1987

My recent monograph, Early Israel, includes a short excursus devoted to ‘the Study of Israelite History from J. Wellhausen to A. Alt’. This chapter, which was originally conceived as part of that monograph, offers material for the judgement of scholars such as Julius Wellhausen, Eduard Meyer and Hugo Gressmann, to name but a few.

The ten scholars, whose works on early Israelite history are evaluated below, have something to contribute to the modern discussion of early Israel, or, better, their influence has never ceased. Perhaps their results are no longer very important; but the impact of the intensive study of early Israelite history around the turn of this century is still heavily felt in many newer histories, even in such a major work as Herbert Donner's Geschichte des VolkesIsrael undseiner Nachbarn in Grundzugen (yet in a much lesser degree in J. Alberto Soggin's A History of Israel). I return to this topic in the final part of this chapter and try to offer some examples of such continuity regarding a topic, which was apparently created by the appearance of Albrecht Alt's studies on the Israelite settlement and state formation.

The works of Alt, and later of his student Martin Noth, mark the summit of the classical tradition of biblical scholarship; but, at the same time, they have contributed to the downfall of this scholarly tradition. It is my intention to demonstrate that although Alt, in his investigation of the Israelite settlement process, which was followed as it was by the massive historical analyses of Martin Noth, marked a break with previous research, which, however, was never complete.