James Muilenburg

Form Criticism and beyond

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The Form and Structure of the Covenantal Formulations

In no area of biblical study has the application of the critical methodologies employed in recent decades proved more fruitful than in our investigations of the Deuteronomic literature. Thanks to the criticism of literary types and to the analysis of the history of traditions we have come to a truer estimate of the range and character of this literature and of the creative forces which went to its making. It has become increasingly clear that behind the promulgation of the Deuteronomic Code of 621 B.C. lies a long history of literary and cultic activity and that this history extends through the rest of the Old Testament, notably in the great prophetic corpuses of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the hymns and liturgies of the Psalter, and the work of the Chronicler, and beyond these into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. 1) It should be possible now to trace the course of this development from its beginnings to its culmination in the Qumran texts and early Christian literature with some degree of clarity and to discern the contexts in which they most characteristically appear. Even though Deuteronomic style and theology come to classical expression in the Book of Deuteronomy, it is questionable whether the term Deuteronomic is altogether satisfactory since it tends to call too exclusive attention to the Book and to the Josianic Reformation and does less than justice to the whole stream of develop-

Modern Issues in Biblical Studies The Gains of Form Criticism in Old Testament Studies

IT was a stroke of singularly good fortune for modern Biblical scholarship that the foremost exponent of form-critical studies should have been a scholar with the diversity of gifts and vast erudition of Hermann Gunkel. His was a manyfaceted genius. He was able as no other before or after him to combine into a creative synthesis the various disciplines essential to responsible formcritical investigation. Heir to more than a generation of intense historico-critical research classically exemplified in the Wellhausen school, he succeeded in pressing the frontiers of Biblical studies into