"Little historical creed" or "little historical anamnesis"?

Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Volumn 68, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-10

  Cody, Aelred ^a  

^a St Meinrad Archabbey   (United States)

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EID: 60950103338     PISSN: 00087912     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (34)

1. We can remind ourselves of the state of the discipline as it was at the middle of the twentieth century by perusing the surveys, by various authors, in The Old Testament in Modern Study: A Generation of Discovery and Research (ed. H. H. Rowley; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951).
2. See also H. H. Rowley, The Changing Pattern of Old Testament Studies (A. S. Peake Memorial Lectures 4; London: Epworth, 1959).
3. Does in Deut 26:10 mean "best products" or " firstfruits"? In Exod 23:19 and in Exod 34:26, we find. Since are "firstfruits," we must conclude that the word is not merely a synonym of but is a word meaning something like "the best," a meaning that clearly has in Deut 18:4. In Deut 26:1-11, nothing is said about. In this essay, following Otto Eißfeldt (Erstlinge und Zehnten [BWAT 22; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1917] 46), the of Deut 26:1-11 will be translated "firstfruits," although may convey an idea of excellence that itself does not convey.
4. In the present context, the ancestor's being is probably related to his going down to Egypt. Does mean "restless," or "fugitive," or perhaps "about to perish"? For the various interpretations of the phrase, see Alan R. Millard, "A Wandering Aramean," JNES 39 (1980) 153-55. Millard himself concludes that the ancestor was "a political refugee and a social misfit."
5. Gerhard von Rad, Das formgeschichtliche Problem des Hexateuch (BWANT 26; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938;
6. reprinted in von Rad, Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament [TBü 8; Munich: Kaiser, 1961] 9-86;
7. Eng. trans. in The Problem of the Hexateuch and Other Essays [trans. E. W. Trueman Dicken; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966] 1-78). Subsequent references to this work will be to the English translation of 1966, then to the original German publication of 1938, then to the German reprint of 1961.
8. The existence of summaries of past events from the exodus to the occupation of the land had already been noticed by Anton Jirku (Die älteste Geschichte Israels im Rahmen lehrhafter Darstellungen [Leipzig: Deichert, 1917] 105).
9. See Siegfried Kreuzer, "Anton Jirkus Beitrag zum 'formgeschichtlichen Problem' des Tetrateuch," AfO 33 (1986) 65-76. Unlike von Rad, Jirku did not call such summaries "creeds."
10. Von Rad seems to have considered this connection secondary, however.
11. As a biblical critic, Gerhard von Rad was interested in literary Formgeschichte. As a biblical theologian, he was also interested in celebrations of God's saving acts, in ritual Sitze im Leben that might enhance the theological relevance of texts belonging to a particular form or Gattung. For von Rad (Problem of the Hexateuch, 18-19 = Das formgeschichtliche Problem, 16 = Gesammelte Studien, 26), traditions about the exodus, found in passages that he considered creeds, were Heilsgeschichte ("redemptive history" in the English translation), while traditions about the events at Sinai, absent from those passages, had to do with Gesetz ("law," which the English translator has specified as "apodictic law"). History, particularly the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte), was an object of belief, something Israelites might confess in a creed. Law was not.
12. James L. Crenshaw (Gerhard von Rad [Waco: Word, 1989] 31), reporting that von Rad once called himself "a little historical monomaniac," explains his self-assessment in the light of his (von Rad's) concern with the history of Israelite traditions, "understood as salvation history, that is, [as] confessional statements of divine action." (The fact that Yhwh, Israel's God, was a god of history did not alone distinguish Yhwh from all other gods in the ancient Near East, for of some pagan gods, too, it can be said that they were considered governors of historical destiny.)
13. The "historical creed" may not be as old as von Rad thought. Leonhard Rost (Das kleine Credo und andere Studien zum Alten Testament [Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1965] 11-25) decided, mainly after a philological investigation marred by inaccuracies, that the only old material (i.e., pre-Deuteronomic material) in Deut 26:5-9 is the reference to an ancestral Aramaean in v. 5,
14. but Dwight R. Daniels ("The Creed of Deuteronomy xxvi Revisited," in Studies in the Pentateuch [ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 41; Leiden: Brill, 1990] 231-42) came to the opposite conclusion, namely, that Deut 26:5-9 is early, although it has undergone some insignificant Deuteronomic retouching.
15. Wolfgang Richter ("Beobachtungen zur theologischen Systembildung in der alttestamentlichen Literatur anhand des 'kleinen geschichtlichen Credo,'" in Wahrheit und Verkündigung: Michael Schmaus zum 70. Geburtstag [2 vols.; ed. Leo Scheffczyk, Werner Dettloff, and Richard Heinzmann; Munich: Schöningh, 1967] 2. 125-212) concluded, mainly after studying the history of traditions, that Deut 26:5-9 could not be earlier than the Book of Deuteronomy.
16. Norbert Lohfink ("Zum 'kleinen geschichtlichen Credo,' Dtn 26,5-9," TP 46 [1971] 19-39,
17. reprinted in Lohfink, Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur deuteronomistischen Literatur, 1 [ed. Gerhard Dautzenberg and Norbert Lohfink; Stuttgarter biblische Aufsatzbände 8; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1990] 263-90), pointing out Deuteronomic language and relatively late allusions both in Deut 26:5-9 and in its literary context (Deut 26:1-11), showed that much of Deut 26:5-9 is based on Num 20:15-16, a text older, therefore, than Deut 26:5-9.
18. For example, in Herbert B. Huffmon, "The Exodus, Sinai, and the Credo," CBQ 27 (1965) 101-13
19. or, more recently, in Siegfried Kreuzer, Die Frühgeschichte Israels in Bekenntnis und Verkündigung des Alten Testaments (BZAW 178; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1989) 19-82.
20. Among those who have questioned the idea that the history of salvation is the proper object of Israel's faith are T. C. Vriezen ("Geloof, Openbaring en Geschiedenis in de nieuwste Oud-Testamentische Theologie, II," Kerk en Theologie 16 [1965] 210-18),
21. James M. Barr (Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments [Currie Lectures 1964; London: SCM, 1966] 65-102),
22. and Hans-Joachim Kraus (Die biblische Theologie: Ihre Geschichte und Problematik [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970] 355-60). The way in which revelation actually takes place is another matter with a set of questions all its own.
23. Mario Liverani ("Memorandum on the Approach to Historiographie Texts," Or 42 [1973] 178-94, esp. 181-82) suggests that in order to understand a text, we need to compare it with other texts of a homologous series, which may be the fairly obvious one of a literary genre common to them all but which may be one seemingly alien in time or space. In trying to understand a text like Deut 26:5-9, we may find it useful to suspend our acceptance of the genre "historical creed" and to compare our text with those of the genre "anamnesis," seemingly removed in time and space, but perhaps really homologous.
24. Michael Downey, "Praying the Creed," in The New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship (ed. Peter E. Fink, S.J.; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press [Michael Glazier], 1990) 302.
25. Frank C. Senn, "Anamnesis," in New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship, 48.
26. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.; Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1993) s.v.
27. This point was made by Dennis J. McCarthy ("What Was Israel's Historical Creed?" Lexington Theological Quarterly 4 [1969] 46-53, esp. 52-53).
28. On the anamnestic quality of the early parts of some anaphoras, see Louis Ligier, "Célébration divine et anamnèse dans la première partie de l'anaphore ou canon de la messe orientale," in Eucharisties d'Orient et d'Occident (2 vols.; Lex orandi 47; Paris: Cerf, 1970) 2. 139-78.
29. Georg Braulik ("Die Abfolge der Gesetze in Deuteronomium 12-26 und der Dekalog," in Das Deuteronomium: Entstehung, Gestalt und Botschaft [ed. Norbert Lohfink; BETL 68; Leuven: Peeters, 1985] 252-72;
30. The expression "performative utterance" was coined by J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (William James Lectures 1955; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962);
31. see also Austin, Philosophical Papers (ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock; Oxford: Clarendon, 1961) 220-39.
32. P. A. H. de Boer, Gedenken und Gedächtnis in der Welt des Alten Testaments (Franz Delitzsch-Vorlesungen 1960; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962),
33. and Willy Schottroff, "Gedenken" im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament (WMANT 15; 2nd ed.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967).
34. For Lohfink ("Zum 'kleinen geschichtlichen Credo,'" 30-39