The Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament. By Reinhard G. Kratz

Abstract

Translated by John Bowden . Pp. xii, 361 , London/NY , T&T Clark , 2005 , $72.00. John Bowden has done us a further service by translating yet another erudite work by a German biblical scholar; composed in 2000 by the professor of Old Testament in the University of Göttingen, it now appears in English. Reinhard Kratz promises us ‘an introduction to the narrative works of the Old Testament’‘based on the historical-critical analysis of the biblical sources’. It is an ‘introduction’ in the German tradition, like Otto Eissfeldt's 1964 The Old Testament. An Introduction, also usefully made available in English the following year by another doyen of academic translation, Peter R. Ackroyd – no mere guidebook for beginners, but a massive digest of the status quaestionis on every aspect of the subject, complete with lengthy bibliographies. Kratz likewise presumes that the reader is well versed in biblical lore before plunging into the quite dense pages of this very lengthy work. Perhaps such an intended readership explains why it is not a particularly reader-friendly ‘introduction’; though a dozen or so tables relieve the text somewhat and summarise the findings, the tone is very business-like and the pace unrelenting. No General Index is provided. Kratz, unlike Eissfeldt, has not gone to the trouble of internationalising his more select bibliographies (nor of including the usual list of Abbreviations); one gets the impression in this case again of ‘the Germans reading the Germans’. And, of course, great figures like Julius Wellhausen and Martin Noth (but not Albrecht Alt) predictably dominate the skyline here; and if the odd English-speaking (but not French, Italian, …) scholar is included in the brief lists heading each chapter (like Antony Campbell and Mark O'Brien on the Former Prophets), they are not invited into dialogue in the endnotes (nor their names always spelt correctly). The Preface to the English edition admits that such concessions were made at that late stage. In one place (p. 157) Kratz divides scholars into two groups, ‘the English-language and Catholic sphere, the other more in the Protestant tradition of German-language exegesis’. What Kratz is offering to his peers is his own take on the whole of OT narrative, beginning with ‘the literary blueprint of the final shape as it has been handed down to us’. So the three sections deal with the Chronistic Writings, the Torah and the Former Prophets, and under a rubric ‘The Myth of Israel’ the Priestly Writing, the Non-Priestly Narrative, and the Hexateuch (the term Octateuch, more familiar to the early Church, as Eissfeldt admits, not occurring here). Each section begins with a ‘Survey’, where Kratz includes his brief bibliographies, including recent research, and closes with a summary, which Bowden has translated as ‘Result’ (an odd term, like his use of ‘assignation’ on p. 255). In the O-so-detailed presentation of his position on all these sections, his tone is magisterial, if not dogmatic; he has no qualms about wielding the sword to cut the Gordian knot. When outlining recent research on the Non-Priestly Narrative, for instance (p. 249), he rules firmly on opposing positions: ‘Some regard the whole non-Priestly text (classical JE) as more or less a unity; here basically it does not matter whether one sees it principally as the (late) ‘Yahwist’ or a pre-Priestly D composition with a Deuteronomic-Deuteronomistic stamp, or recognizes the ‘final redactor’ (R) in each and everything. Others reduce the text to a minimum in which they find a(n early) Yahwist, a proto-Yahwist or the sources of the Yahwist and the Yahwistic redaction, but distribute the bulk of the text between pre- and post-Priestly, final-redactional and post-final-redactional elaborations’. In case a luckless beginner should feel at a loss before these positions, or an expert have misgivings, Kratz unhesitatingly delivers his verdict: ‘As so often, the solution lies in reconciling the extremes. There is only one way of escaping the circle of the source hypothesis: it has to be abandoned’. On the other hand, in summarising recent research, Kratz can be clear and detached, as in his summary of (German) research on the Priestly Writing (pp. 226–229), where we gain a clear understanding of hypotheses on documents, sources and strata in the Pentateuch; likewise in his dating of the major sections of OT narrative in his Conclusion. Though not light reading, nor a user-friendly reference book for the interested delver into the Old Testament, this volume in the German style offers the cognoscenti a thorough evaluation of old and new research into its narrative material. The preface to this English edition lists the (mostly German) journals where ‘predominantly friendly’ reviews of the German edition have appeared.