When my “The Old Testament—a Hellenistic Book?” was published for the first time—in Danish 1 —my old teacher and mentor, Professor Eduard Nielsen vehemently opposed the idea that the formation of the Old Testament mainly belong to the Hellenistic Period. 2 Among other things he warned me of the fate of Maurice Vernes, who at the end of the 19th century opted for a very late date of the Hebrew literature and consequently—apart from a note in a short History of ancient Israel by Frants Buhl and a likewise short mentioning in Robert H. Pfeiffer’s introduction 3 —was completely forgotten. Extremist ideas like that will prepare a graveyard for the scholar who entertains such outrageous opinions. That was the general idea.
My answer to this warning was that Vernes’ example is indeed outrageous and should be considered a memento, not to the members of my circle but to Old Testament scholarship in general. It should remind it of its former bad ways. 4 I was not surprised that such things have happened within Old Testament scholarship. It goes well with the general impression of the field from many years of experience, leaving the bodies of too critical scholars all along the route, forcing critical as well as apologetic minds to seek refuge in other and greener pastures like assyriology.
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1 “Det gamle Testamente som en hellenistisk bog”, Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 55 (1992), 81-101. Subsequent revised English edition “The Old Testament-A Hellenistic Book?” SJOT 7 (1993), 163-193.
2 Eduard Nielsen, “En hellenistisk bog?”, Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 55 (1992), 161-174.
3 Frants Buhl, Det israelitiske Folks Historie (1st ed 1892), here quoted according to the 6th printing (Copenhagen, Kristiania, London, Berlin 1922), 12; Robert H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (rev. ed.; New York 1941), 528.
4 “Det gamle Testamente, David og hellenismen. Svar til Folker Willesen og Eduard Nielsen”, Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 57 (1994), 20-39, 35-36.
Lemche, Niels Peter. “Ideology and the History of Ancient Israel.” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 14, no. 2 (June 2000): 165–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/09018320050178790.
