting in 1952, von Rad himself had talked about the “typological interpretation of the Old Testament’, and Walther Zimmerli (who, with Hans 2204 2a, 2oer auth190 Gerhard vom Rad Walter Wolf, was closest to von Rad theologically among his professional col leagues) had spoken about "promise and fullilment’.™’ So the theological world \way not unprepared. and eagerly awaited the work, which appeared in two vol- umes in 1957 und 1960, and was received with admiration but also with severe criticism, The first volume is entitled: “The Theology of Israel's Historical Traditions’ the second “The Theology of Isriel’s Prophetic Traditions’. Each volume is prefaced by a biblical motto, the first from Psalm 111.4: "HE hath made his wonderful works to be remembered’, the second from Isaiah 43.18f.: Remem ber ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old, Behold [will do anew thing.’ The common denominator is not just that both volumes deul with the theology of taditions. It is rather that in both eases, as the quotation from Deutero-Isaiah already shows, the subject of these traditions is for von Rad his- tory in its essential dimension. In his programme of 1943, he already wrote: The kerygma of the prophets is even more closely related to history [than that Of the books Genesis to Kings}, because the recollection of divine facts in the past is complemented by the pointer to God's future acts in history." But the ‘word ‘complemented’ could be open to misunderstanding. For Deutero-Isaiah ‘admonishes: “Remember not the former things neither consider the things of old.’ In 1957 von Rad wrote: “The proclamation of the prophets cannot be or ganically tied to Israel's ideas of faith’, “its convietion about the breach with What has gone before puls it... fundamentally speaking outside salvation his: tory. in the sense in which Israet had hitherto understood it,” Consequently in a theology of the Old Testament — and this is ‘the most reliable touchstone of all” for its layout ~ the prophetic proclamation must be talked about separately." This separation surprised some readers, since it was von Rad who of all people attached great value to the substantial link between prophecy and tradition, and in his first volume had already often and not without reason talked about the connection between the two. But it was certainly valuable to bring to the fore the fact that the most important thing about prophecy was not the link with tra dition (which is in any case somewhat questionable, exegetically speaking) The arrangement of his material was never von Rad's strong point. In the Theology this emerges, not merely from the problematical place given 10 prophecy, but even more noticeably by the structure of the first volume, This comprises two main parts, and it is only with the second of them (which is by far the more extensive) that we are given “preliminary methodic considerations” about the object of an Old Testament theology. and the procedure to be fol- Towed; whereas the first part (which is then really separated fundamentally from the subject of the whole) offers the ‘outline of a history of the Yahweh faith and Israel"s sacral institutions’. This first part, that is (0 Say. is a variation Se below 247. Op. cit. 227 ” Thealegie I, 13.Gerhard von Rad 191 and incidentally a highly instructive one ~ on the history-of-religion theme, which in the 19th century had taken the place of the ‘theology’; although here von Rad gives the theme a new stress, He later considered taking out these hundred pages, and publishing them separately; but he was unable to decide for this step, which would have permitted his conception to emerge more clearly The second main part carries the heading of the whole volume: “The Theol- ‘ogy of Israel's Historical Traditions." Following the ‘preliminary methodic con- siderations’, wwo chapters conform to this heading: one detailed chaper on “The ‘Theology of the Hexateuch’ and a much shorter one, headed “Israel's Anointed’, on the monarchy and the theology of Deuteronomy and the Chroni- cler's History. But the volume then ends with an again more detailed, and es cially fine, chapter on ‘Israel before Yahweh (Israel's Response). Here the subject is the effect on Israel of Yahweh’s acts, and “how Israel for its part now affirmed and understood this existence in its immediacy and closeness 10 Yah- \weh, and the measures it took to justify or to shame itself in its own sight, and in Yahweh's, in this close relationship to Yahweh’. It was also to be hoped, he ‘wrote, “that here the basic features of a theological anthropology’ would be- come clear.” Unexpectedly, we see shining through here the systematic outline of an Old Testament theology such as von Rad wanted to avoid, and which in developing this chapter he then did to some extent avoid, inasmuch as itis ori- eentated towards the ‘Writings’ of the third part of the canon: Psalms, Job, Prov: erbs and Ecclesiastes. Aputt trom a few sections, this is no longer a “theology of historical traditions’, not even in the sense in which his 1943 programme demanded: that ‘the books which do not share [in the witness to God's contin- ual acts in history| are to be interpreted from that very standpoint’, For that, this chapter isin itself theologically too rich and too concentrated ‘What has already been said will have made it clear that this Old Testament Theology offered material for discussion. And indeed there was hardly anyone who did not somewhere have his say, and record his yes or his no, oF both. In the German-speaking countries, the most important questions were put by Christoph Barth, Friedrich Baumgtirtel, Hans Conzelmann, Walther Eichrod Johannes Hempel, Franz Hesse, Victor Maag, and Walther Zimmerli. These {questions centred on the one hand on the problem of history, Von Rad had talked about two ‘pictures of Israel's history’, one drawn by modern critical scholarship and the other by Israels faith,”” and had made the second the sub: {ect of his account. But did the theology not then rest on a fiction instead of on real history? Another question touched on von Rad's renunciation of a “centre for the Old Testament. Did theology not also have the task, and especially so, of seeing and considering as far as possible the connection between what was ™ Theolowie 3524 " Theologie B13192 Gerhard von Rad disparate? And had von Rad himself not done this more than was in eonformity with his programme, and more too than he was conscious of? His view of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments was the subject of particularly acrimonious debate. Going far beyond his 1943 outline, hie developed his view about this relationship at the close of the second volume Under the headings “The actualizing of the Old Testament in the New’. “The Old Testament’s understanding of the world and human beings, and faith in Christ” and “The redemptive events of the Old Testament in the light of their fulfilment in the New’. If we remember the later debates about a “biblical the- ‘ology’. these headings were particularly forward-looking. But, asked the hope- folly addressed New ‘Testament scholary in their turn, were the fundamental distinctions not smoothed out? Was the validity of the Old Testament not here asserted on the basis of @ continuity in intellectual history, instead of on the ba- sis of Word and faith? And in general: did this Theology not lack a definition of ‘what was valid and normative, which after all ought to be an indespensible task for all theology? Was this not rather a mere tradition history? I. L. Seeligmann in Jerusalem, an astute reader who kept his distance from theology, later formu- tated the bon mor that he found von Rad's Theology good because it was not a theology, and Zimmerli’s Theology good even though it was a theology Von Rad read everything that came 10 his notice with close attention, and took some of it to heart, He replied repeatedly to the more important questions and objections in fundamental explanatory comments about the problem of an Old Testament theology.”* He was not adroit in debate and was easily defeated in the clash of arguments, even when he knew that in the deeper sense he had right on his side. He did not cling obstinately to something just because he had once said it, but often softened down remarks which secmed to him too apodic- tie, He was large-minded enough, for example, to call his ‘typology’ essay” “foolish’”* — though in private, avoiding the attitude of someone who in seera- ing self-criticism testifies to something like an intellectual move, whereas he is really only trimming his sais to the current wind. Trimming his sails was com- pletely foreign to von Rad, It was always the same concern which he knew he served, and in spite of his great respect for what was new. he served that con- cern with astonishing constancy. Thus even in the dispute about his Theology he saw no reason to undertake any essential revisions. It was all the more sig- nificant that he gave what was really his final summing up the heading: “Open Questions in Connection with an Old Testament Theology’. It disappointed him most if he thought that he could see that his discussion partners were not ‘open-minded, that their minds were made up, and that they already knew it all = Eg. Theologe (1960), 7: BvTh 24 (1964), 3880, ® BoTh 12 (1952153), 17H. (Gesummelte Studien I, 1973, 27247). CL H.W. Wolff (ed), Probleme biblischer Thevlogie. G. ss Rad sam 7 Geburtstag 971). 656. °° THLZ 88, 40116 (Gesamte Studien 2894),Gerhard von Bad 193 and that they had the Old Testament less at heart than had he himself; “The di cussion’, he noted “only hay a point if it is not an exchange of cut and dried dogmatic judgments, but isa discussion about specific Old Testament issues." With these guidelines, he never tired of letting the Old Testament, as he un- derstood it, speak for itsel, in individual details no less than as a whole, and in such a way that he tried to grasp the whole through the detail and in its Fgh: “Today there is no overall interpretation of the Old Testament which must not continually prove itself against the interpretation of its individual pars, and this interpretation must he entirely in line with the whole. Otherwise itis no more than idle talk, Today general formulas or slogans about biblical theology take tus nowhere, less than ever before.’ In this connection, he described as ‘charac- teristic of our situation the close proximity between exegesis and introduction” on the one hand, and a theology of the Old Testament on the other.”” This proximity ~ “introduction” was his favourite lecture ~ can be sensed everywhere in the Theology. The essential definition is probably his assertion that “The most legitimate way of talking theologically about the Old Testament is ... 10 retell it” Later von Rad added the comment that this was ‘at least the most direct conclusion which Israel drew from the historical acts it experienced. The divine acts had to be told! Every generation has been told them by their fathers (Ps. 44.1; 18.3; Deut, 6.7; 29.2211), and they had therefore to be told again in ever-new actualization (Ps. 96.3: Isa 43.21). A theology of the Old Testament will hence also have to practise the proper reiteration of these historical testi- monies if it wants to elicit the substance of the Old ‘Testament appropriately. ‘The author of the book of Acts also lets Stephan and Paul tell the story of God's people (Acts 7.2ff; 13.17F.°” ‘The succession to which we thus belong does not prevent this today from be- ing a ‘critical re-telling’; for itis the work of “the exegete schooled in literary ‘and historical criticism’ ® For von Rad. however, something else was atleast a important: the retelling must not too rashly destroy the overall pattern to which things belong in the eyes ofthe biblical narrator. This applies to the sequence of events, which the theology ought not fo rearrange according to our notions of history, or literary history: but it applies too indeed itis even more important ~ for the understanding of reality which was so very different then from ours today. The "kerygmatic’ history of that time has an advantage over the ‘eritcal’ history of today in that itis able to talk about God"s acts. That is why von Rad. the theologian, gives it the preference and trusts himself to it ~ without thereby wishing fo set aside what has succeeded to this view in our own time: for he vas still Al's pupil. He did not attempt a systematic solution of the problem TD. 166, ” Theokgie W160), 12 * Thenlose (1987). 126 ™ Thenogiek.hed. 138 © Thenogieti (1960), 2194 Gerhard vom Rad but, “convinced that the two aspects were ultimately linked, and indeed formed 3 unity’, called readers to withstand the tension between them." He went no further, and even when, with an emphatic appeal to his name, a group of young Heidelberg theologians undertook the ambitious attempy to grasp the whole of theology with the aid of the concept of history, he warily kept his distance, in spite of his respect for Wolthart Pannenberg. the leading figure in this under taking. He was too closely associated with dialectical theology and. more im- portant, thought too mach in biblical terms, for him to participate when “the Word” threatened to be neutralized by ‘history’ Where “theological criticism’ within the Old Testament was concerned, he continued 10 observe the reserve he had already practised in his post-doctoral thesis. He distanced himself from the customary value-judgments based on aes- thetic criteria or even against the yardstick of religious history, and warned against rash theological partisanship. It was an exception when he established, for example in Job and Beclesiastes, that the lack of ties with history and the ‘community was bound to result in the breakdown of faith." In the present ‘in- terim situation’ in which we have not as yet at our disposal the means for “highly differentiated accounts, and thus for more precise appreciations and de preciations’, he saw his own task, over against the proficient “masters and interveners” by whom he saw himself surrounded, “frst of all to accept from every author and every work its own particular concern as objectively a8 possi ble." In other words, he saw himself as what he was: an exegete. Inthe stug~ les of the Nazi period, he had expressly adopted for himself Kael Barth's final advice to his Bonn students on his departure in 1935: ‘Exegesis, exegesis, and again exegesis!” And fo this he added: “But now without any general recipe, without a universal key, but simply and solely risking an intespretation which centers into the faith of the particular witness... LF we did not trust ourselves to bend one ear closely 10 the text, and to close the other one altogether, would it not be faithless?”™ And is an exegesis ofthis kind not theology? Certainly. von Rad had good reasons for saying later that he had written his Theology “quite phenomenologically’, and that it was ‘not as yet an adequate theology of the ‘Old Testament’ But the systematic theologian was also certainly tight when he told von Rad that he had always understood his work ‘not purely phenome- nologically, but also in the sense that it was meant to interpret the theological significance the Old Testament for us to0"."* In earlier generations it almost counted as a rule that Old Testament theolo- gies only appeared after the death oftheir authors, Von Rad survived the com- " Theologie MAth ed 443 © HZ 68 (1983). 228, * Theologie W.(1960). 11: Gesummelte Studien 1,298, S THB IS A936), 33, SS HLW. Wolf (seen. 74). 657 'R Mermann, Gesamte and nechgelassene Werke I (1971), 302Gerhard von Rad 19s pletion of his Summa by more than a decade and during that time by no means rested on his laurels. Honours were heaped on him, culminating in membership Of the order Pour le mérite for science and the atts, The last Protestant theolo sian to belong had been Adolf von Harnack, Romano Guardini being von Rad's predecessor and Karl Rahner his successor, Until his retirement in 1966, he ful- filled his academic duties in full, and held a number of seminars afterwards. He continued to take the keenest interest in what went on in his own field, and put forward ideas in conversation or letters which could considerably surprise read- ers of his Theology. For him, nothing was ever finished. He encountered his successors entirely without arrogance, listening attentively when they talked to hhim about what they had observed in biblical texts, although he found the dis- cussion of principles, structures and methods inereasingly tedious. He followed ‘with concern a trend in Heidelberg for lectures to be devoted to the communi- cation of sweeping surveys rather than to an encounter with the individual text, He found writing no easier as years went on, Revisions of the Theology and his Genesis commentary (the latter completed in the last year of his life) were a tiresome duty, and at first there loomed up on the horizon the even more ardu- ‘ous task of providing new commentaries on Deuteronomy for Das Alte Testa- ‘ment Deutsch and on Jeremiah for the Neukirchener Kommentar. He wrote the Deuteronomy somewhat listlessly ~ there was nothing more for him to discover there — and then decided to give buck the contract far the Jeremiah commen- tary, as he had already done with contracts with Neukirchen for commentaries con Isaiah and Proverbs. He employed the freedom he had gained in what seemed 0 be a completely, new sphere: Wisdom ~ that is to say the non-revelatory counterpart t0 the his- tory, At that time Wisdom was especially en vogue. Was he just following the fashion? There was undoubtedly a connection, inasmuch as there was to some degree widespread feeling that the concern with “history” had reached satura- tion point. In 1964 von Rad, not without self-criticism, himself talked about the danger of seeing theological problems too one-sidedly’ in the framework Of the theology of history.*” But he differed from many followers of the fashion by not now falling into the opposite trap of scenting a Wisdom background eve- rywhere. He had essentially less need for a natural theology than some others He had long found Wisdom interesting, within reasonable limits. He hid related the God’s speects in Job 38 to Amenope’s Onomasticon, and the story of Joseph to older Isfaelite Wisdom teaching, postulating for this that “one cannot simply ‘come to grips with it in different collections of aphorisms. From the beginning it came to the fore as a much more comprehensive intellectual phenomenon." In the first volume of the Theology he had incorporated this phenomenon some~ what artificially into “Israel's Response’, dividing it into three periods ~ older © Gesammete Studien 1311 td 27,196 Gerhard von Rab Wisdom, the Wisdom of experience, and theological Wisdom ~ which he de- picted very fully. In the 1960s he set about freeing Wisdom from this stait- Jacket, showing it to be a quite separate entity in its own right. This is frst documented in his essay about aypects of the understanding of the world in the Old Testament (1964). and finally in the monograph Weisheit in Asraet (1970)." One can agree with W. Brueggemann” in viewing this book as the third volume of von Rad's Theology. whereby atthe same time its incompletion and the unconvincing character ofits systematies again becomes clear ~ weak- nesses of which von Rad became increasingly aware. ‘The book ranges over a whole world on the basis of the texts, in order to bring out “the adventure of set- ting reason free’, an adventure which Israel, in spite of all its international Hinks, ad to master, here above all, ‘in its very own way’. The foreword asks readers ‘to open themselves forthe tensions in which the teachings of the wise ‘move, and {© bring with them considerable readiness for contemplation, Res oguuntur.? Tt has occasionally been suggested that in turning from history to Wisdom von Rad had become untrue to himself. But the criticism is hardly justifiable For he did not abandon what he had said about history, and at bottom it was @ matter of the same problem on both sides: the relation between faith and the experience of reality, which is never fully congruent in historical existence. He hhad been already conscious of this duality in 1935, when he considered “the theological problem of the Old Testament’s belie in creation’, and in 1961 he concluded a lecture on “The Word of God and History in the Old Testament’ by saying that now ‘a second account must follow, on “The Word of God and Na- ture” 2” As in the sphere of history, here too he neither played off the “now” against the ‘then’ in the understanding of reality, nor the ‘then’ against the ‘now’, but drew attention 0a tension which had initially to be endured. It was enough for him to have offered some suggestions Inthe last days of his life he noted a sentence of Gerhard Ebeling: “The cre terion of theotogy is preaching’. and added: “That has accompanied me.” He ‘was both a passionate preacher and a passionate listener to sermons. After dee- ades had passed, the Gaitingen student-pastor of the postwar years described as “unforgettable” the way von Rad ‘critically accompanied” his sermons." As far as von Rad the preacher is concerned, we have the testimony of Ricarda Huch, writen in 1940: “It did me so much good to hear such a thoroughly cultivated person preach, who is perhaps a believer in no different sense from myself, in Wid, 31181 — Eng. ans: From Genesis uo Chronicles, 20 ° Wisom in Irae. wars. 3-D. Matin 1972) 2" Thevlos of the Od Tesanent 1999), 37 ° Gesamielte Sralen 1.136, Gates Wirken Irae. 212 °G"Bheling, Vim Geber (1963) 6 "D: Anderen. Frugmente der Versohnung (1984). 23.Gerhard vom Rad 197 that he feels that the Bible contains the Word of God. have never heard a preacher whose own words cling so closely to God's Word that there was no discrepancy between the two." Those who want to get to know this theologian and to discover what was more important for him than anything else should look at his printed sermons.” Their wish willbe fulfilled, and more thar that Let us turn back again to von Rad's personal testimony. He was a teacher of | theology frst and foremost, even if he could ask “whether, when one was old, ‘one could not sometime put on one side, not one’s Christian position, but theo- logical work’* Using almost the same words as Karl Barth, he called his task as academic teacher “learning to read and reading to teach’.”” What had been the outcome, in forty years? He liked to say: ‘Now and then something oc- curred to me.” In this laconic information there is satisfaction, but atleast as ‘much a profound awareness that what had been achieved was limited, and ‘worry lest he overvalued it, and was content. If anything was characteristic of him it was the resignation he always felt when he finished a book. The last thing he wrote was an essay for a Festschrift for Hans Walter Wolff, ‘Beobach- tungen an der Moseerzihlung Exodus 1-14"."' He sent it to the editor, saying: “mast ask you to play the part of a friend and to tell me whether this will do, ‘or whether it is too simplistic? Am I asking too much of you? The story of the ‘old professor who asks his young friends to tell him when he should stop has ‘many variations. But in all of them the young friends come off badly.” If need be, he could look out a sermon but, he added in the margin, only very unwill- ingly, since he had ‘no deep freeze for the purpose’. When the editor tied to put his mind at rest, he answered, in the very month in which he died: ‘Perhaps T have seldom been able to arrive at a detached view of what I have written, but always only see the swarm of unanswered questions ... But now let things take their course.” ‘The text for the day he died, Reformation Day 1971, was taken from He- brews 13.7: ‘Remember your teachers, who spoke to you the word of God: con- sider the outcome of ther life, and imitate their faith. 1 ref (s00 48). 479. © Predigien (1972) Wolff sce 0.78), 658, ® Gones Wirke in Irae, 321 Wolff sea, 75), 657 ™ BeTh 311971), STOIE. (Gesamte Studien ISON). ch BVT 31 (1971), 70s,