Tradition and Expectation in Ancient Israel

Abstract

Perhaps the most important advance in Old Testament studies in recent years has been the rediscovery of and the new emphasis on tradition. Older studies commonly implied that the biblical material, the sources, were essentially to be seen as literary products, that is as books or documents written at a certain date and edited and annotated through subsequent written additions. This did not explicitly deny that before they were written down the stories or laws had existed in a preliterary form; but such was the emphasis on study of the written material and the discernment of written sources that the pre-literary stage was considerably neglected. Biblical criticism was predominantly literary criticism. More modern studies have not for the most part abandoned such literary criticism, nor is it ever likely to be fully abandoned; but more and more emphasis has been laid, in Old Testament and in New Testament work alike, on the living tradition which preceded or accompanied the literary transmission.