Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 80:320 (Oct 1923)
Article: The Present Ills Of Old Testament Theology And Their Remedy
Author: Eduard Koenig

BSac 80:320 (Oct 1923) p. 465

The Present Ills Of Old Testament Theology And Their Remedy

Eduard Koenig, Ph.D. D.D.

In QUITE recent and widely prevailing books, which have appeared under the title “Biblical Theology of the Old Testament” (The books referred to are those of Stade, 1895, and Kautzsch, 1911), there is presented in substance the following portrayal of Old Testament Religious History:

1. First of all, these books no longer permit Abraham to be the founder of a new period in religious history, in spite of the express affirmation of all the earliest sources (Gen. 12:1, seq.; Jos. 24:2, seq.; etc.). In opposition to all Biblical evidence they will no longer allow the Patriarchal religion to be the first step in Biblical religion; but they put the Patriarchs in a class (Stufe) of general Semitic religion, or make them even Fetish worshipers —worshipers of “sacred” stars, fountains, trees, etc. Furthermore, they make the Deity of earlier Israel a limited local deity, although the oldest scriptural sources already characterize the God of the Patriarchs as the Creator of the world and the “Judge of all the earth” (Gen. 18:25). They delight also to call Him the “Thunder God of Sinai” (Stade, par. 20), whom Israel had worshiped in his “Bedouin religion”; and only after Israel’s immigration into Canaan would they make Him the Ceres (“Ackerbaugott”) of the present “Peasant religion.”

Therefore, they simply pass by entirely the fact that in the earliest sources the field is already mentioned which the “Lord (Jahwe) has blessed” (27:27), and that already Isaac and Jacob had been engaged, according to the original evidence (Quellenzeugnis), in agricultural pursuits (26:12; 37:7). Consequently, they call Israel’s earlier religion “PRE-PROPHETIC” (in spite of 20:7; Deut. 18:15; etc.), and argue that the Prophetic religion

* Translated by the Rev. J. Sander, L.H.D.

BSac 80:320 (Oct 1923) p. 466

did not exist until the eighth century, even though Amos and his class (Reihe) claim to be only Reformers. A very important feature in this modern portrayal of Israel’s religious history is, furthermore, the assertion that the God of Israel in the “pre-prophetic” religious history had been a “being of incalculable power” (unberechenbares Machtwesen