ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some problems in Gerhard von Rad's reconstruction of the early Israelite world-view and analyses few questions about the internal coherence of his presentation. The notion of a Hexateuch is more problematic than von Rad thought, and hard to square with the now widely accepted idea of a Deuteronomic History beginning with Deuteronomy. One factor which complicates von Rad's reconstruction of the Israelite world-view is his own attitude towards the Old Testament. Robert Alter's discussion also treats Hebrew narrative as a whole, and focuses it as characterized throughout by the enigmatic, theologically and psychologically sensitive quality that von Rad tends to restrict to the two major works of the Solomonic Enlightenment. Von Rad tries to show that the wise men of the Old Testament presuppose the faith of Israel' as the backdrop to their own wisdom, rather than being purely humanistic teachers.
