ABSTRACT
The minimalist approach has taken part in the changing perspectives in the humanities, in particular in the science of history of the 1980s and 1990s and thus, without doubt, triggered a change of perspectives in biblical studies. In the light of this, De Wette can be considered to be the founder and first representative of modern minimalist approach. According to him, biblical history in the Pentateuch and Chronicles in any case, and on the whole, elsewhere is not history but myth, not sources for the history of Israel and Judah but the witness and source of faith. Although biblical history is myth and not history, the myth itself still has a history and is therefore a source of cultural and religious history. Wellhausen's reconstruction of a development from history to myth seems only to be an interlude between the myth of the beginning in oral tradition and the myth at the end of the written tradition.
