German Scholarship and Joel
March 26, 2009
In his 2001 commentary, Barton says (7) “In a scholarly discipline so dominated by German scholarship as Old Testament Studies, it is interesting to note that both major theories about the origins of Joel go back to a work in French”. This is interesting and not just for what it states; Barton here expresses the feeling that OLd Testament Studies is still dominated by German Scholarship. There is truth in this insofar as monographs and commentaries have a “history of scholarship” to wade through which is in the main German – “the classics”. Some are translated into English. However, in terms of living scholars working and writing today, it is English language scholarship that dominates, and this has come about as a result of the literary turn in Old Testament scholarship.
