Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Thomas L. Thompson" <tlt AT teol.ku.dk>]

Lloyd Barre wrote:

        (Is) it possible to analyze
> them in a way that will yield reliable historical data?  As it turns out,
> there is, but the issue has been somewhat beclouded by the American based
> emperical, linguistic-archaeological school of biblical interpretation
> (eg.
> Albright) as opposed to the German literary-critical approach (eg. Gunkel,
> Noth).  The principles contained in the methodologies of form criticism,
> tradition criticism and redaction criticism allow the interpreter to
> extract indirectly hitorical information regarding the creaters and
> bearers
> of any given tradition, or the redaction of previous traditions.  
> 
Dear Lloyd. Regarding Noth and the whole development of
Ueberlieferungsgeschichte, one might do well to read some of the rather
heavy European criticism of this tradition, beginning already with Heike
Friis' gold medal essay from Copenhagen in 1968: published in German 18
years later as: Die Bedingungenfuer die Errichtung des davidischen Reiches
in Israel und seiner Umwelt, DBAT 6 (Heidelberg, 1986). Lemche and Fohrer
also criticized Noth's amphictyony rather devastatingly in this same year:
1968. There is also a good deal of sound criticism in the Dielheimer
Blaetter of the 1970s and early 1980s. This criticism has grown and
continued, beginning with criticisms of Noth's amphictyony and the David
stories and continuing on to broad ranging critiques of the historicity of
Exile traditions (See the essays collected by Grabbe in his JSOTS volume of
1998). Believe me hopes for historicity on this side of the Atlantic are, if
anything, even more muted than they are stateside.
        But I would agree with you concerning the possibility of drawing a
great deal of historical information from the traditions, and that is by
paying more attention to what is implied in and by them and by their
composition rather than to the narrative line the theological discourse
created.
Thomas

Thomas L. Thompson
Professor, University of Copenhagen