Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Deutsche Gelehrte gegen Mythisierung; von Rad, Kraus, Alt

Kurzinhalt: that another, specifically Israelite cult dominated the order; the cult-functional method was thus used by von Rad to show the existence of a cult which had its place in the context of the Sinaitic revelation

Textausschnitt: 68/9 In order to answer this question in the negative, it had first to be shown that an orbit of historical form existed indeed in the cult of Israel; that the cosmological symbolism was not as pervasive in the cult of the monarchy as the Scandinavian accents made it look; but that another, specifically Israelite cult dominated the order. And the existence of such a cult was proven with a high degree of probability indeed by the studies of Gerhard von Rad, when he demonstrated the character of the Sinai pericope (Exod. 19-24) as a cult legend and, furthermore, showed that its form was used in the construction of Deuteronomy. Moreover, Psalms 50 and 81 were found to contain elements (the Sinaitic appearance of Yahweh, the pronouncement of the Decalogue) that would be explained best by the assumption of a "Covenant Festival" at which Psalms of this type had a cultic function. Mowinckel's cult-functional method was thus used by von Rad to show the existence of a cult which had its place not in the ritual re-creation of cosmic order, divine and royal, but in the context of the Sinaitic revelation. (293f; Fs)
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... For first, the historical symbol of the Covenant enters, without impairment of meaning, into the cosmological form of cultic renewal; while second, the tradition of the historical event is couched in the form of a cult legend which no longer permits a reconstruction of the course of events in terms of pragmatic history; and third, the form of the cult legend, which has absorbed the historical events, is applied to the organization of a literary work like Deuteronomy which poses quite difficult formal problems of its own. (294f; Fs)
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72/9 With the prophetic institution of kingship secured, the attack could be undertaken. The kingship in Jerusalem as the point of irruption for the oriental symbolism, as well as the massiveness of the irruption, were acknowledged. The question now was "how far these mythical elements became subordinate to the main statements of the royal cult, or how far they preserved themselves as components in their own right" - a question to be answered in favor of the first alternative. Alt found it difficult to believe that "the supposedly general oriental divine kingship" should have been received into the Israelite order unless it had been transformed (umgebildet) so far that ...