Abstrakt
The Emergence of Modernity posed new questions to Christianity. The religion that had been characterized as historical, connecting the image of God with particular historical events, has suddenly got a problem with history.
Critical inquiry of the past has often disproved these events. To save the validity of the Bible amid historical criticism, a new literary genre has appeared since the very end of the 1700s which was called Theology of the Old Testament.
The ambition of the new genre was to formulate what is, then, the Old Testament all about. History stood as a godmother of the new genre and it is, therefore, no wonder that the way any OT Theology relates to history is one of its most telling features.
In this book, a few dozen OT theologies written in the last two centuries are scrutinized with special regard to their relation to history. Also, history as a special way of making sense of the past is discussed.
Finally, a distinction between emic (taken from within a literary work) and etic (taken from outside of a literary work) perspectives are being suggested as an important criterion for understanding any Old Testament theology.