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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2019
Julius Wellhausen proposed a “sharp break” between ancient Israelite religion and early Judaism: for him, the eighth-century prophets were the “spiritual destroyers of old Israel” and the forerunners of early Judaism. The biblical theologian Brevard Childs rejected Wellhausen’s reconstruction and insisted instead that “very strong theological continuity” characterized the development of Israelite religion from its outset. Numerous contemporary theological interpreters share Childs’s perspective. However, a “Wellhausen renaissance” is currently underway in the study of Israelite religion and early Judaism. This situation poses an unresolved challenge for theological interpretation, at least of the kind that Childs advocated. The present article addresses this dilemma. It first inventories Childs’s reasons for opposing Wellhausen’s sharp break, which emerge from Childs’s vision for scriptural “theo- referentiality.” Secondly, it tests whether Childs’s theological insights, the very same that led to his repudiation of Wellhausen, might accommodate Wellhausen’s historical claim. The final result is to set Wellhausen and Childs, historical reconstruction and theological interpretation, in a noncompetitive relationship.
I thank Philip Sumpter for teaching me much of what I know about Brevard Childs—and for thoroughly reviewing and critiquing a draft of the present article. Perhaps the finest accolade I can expect for it came from one of his emails (27 February 2017): “I think you have certainly opened up the possibility for me that Wellhausen’s theory could be more acceptable to Childs on his own terms[;] you certainly go about trying to demonstrate that using principles that I think are compatible with his approach.” I also thank the two anonymous peer reviewers for their excellent and exacting feedback, as well as Daniel R. Driver, Brent A. Strawn, and Ryan P. O’Dowd for their generous critical reading of earlier drafts. All glitches, errors, and especially theological missteps that remain are solely my own.
1 The phrase is Childs’s, Brevard S. “There is no evidence of a sharp break between a relationship established by natural bond and one of gracious election” (Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992] 418Google Scholar; hereafter cited as BTONT).
2 Wellhausen, Julius: “The people of Jehovah on the one hand, and the people of Chemosh on the other, had the same idea of the Godhead as head of the nation” (“Moab,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica [ed. Smith, William Robertson; 25 vols.; 9th ed.; Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1878] 16Google Scholar:533–36, at 535).
3 Wellhausen: “A paradoxical thought—as if the national God were to cut the ground from under His own feet!” (Prolegomena to the History of Israel [trans. Black, John Sutherland and Menzies, Allan; 3rd ed.; Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1885] 471)Google Scholar. The responsibility of eighth-century prophets like Amos for oracles of unconditional doom is now a subject of some controversy: e.g., Becker, Uwe, “Die Wiederentdeckung des Prophetenbuches: Tendenzen und Aufgaben der gegenwärtigen Prophetenforschung,” BTZ 21 (2004) 30–60Google Scholar. But see Reinhard, G. Kratz on the continuing, if adjusted, viability of the sea-change Wellhausen envisioned between Israelite religion and early Judaism (Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah [trans. Kurtz, Paul Michael; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015] 197–203)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Becker, Uwe, “Julius Wellhausens Sicht des Judentums,” in Biblische Theologie und historisches Denken: wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien aus Anlass der 50. Wiederkehr der Basler Promotion von Rudolf Smend (ed. Kessler, Martin and Wallraff, Martin; Basel: Schwabe, 2008) 279–309Google Scholar, at 299–302.
4 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 491, 485. On the prophets as “Wegbereiter des Judentums,” see Becker, “Julius Wellhausens Sicht,” 289–92, as well as Lothar Perlitt, “Hebraismus—Deuteronomismus— Judaismus,” in Deuteronomium-Studien (FAT 8; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1984) 247–60. See also James Pasto on the Israel/Judaism distinction in the context of nineteenth-century German nationalization (“When the End Is the Beginning? Or When the Biblical Past Is the Political Present: Some Thoughts on Ancient Israel, ‘Post-Exilic Judaism,’ and the Politics of Biblical Scholarship,” SJOT 12 [1998] 157–202); and relatedly, Brueggemann, Walter and Hankins, Davis, “The Invention and Persistence of Wellhausen’s World,” CBQ 75 (2013) 15–31Google Scholar; also Bediako, Gillian M., Primal Religion and the Bible: William Robertson Smith and his Heritage (JSOTSup 246; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997) 74–104Google Scholar. The brief description of Wellhausen above evokes two stages in the history of Israelite religion; in point of fact, Wellhausen posited three, corresponding to the literary strata of the Pentateuch: early, pre-nomistic, “heathen” religion (JE); the prophetic reforms encapsulated by Deuteronomy (D); and the idealistic and law-oriented religion of post-exilic early Judaism (P). See Elrefaei, Aly, Wellhausen and Kaufmann: Ancient Israel and its Religious History in the Works of Julius Wellhausen and Yehezkel Kaufmann (BZAW 490; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016) 55–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hahn, Herbert F., “Wellhausen’s Interpretation of Israel’s Religious History,” in Essays on Jewish Life and Thought Presented in Honor of Salo Wittmayer Baron (ed. Blau, Joseph L. and Friedman, Philip; New York: Columbia University Press, 1959) 299–308Google Scholar; Hayes, John H., “Wellhausen as a Historian of Israel,” in Julius Wellhausen and His Prolegomena to the History of Israel (ed. Knight, Douglas A.; Semeia 25; Chico: Scholars Press, 1983) 37–60Google Scholar.
5 For a brief summary of the furor generated by the Prolegomena, see Brevard S. Childs, “Wellhausen in English,” in Julius Wellhausen (ed. Knight) 83–88 and bibliography there.
6 Smith, J. R., “Wellhausen and His Position,” The Christian Church: A Journal in Defense of Christian Truth 2 (1882) 366–69Google Scholar, at 368.
7 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Antichrist (trans. Ludovici, Anthony M.; Great Books in Philosophy; Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2000) 32–37Google Scholar. On the relation of Nietzsche and Wellhausen, see Boschwitz, Friedemann, Julius Wellhausen: Motive und Maßstäbe seiner Geschichtsschreibung (Libelli 238; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968) 31–32Google Scholar; also Weidner, Daniel, “‘Geschichte gegen den Strich bürsten’: Julius Wellhausen und die jüdische Gegengeschichte,” ZRGG 54 (2002) 32–61Google Scholar, at 37.
8 Smith, “Wellhausen and His Position,” 368.
9 For a survey of Childs’s reception in English and German, see Driver, Daniel R., Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church’s One Bible (FAT 2/46; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010) 35–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as Olson, Dennis T., “Types of a Recent ‘Canonical Approach,’” in Hebrew Bible/The Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation (ed. Sæbø, Magne; 3 vols.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) 3/2Google Scholar:196–218, at 216–18. For entrées to theological interpretation, see Vanhoozer, Kevin J., “What Is Theological Interpretation of the Bible?” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (ed. Vanhoozer, Kevin J.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) 19–25Google Scholar; Moberly, R. W. L., “What is Theological Interpretation of Scripture?” JTI 3 (2009) 161–78Google Scholar. See also now A Manifesto for Theological Interpretation (ed. Craig G. Bartholomew and Heath A. Thomas; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016).
10 BTONT, 418. This continuity is what is most at issue in the present article (versus a “sharp break”). Childs lived downstream from Wellhausen and accepted several of Wellhausen’s insights: he could agree that “[t]here is a radical newness to the prophets’ message, a deeper plunge into the reality of God” (ibid., 175), and also that “in the period [after Moses’s death] there is little sign that Israel was conscious of its relation to Yahweh being grounded on the elaborate system of law found in the present form of the Pentateuch” (ibid., 135). But he denied lex post prophetas: the prophets for Childs “assum[ed] the authority of Israel’s ancient covenantal law” (ibid., 174). This basic disagreement with Wellhausen justifies the present article’s rhetoric about Childs’s “rejection” or “repudiation” of Wellhausen; see n. 1.
11 Childs, Brevard S., Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 148Google Scholar; hereafter, OTTCC.
12 Christoph Dohmen’s revised dissertation, Das Bilderverbot: seine Entstehung und seine Entwicklung im Alten Testament (BBB 62; Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1985), late-dates the image ban while his other and later writings depend heavily on Childs’s work; see also Driver, Brevard Childs, 60–64. For another apparent exception, see Moberly, R. W. L., “Theological Interpretation, Second Naiveté, and the Rediscovery of the Old Testament,” ATR 99 (2017) 651–70Google Scholar, at 665–66.
13 In his own generation, each of the figures whom Childs names as “the most avowedly confessional Old Testament scholars” (von Rad, Vriezen, Zimmerli, Wolff) shares with him a more continuous view than Wellhausen of the relationship between stages of Israelite religion (“Toward Recovering Theological Exegesis,” ExAud 16 [2000] 121–29, at 123). Childs repeatedly and approvingly cites Zimmerli’s 1963 Sprunt Lectures which argue, contra Wellhausen, that the prophets were not so much precursors to the law as its preachers—”messengers of the covenant” rather than theological revolutionaries (BTONT, 137, 175, 534, citing Zimmerli, Walther, The Law and the Prophets: A Study of the Meaning of the Old Testament [trans. Clements, Ronald E.; New York: Harper & Row, 1967])Google Scholar. Numerous contemporary theological exegetes concur with Childs that Israelite religion progressed rather more linearly into early Judaism, e.g., Stephen B. Chapman: “nothing comes from nothing, and it is inconceivable that a profound Persian-period Israelite faith did not have roots in the pre- exilic era” (1 Samuel as Christian Scripture: A Theological Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016] 226); also, idem, “The Covenant God of Israel: Joshua 8, Divine Concession, and Jesus,” in Covenant and Election in Exilic and Post-Exilic Judaism: Studies of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Research Group on Early Jewish Monotheism, Vol. V (ed. Nathan MacDonald; FAT 2/79; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015) 63–85; Strawn, Brent A., “What Would (Or Should) Old Testament Theology Look Like If Recent Reconstructions of Israelite Religion Were True?” in Between Israelite Religion and Old Testament Theology: Essays on Archaeology, History, and Hermeneutics (ed. Miller, Robert D. II; CBET 80; Leuven: Peeters, 2016) 129–66Google Scholar; Sommer, Benjamin D., The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 240CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 65.
14 Bartholomew, Craig G. and Emerson, Matthew Y., “Theological Interpretation for All of Life,” in A Manifesto (ed. Bartholomew and Thomas) 257–73Google Scholar, at 263.
15 Roy A. Harrisville writes, “Childs’s single, perduring theme is that of the [biblical] canon as vehicle to encounter with God” (“What I Believe My Old Schoolmate Is Up To,” in Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs [ed. Christopher R. Seitz and Kathryn Green- McCreight; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998] 7–25, at 17).
16 Christoph Levin writes: “[g]egenwärtig erleben wir eine Wellhausen-Renaissance” (“Die Entstehung der Bundestheologie im Alten Testament,” in Verheißung und Rechtfertigung: Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament II [BZAW 431; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013] 242–59, at 244). See also the overview of Zenger, Erich, “Die Bundestheologie—ein derzeit vernachlässigtes Thema der Bibelwissenschaft und ein wichtiges Thema für das Verhältnis Israel–Kirche,” in Der Neue Bund im Alten: Studien zur Bundestheologie der Beiden Testamente (ed. Zenger, Erich; Quaestiones Disputatae 146; Freiburg: Herder, 1993) 13–49Google Scholar, but esp. 13–26; Schmid, Konrad, “Zurück zu Wellhausen?” ThR 69 (2004) 314–28Google Scholar; Uwe Becker, “Julius Wellhausens Sicht,” 279–309, at 299–302. See also Kratz, Reinhard G., “Eyes and Spectacles: Wellhausen’s Method of Higher Criticism,” JTS 60 (2009) 381–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 400–402.
17 On the productiveness and interest of comparisons, especially of nonadjacent entities, see Strawn, Brent A., “Comparative Approaches: History, Theory, and the Image of God,” in Method Matters: Essays on the Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of David L. Peterson (ed. LeMon, Joel M. and Richards, Kent Harold; SBLRBS 56; Atlanta: SBL, 2009) 117–42Google Scholar. Of course, the radicalism of Wellhausen’s Prolegomena is relative; Niels Peter Lemche writes that “Wellhausen’s reconstruction is not at all revolutionary … [it] may best be described as a critical or rationalistic paraphrase of the Old Testament tradition” (“Rachel and Leah, Or: On the Survival of Outdated Paradigms in the Study of the Origin of Israel,” SJOT 1 [1987] 127–53, at 132).
18 This selection of exemplars is somewhat artificial. But the monumental influence of these two figures within biblical studies makes them especially suited for comparison—a sort of duel of champions. Also, although they belong to wholly separate scholarly generations and to different theological climates, Childs wrote about Wellhausen’s history of Israel at a uniquely opportune moment for the purpose of the present article. In Childs’s era, the chief problem facing theological interpretation was historical. So, too, after a period of academic disfavor, Wellhausen’s view was once more and freshly ascendant at just the time that Childs’s career began. On the location of Childs’s “canonical approach” in the period of historical-critical hegemony, see Seitz, Christopher R., “The Changing Face of Old Testament Studies,” in Word without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) 75–82Google Scholar.
19 Once more (see nn. 1, 10), the historical point that the present article has in view is a “sharp break” in Israel’s religio-historical trajectory; Childs accepts numerous other historical and literary claims made by Wellhausen, as any consultation of, for example, his Exodus commentary shows. The present article sets aside Wellhausen’s pentateuchal criticism, which was less important to Wellhausen in any case (he famously called his literary criticism “a game of skittles”); see Kratz, “Eyes and Spectacles,” as well as Rudolf Smend, “ Wellhausen, Julius,” in From Astruc to Zimmerli: Old Testament Scholarship in Three Centuries (trans. Kohl, Margaret; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007) 91–102Google Scholar, at 95–96.
20 I am indebted to Philip Sumpter for the neologism “theo-referential” (The Substance of Psalm 24: An Attempt to Read Scripture after Brevard S. Childs [LHBOTS 600; London: Bloomsbury, 2015] 151).
21 Brueggemann, Walter, Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World (ed. Miller, Patrick D. Jr.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000) 133Google Scholar n. 25.
22 See Brueggemann’s famous pronouncements on scriptural theo-referentiality—or lack thereof, e.g.: “I shall insist, as consistently as I can, that the God of Old Testament theology as such lives in, with, and under the rhetorical enterprise of this text, and nowhere else and in no other way” (Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, and Advocacy [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997] 66). Other theologians have criticized these claims, e.g., Strawn, Brent A., “On Walter Brueggemann: (A Personal) Testimony, (Three) Dispute(s), (and on) Advocacy,” in Imagination, Ideology and Inspiration: Echoes of Brueggemann in a New Generation (ed. Kaplan, Jonathan and Williamson, Robert Jr.; HBM 72; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2015) 9–47Google Scholar, at 25–32. See Jaco Gericke’s labeling of Brueggemann as a “crypto-atheist” (“A Fourth Paradigm? Some Thoughts on Atheism in Old Testament Scholarship,” OTE 25 [2012] 518–33, at 524), as well as Hankins, Davis C., “Introduction,” in Walter Brueggemann, Ice Axes for Frozen Seas: A Biblical Theology of Provocation (ed. Hankins, Davis C.; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press) 1–19Google Scholar.
23 Olson, Dennis T., “Zigzagging through Deep Waters: A Guide to Brevard Childs’s Canonical Exegesis of Scripture,” WW 29 (2009) 348–56Google Scholar, at 350; also idem, “Recent ‘Canonical Approach,’” 209.
24 James Barr calls Childs a “theological inerrantist,” and this is accurate, so far as it goes (The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999] 437). Childs would thus deny that biblical texts ever misrepresent their theological referent, as, for example, Rudolf Bultmann says of 1 Cor 15 (Faith and Understanding [trans. Louise Pettibone Smith; 2 vols.; New York: Harper & Row, 1969] 1:66–94), or Fretheim, Terence E. and Froehlich, Karlfried say in their “Is the Biblical Portrayal of God Always Trustworthy?” (The Bible as Word of God in a Postmodern Age [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1998] 97–111)Google Scholar. On the issue, see Jaspert, Bernd, “Sachkritik und Widerstand: das Beispiel Rudolf Bultmanns,” TLZ 115 (1990) 161–82Google Scholar.
25 This is an image beloved of Karl Barth. Childs does not cite it, though the vocabulary of scripture as “pointing” and “witness” is ubiquitous in his writings, e.g., “Scripture … points beyond itself to the reality of God” (BTONT, 721); see Driver, Brevard Childs, 137–59, and also Chapman, Stephen B., “Reading the Bible as Witness: Divine Retribution in the Old Testament,” PRSt 31 (2004) 171–90Google Scholar, at 171–75.
26 On Childs’s relation to Barth, see Scalise, Charles J., “Canonical Hermeneutics: Childs and Barth,” SJT 47 (1994) 61–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Driver, Brevard Childs, 89–93, 235–37, as well as Sumpter, Philip, “Trinity and the Canonical Process,” ThTo 72 (2016) 379–97Google Scholar. See also Childs’s own reminiscences in “Karl Barth and the Future of Theology,” in Karl Barth and the Future of Theology: A Memorial Colloquium Held at Yale Divinity School, January 28, 1969 (ed. David L. Dickerman; New Haven: Yale Divinity School Association, 1969) 30–39. On how Childs misreads Barth, however, by pursuing an integrative biblical theology rather than seriatim exegesis, see Barr, Concept, 412–16, also 243–45.
27 For comments on Childs’s characteristic theological vocabulary, see Sumpter, “Trinity and the Canonical Process,” 383–84.
28 This section takes inspiration from Sumpter, “Trinity and the Canonical Process;” also idem, “Verbum: The Shape of Israel’s Witness,” in The Substance of Psalm 24, 12–32.
29 BTONT, 125 on which, see Gunkel, Hermann, The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga and History (trans. Carruth, W. H.; 4th ed.; New York: Schocken Books, 1975)Google Scholar.
30 Chapman, Stephen B. observes, “Childs’s insistence on the correctness of interpreting the Old Testament theologically is ultimately historically-grounded and not dogmatically-based” (The Law and the Prophets: A Study in Old Testament Canon Formation [FAT 27; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000] 47Google Scholar n. 151).
31 On Childs’s inheritance of the concept Kanonbewußtsein from Isac L. Seeligman, see Driver, Brevard Childs, 173, although see also Don Collett’s caution that Childs’s concept descends from Otto Eissfeldt through Peter Ackroyd and Ronald Clements as well (review of Driver, ProEcc 23 [2014] 99–112, at 105); further, Chapman, Law and the Prophets, 20–23, 44–45 n. 36. On Childs’s characteristic vocabulary, see Sumpter, “Trinity and the Canonical Process,” 383–84.
32 For example, Wright, Jacob L., “The Commemoration of Defeat and the Formation of a Nation in the Hebrew Bible,” Prooftexts 29 (2009) 433–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 E.g., Watts, James W., “Scripturalization and the Aaronide Dynasties,” JHS 13 (2013) 1–15Google Scholar, http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_186.pdf.
34 For example, Carr, David M., Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 One is reminded of Walther Eichrodt: “It is not national feeling but religion which should be seen as the soil in which Israel’s bold expectation of the future grew to maturity. It was not because men wished to become a nation, or sought with sorrow a national status that had departed, that they ascribed to Yahweh a restoring action in the future. It was because they knew God” (Theology of the Old Testament [trans. J. A. Baker; 2 vols.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961] 1:501).
36 OTTCC, 148; also Olson, “Recent ‘Canonical Approach,’” 211.
37 Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979) 60; hereafter, IOTS.
38 This sentence perhaps registers disagreement with Philip Sumpter, who writes that “the later shapers of the received tradition … factored this growth in knowledge of the one [theological] referent into their presentation of the traditions which, in their opinion, only witnessed to this reality in fragmentary form”; or again: “the function of, say, the editor of a prophetic oracle, was to witness to the one reality of God for the community of faith by rendering that oracle more adequate to its object (“Trinity and the Canonical Process,” 390 [italics added]).
39 Childs: “basic to the canonical process is that those responsible for the actual editing of the text did their best to obscure their own identity … the original sociological and historical differences within the nation of Israel … were lost” (IOTS, 78). See also Chapman on “self-subsumption” (Law and the Prophets, 99–104).
40 Sumpter: “the editorial work on the oracle functions to improve its ability to do its job by, for example, emphasizing one dimension and deemphasizing another, or adding a significant perspective in order to shape the reader’s reception of a particular theme” (“Trinity and the Canonical Process,” 390).
41 On the language of “optimization” in connection with Childs and the final form, see Cornell, Collin, “Brevard Childs and the Treasures of Darkness,” SJT 71 (2018) 33–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 35–41. For more on the superiority of the final form, see also Seitz, Christopher R., “Canonical Approach,” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, 100–102; also idem, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011) 49–53Google Scholar.
42 The final form exercises a “critical function”—even a Sachkritik!—towards earlier levels of tradition in just this way: it clarifies prior strata for reception by the ongoing community of faith. “The effect of the canonical process was to render the tradition accessible to the future generation” (Childs, IOTS, 79 [italics added]); cf. Sumpter, “Trinity and the Canonical Process,” 390. Only the final form “bears witness to the full history of revelation” in that it alone reflects the accumulated discernment of God’s people about what features from the tradition’s previous forms continue to speak truthfully of God (IOTS, 75).
43 Barr thus exaggerates when he says, “Childs is stuck with two theories, a non-referential one for historical matters and a strongly referential one for theological matters” (Concept, 416).
44 Driver, Brevard Childs, 283.
45 Letter to Justus Olhausen of February 9, 1879 (Julius Wellhausen: Briefe [ed. Rudolf Smend with Peter Porzig and Reinhard Müller; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013] 55). On this opposition, see also Lothar Perlitt, “Hebraismus—Deuteronomismus—Judaismus,” as well as the critical essays of Pasto, “When the End Is the Beginning?”; Walter Brueggemann and Davis Hankins, “The Invention and Persistence of Wellhausen’s World”; and Bediako’s subtle, postcolonial critique of Wellhausen’s view of “primal religion” (Primal Religion and the Bible, 74–104).
46 Kratz: “the opposition between the original beginnings of a religion or culture which grew up naturally and are still completely earthy, and the later stage, in which things have assumed an institutionally established, artificial, and dogmatic state” (“Eyes and Spectacles,” 383).
47 Uwe Becker, “Julius Wellhausens Sicht,” at 299. I thank Philip Sumpter for suggesting the above translation.
48 BTONT, 135.
49 The two most important passages for understanding Childs’s rejection of Wellhausen are BTONT, 413–20 and OTTCC, 145–53. To note, in these and other passages where Childs engages Wellhausen, it is never in isolation. Childs usually lumps Wellhausen together with his epigones such as Perlitt, Lothar (esp. his Bundestheologie im Alten Testament [WMANT 36; Neukirchener: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969])Google Scholar, Kutsch, Ernst (Verheißung und Gesetz: Untersuchungen zum sogennanten ‘Bund’ im Alten Testament [BZAW 131; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973])CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or Nicholson, Ernest W. (God and His People: Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament [Oxford: Clarendon, 1986])Google Scholar. Childs also refers to Whitley, C. F., “Covenant and Commandment in Israel,” JNES 22 (1963) 37–48Google Scholar, cited in BTONT, 418. For convenience, the present article focuses more narrowly on Wellhausen himself, while keeping in mind that Wellhausen’s present-day heirs advocate for an updated version of his proposal (e.g., Becker, “Julius Wellhausens Sicht,” 299–302).
50 Zimmerli: “Wellhausen wanted to be a historian, and not a theologian. Nevertheless, he believed that through his historical studies he would contribute to the knowledge of God” (Law and the Prophets, 26).
51 Wellhausen’s resignation letter says that his teaching was making theological students unfit for ministry (Alfred Jepsen, “Wellhausen in Greifswald: ein Beitrag zur Biographie Julius Wellhausens,” in Der Herr ist Gott: Aufsätze zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1978) 254–70, at 266.
52 Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, My Recollections: 1848–1914 (trans. Richards, G. C.; London: Chatto & Windus, 1930) 226Google Scholar.
53 Perlitt, Lothar, Vatke und Wellhausen: Geschichtsphilosophische Vorraussetzungen und Historiographische Motive für die Darstellung der Religion und Geschichte Israels durch Wilhelm Vatke und Julius Wellhausen (BZAW 94; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1965) 229–43Google Scholar; idem, “Pectus est, quod theologum facit?” in Allein mit dem Wort: theologische Studien zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. Hermann Spieckermann; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1995) 256–62; Kratz, Reinhard G., “Auslegen und Erklären: über die theologische Bedeutung der Bibelkritik nach Johann Philipp Gabler,” in Johann Philipp Gabler 1753–1826 zum 250. Geburtstag (ed. Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm und Böttrich, Christfried; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2003) 53–74Google Scholar, at 66. Childs himself obliquely concurs (BTONT, 137). Smend quipped that Wellhausen had more biblical theology in his little finger than many professional theologians have in their hand (“Der Greifswalder Julius Wellhausen und die Biblische Theologie,” in Beyond Biblical Theologies [ed. Heinrich Assel, Stefan Beyerle, and Christfried Böttrich; WUNT 295; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012] 3–18, at 18).
54 Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte (10th ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002)Google Scholar.
55 Smend, “Der Greifswalder Julius Wellhausen,” 17. Smend develops the latter claim in more detail in his essay, Die Mitte des Alten Testaments (ThSt[B] 101; Zürich: EVZ-Verlag, 1970), reprinted in idem, Gesammelte Studien, Band I: die Mitte des Alten Testaments (BZET 99; München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986) 40–84. Here Smend situates Wellhausen’s formula against other proposals about the “center” of the Old Testament; see also Schmid, Hans H., “‘Ich will euer Gott sein, und ihr sollt mein Volk sein’: die sogenannte Bundesformel und die Frage nach der Mitte des Alten Testaments,” in Kirche: Festschrift für Günther Bornkamm (ed. Lührmann, Dieter and Strecker, Georg; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1980) 1–26Google Scholar; and McKane, William, “The Middle of the Old Testament,” in Covenant as Context: Essays in Honour of E.W. Nicholson (ed. Mayes, A. D. H. and Salters, R. B.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 261–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Childs does not cite Smend’s essay, although he does refer to Smend’s related work on Die Bundesformel (ThSt[B] 68; Zürich: EVZ-Verlag, 1963), cited in BTONT, 138, 142, 425; and Smend’s famous article on Karl Barth’s “Nachkritische Schriftauslegung,” in Parrhesia: Karl Barth zum 80. Geburtstag am 10. Mai 1966 (ed. Eberhard Busch, Jürgen Fangmeier, and Max Geiger; Zürich: EVZ-Verlag, 1966) 215–37, cited in IOTS, 70.
56 Perlitt’s works are here indispensable. Childs penned a review of Perlitt’s Vatke und Wellhausen and called it a “superb monograph” (JBL 84 [1965] 470).
57 Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, 103; all translations from the German are my own unless otherwise noted. For the historical context of Wellhausen’s antipathy to “book religion,” especially with reference to Herder, see Elrefaei, Wellhausen and Kaufmann, 44–47; Perlitt, Vatke und Wellhausen, 15–24; but also and contrastingly Weidner, “’Geschichte gegen den Strich bürsten,’” 39.
58 Wellhausen, review of F. Baethgen, DLZ 9 (1888) 1321, cited in Smend, Die Mitte, 67. See also Zimmerli, Law and the Prophets, 26.
59 Perlitt, Vatke und Wellhausen, 232.
60 Perlitt, “Pectus est,” 260.
61 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 79.
62 Ibid.
63 Much the same applies to Wellhausen’s view of Jesus and the canonical gospels: their abstract concepts and their textuality itself betray and do not faithfully mediate Jesus’s own naturalness and individualism (e.g., Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien [2nd ed.; Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1911]; see Kratz, “Eyes and Spectacles,” 385).
64 Childs’s resistance to Wellhausen’s supersessionism can be fruitfully compared with his resistance to some recent, apocalyptic Pauline scholarship, on which, see also Collett, Don (“A Tale of Two Testaments: Childs, Old Testament Torah, and Heilsgeschichte,” in The Bible as Christian Scripture: The Work of Brevard Childs [ed. Seitz, Christopher R. and Richards, Kent Harold; SBLBSNA 25; Atlanta: SBL, 2013] 185–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Childs repeatedly and disapprovingly plies the phrase “radical discontinuity” to describe (for instance) the way J. Louis Martyn relates law to gospel in the writings of Paul—the same vocabulary Childs uses of Wellhausen (The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008] 103). Childs’s main concern in opposing Martyn is theo-referential—in the divinely-facing sense. Martyn’s interpretation of Paul makes it impossible to treat the earlier, Mosaic law as an abidingly true testimony to the living God. In response, Childs insists that, even granting the newness of the gospel, the law must in some sense remain “the true voice of God”—because the same God who self-disclosed on Sinai acted decisively in Christ. Setting the dispensation from Sinai against God’s work in Christ renders impossible their mutual reference to the selfsame divine reality—just as setting preexilic against postexilic does, in the opposite direction, on Wellhausen’s account.
65 BTONT, 416.
66 Ibid., 415. For a subtle treatment of this issue of canon, power, and self-interest, see Chapman, Law and the Prophets, 93–110.
67 OTTCC, 148.
68 BTONT, 136, 414.
69 Ibid., 415.
70 Ibid., 417.
71 See also Strawn, “What Would (Or Should) Old Testament Theology Look Like,” 146–51; Chapman, Law and the Prophets, 93–110.
72 BTONT, 417. Childs brings up Alt as a counterbalance to Wellhausen in ibid., 135, 174. It is Childs’s instinct as a historian more than as a theologian that motivates him in BTONT to isolate would-be examples of early, preexilic texts attesting a free and conditional relationship between God and Israel (ibid., 418); see also OTTCC, 149.
73 This is a point of continuity—namely, a community’s transmission of a truthful testimony about God to another generation—that differs from other continuities within Wellhausen’s thesis that Childs or Zimmerli might recognize and affirm: e.g., the founding role of Moses for Israelite religion (Zimmerli, Law and the Prophets, 25). What this section attempts cannot be found in Childs’s oeuvre.
74 Aly Elrefaei emphasizes this point (Wellhausen and Kaufmann, 197–211). So Wellhausen: “The foundation upon which, at all periods, Israel’s sense of its national unity rested was religious in its character” (Prolegomena, 433).
75 For example, Knoll, K. L., “The Kaleidoscopic Nature of Divine Personality in the Hebrew Bible,” BI 9 (2001) 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 3–10.
76 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 436.
77 Ibid., 398; this translation is taken from Kratz, Reinhard G., The Prophets of Israel (trans. Hagedorn, Anselm C. and MacDonald, Nathan; CSHB 2; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015) 8Google Scholar.
78 Cf. Barton, John, “History and Rhetoric in the Prophets,” in The Bible as Rhetoric: Studies in Biblical Persuasion and Credibility (ed. Werner, Martin; Warwick Studies in Philosophy and Literature; London: Routledge, 1990) 51–64Google Scholar.
79 Smend remarked: “[Wellhausen’s] fundamental theme is belief: ‘Yahweh, Israel’s God, and Israel, Yahweh’s people.’ On that, the nation, its collective consciousness and its history all rest. This history is in essence religious history. Its great caesura was brought about by the clash with the Assyrian empire” (“Julius Wellhausen,” 99–100).
80 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 473.
81 Wellhausen: “with all this similarity, how different were the ultimate fates of the two [Moab and Israel]! The history of the one loses itself obscurely and fruitlessly in the sand; that of the other issues in eternity” (“Moab,” 535–36).
82 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 474.
83 This continuity is one reason why Smend advocates for the solidarity of YHWH and Israel as the center of Old Testament theology (Die Mitte). See McKane, “The Middle of the Old Testament,” for a comparison of Smend’s proposal with other twentieth-century accounts of Old Testament theology.
84 BTONT, 426.
85 The language of provisionality (e.g., “ad hoc,” “probationary”) used in this article to characterize Childs’s relationship to critical reconstructions reflects his (strategic) caginess about leaning on any one critical theory; see Philip Sumpter, “Comparison of Childs’s Exodus and Isaiah Commentaries: Continuity and Development” (paper presented at the International Meeting of SBL, Vienna, Austria, July 6–10, 2014).
86 Alt, Albrecht, “The God of the Fathers,” in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (trans. Wilson, R. A.; New York: Doubleday, 1967) 3–100Google Scholar.
87 BTONT, 125.
88 Ibid., 351. Childs does not cite Alt here, though his section bibliography includes Alt’s work on the “God of the Fathers” (ibid., 358). This essay is cited in bibliographies for the following sections: “Patriarchal Traditions” (ibid., 128) and “Covenant, Election, and the People of God” (ibid., 420). See also the section in OTTCC entitled, “Revelation through the name” (38–39).
89 Childs attributed this regrettable situation—of absolute sequester—to both von Rad and Wellhausen, albeit each in his own distinctive way. On von Rad, see BTONT, 102–3; on Wellhausen, see OTTCC, 148–49, as well as below (“Canonical Considerations”).
90 BTONT, 99.
91 “It is fully inadequate to restrict the nature of the Old Testament’s theological witness either by demanding absolute historical coherence or by positing in principle no relationship whatever” (OTTCC, 149 [italics added]).
92 BTONT, 100. See also ibid., 204–6, for further remarks on the dead-end of moving entirely from history to language for interpreting the Old Testament.
93 Childs introduces the contrast of emic and etic in ibid., 416. See also Sumpter, “Trinity and the Canonical Process,” 8, as well as Sláma, Petr, “Von richtiger Unterscheidung einer emischen und etischen Perspektive in neueren Theologien des Alten Testaments,” CV 58 (2016) 388–400Google Scholar.
94 OTTCC, 149. Compare Childs’s preference for Gunneweg’s reconstruction of the priesthood over Wellhausen’s.
95 BTONT, 351.
96 Alt: “The religion of ‘El is obviously to be distinguished from that of Yahweh” (“The God of the Fathers,” 11). Also, on the other hand: “from the very beginning [the “God of the fathers”] represents a quite different type of religion from that of the ‘Elim” (ibid., 29).
97 Loader, James A., “‘Theologia Religionum’ from the Perspective of Israelite Religion—An Argument,” Missionalia 12 (1984) 14–35Google Scholar; also, similarly, Anderson, James S., “El, Yahweh, and Elohim: The Evolution of God in Israel and its Theological Implications,” ExpTim 128 (2017) 261–67Google Scholar, at 266–67. Childs would heartily object to Loader’s procedure of making a reconstructed history of religions the theological norm rather than scripture’s final form. But this is besides the present point. The striking thing is Childs’s provisional acceptance of the same historical reconstruction that Loader cites.
98 Loader, “’Theologia Religionum,’” 28, 29.
99 Critically for Childs’s vision of theo-referentiality, humanly considered, Alt’s religio-historical succession apparently did not disrupt the various tradents’ belief in the truthfulness of their traditions vis-à-vis God: e.g., Alt’s remarks on how “the same fundamental outlook and practice are simply carried on to a higher plane,” as well as his famous statement about the “Gods of the fathers” as παιδαγωγοί leading to YHWH (“The God of the Fathers,” 78, 80). The devotees of the el numina believed their stories told truthfully about God(s), and the devotees of the “God of the fathers” believed their stories told truthfully, and the early Yahwists believed the same—and the difference of dispensations did not prevent the community from affirming the reference of their traditions to the selfsame divine reality; for more on the theo-referential unity of varied biblical traditions, see Stephen B. Chapman, “Brevard Childs as a Historical Critic: Divine Concession and the Unity of the Canon,” in Bible as Christian Scripture (ed. Seitz and Richards) 63–83, at 63.
100 The allusion to the line from Anna Bartlett Warners’s well-known children’s song “Jesus Loves Me” is, of course, puckish—but also content-rich, especially given Stephen B. Chapman’s coordination of the Old Testament witness to divine concession with the passion of Jesus Christ in idem, “Covenant God of Israel.” See also, similarly, Cornell, Collin, “Holy Mutability: Religionsgeschichte and Theological Ontology,” HBT 38 (2016) 200–20Google Scholar, at 215–20.
101 This translation is taken from OTTCC, 39.
102 Christopher R. Seitz presents a quite different and innovative reading of Exod 3 and 6, one that seems to stand in tension with Childs’s more customary critical interpretation (“The Call of Moses and the Revelation of the Divine Name: Source-Critical Logic and its Legacy,” in Theological Exegesis [ed. Seitz and Green-McCreight] 145–67).
103 OTTCC, 148.
104 See, e.g., Fretheim, Terence E., “The Repentance of God: A Key to Evaluating Old Testament God-Talk,” HBT 10 (1988) 47–70Google Scholar, reprinted in What Kind of God? Collected Essays of Terence E. Fretheim (ed. Michael J. Chan and Brent A. Strawn; Siphrut 14; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015) 40–57.
105 BTONT, 357. Childs elsewhere writes more positively: “the Hebrew idiom of God’s ‘repenting of his resolve’ retains the integrity of the divine will, but allows for decision and flexibility in relation to a genuine human history” (OTTCC, 53).
106 Sonnet, Jean-Pierre, “God’s Repentance and ‘False Starts’ in Biblical History (Genesis 6–9; Exodus 32–34; 1 Samuel 15 and 2 Samuel 7),” in Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007 (ed. Lemaire, André; VTSup 133; Leiden: Brill, 2010) 469–94Google Scholar. On the related theme of divine concession, see Chapman, Stephen B., “Childs as a Historical Critic”; also idem, “Covenant God of Israel”; and idem, “Martial Memory, Peaceable Vision: Divine War in the Old Testament,” in Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem (ed. Thomas, Heath A., Evans, Jeremy A., and Copan, Paul; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013) 47–67Google Scholar, esp. 61–67.
107 Fretheim, “Repentance of God,” 48.
108 Sonnet, “God’s Repentance,” 470.
109 Sonnet uses this word in ibid., 471, 472, 477.
110 Ibid., 490.
111 Though see Sonnet on “Genetic Hypotheses,” in ibid., 480–82.
112 BTONT, 100, continues: “At times Israel’s confessional witness overlaps fully with common public testimony. … At other times there is virtually no relation.”
113 Ibid., 105.
114 Sonnet, “God’s Repentance,” 476.
115 For a pithy statement of this distinction, see Barr, James, “The Problem of Old Testament Theology and the History of Religion,” CTJ 3 (1957) 141–49Google Scholar, at 145; also Spieckermann, Hermann, “’YHWH Bless You and Keep You’: The Relation of History of Israelite Religion and Old Testament Theology Reconsidered,” SJOT 23 (2009) 165–82Google Scholar; and Cornell, “Holy Mutability,” 202–4.
