Böcker av Christoph Berner

Biblical books, which were transmitted on separate scrolls in antiquity, are not necessarily identical with books in the modern sense of a coherent and self-contained compositional unit. The books of the Primary History especially constitute a larger master narrative. This raises the question of how the distribution of the text to different scrolls relates to its compositional history. Were the respective books conceived as physically separate parts of a multivolume composition (whether Pentateuch, Hexateuch, Deuteronomistic History or Enneateuch) from the outset, or are we dealing with a more complex development of originally independent compositional units that were only connected or separated by later redaction? The present volume addresses these issues with respect to the transitions between the books of Genesis/Exodus and Joshua/Judges, which have obviously developed in dependency upon each other.

Die Arbeit bietet die erste Untersuchung aller heptadisch strukturierten Geschichtsentwurfe aus der Zeit des Zweiten Tempels. Behandelt werden Dan 9, das athiopische Henochbuch, das Jubilaenbuch, die Qumrantexte und das Testament Levis. Durch detaillierte Einzelexegesen wird gezeigt, dass jeder Text ein individuelles geschichtstheologisches Profil aufweist. Im Hintergrund der zu verzeichnenden Gemeinsamkeiten steht keine universell gultige Referenzchronologie, sondern die Arbeit mit denselben chronologischen Traditionen, die je nach theologischem Interesse uberformt werden.