ABSTRACT
I took my first course in the introduction to the Old Testament in the fall of 1963 at Saint Paul’s College in Concordia, Missouri. It liberalized my views, for one of the chief texts was George Ernest Wright’s Biblical Archaeology (Wright 1962). I became an Albrightian and moved away from the unconscious fundamentalism of my earlier education. Then in the fall of 1966 I became acquainted with the four source documentary hypothesis, and my views shifted further to the left as I underwent a second intellectual transformation. After reading the books by Thomas Thompson (The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives) and John Van Seters (Abraham in History and Tradition) in the 1970s, my scholarly opinions were challenged yet again (Thompson 1974; Van Seters 1975). But not until the later 1980s did I become convinced of the views expressed by Van Seters and others, that the bulk of the Pentateuchal material was exilic and post-exilic. I thus undertook a third great intellectual shift. In the 1990s my views were challenged by Giovanni Garbini, Niels Peter Lemche, and others, and by the 2000s I became increasingly convinced that some of the materials in the Primary History originated after 300 bce in the Hellenistic era. That was my fourth paradigm shift. By the 2010s, as I published my own critical observations, I became convinced that a goodly portion of the Primary History originated in the Hellenistic era, and moved even further into a critical perspective of the biblical text. After five such significant intellectual paradigm shifts in my life, I don’t think I can move any further. Much of where I have come to stand presently is due especially to the writings of Niels Peter Lemche and others in the Copenhagen school. A detailed presentation and discussion of outstanding founders and members of the Copenhagen school are offered in the first chapter. I consider myself, however, a somewhat “modified minimalist” in that I believe significant portions of the Primary History originated in the Persian period, but that the final form of the Primary History assumed its shape in the Hellenistic era after 300 bce with equally significant additions, not long before the gradual, piecemeal translations of the Greek Septuagint. (However, who knows where the 2020s will take my views.)
