Bücher der Reihe Julius-Wellhausen-Vorlesung

Die Vorlesung widmet sich der Frage, wann und unter welchen Umstanden die Rezeption orientalischer Traditionen in der antiken griechischen Kultur stattfand. Durch spektakulare Thesen uber die orientalische Herkunft der homerischen Epen ist die Frage in jungster Zeit wieder hochst aktuell geworden und wird kontrovers diskutiert. Albrecht Dihle geht das einschlagige Material von den orientalischen Lehnwortern im Griechischen uber die kunstgeschichtlichen Einflusse der klassischen Zeit bis hin zu den philosophischen Diskursen und den Mysterienkulten der Spatzeit Punkt fur Punkt durch. Auf diese Weise zeichnet er ein lebendiges und zugleich differenziertes Bild der Begegnung und des wechselseitigen Austauschs zwischen Ost und West im Laufe der Geschichte des griechischen Altertums.

Der dritte im Rahmen der Julius-Wellhausen-Vorlesung erscheinende Band behandelt den Dschihad vornehmlich als historisches Phanomen. Van Ess erklart die gegenwartige Entwicklung nicht nur vom Koran und der Prophetentradition her, sondern auch als Ergebnis jahrhundertelanger Uberlegungen zur sachgemaen Interpretation des Begriffs. Da die heutige islamische Welt von westlichen Vorstellungen mitgepragt sei, liege die Vermutung nahe, dass in der gegenwartigen Verwirklichung des Dschihad westliche Handlungsmuster ebenso wie islamische Denkformen zum Ausdruck kommen.

In one form or another, the Trisagion, "e;Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory"e;, entered Jewish and Christian liturgy at an early stage from Isaiah's account of his vision as recorded in Isaiah 6. Before that happened, however, it is likely that it went through a significant change of meaning from what the Old Testament prophet himself meant by it. Drawing on material that was familiar to him from the worship of the Jerusalem temple, he used it distinctly but characteristically to challenge his audience's view that God would automatically protect them from their enemies. In other words, the saying had a threatening rather than an encouraging tone. In the course of the following centuries, however, as the book of Isaiah grew, new reflections on the saying were added in the later chapters, with the result that when the book came to be translated into Greek the translator was justified in rendering the saying in the way that has become familiar to us. The unusual retention of the Hebrew word "e;Sabaoth"e;, however, reminds us even today of the long path by which it has reached us from antiquity.

This booklet is a fresh consideration of German-speaking scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls; it divides the scholarship into two phases corresponding with pre- and post 1989 Germany. In the first phase the dominant place given to how the scrolls inform the context of Jesus is analyzed as one of several means through which the study of Judaism was revitalized in post-war Germany. Overall it is argued that the study of the Scrolls has been part of the broader German tradition of the study of antiquity, rather than simply a matter of Biblical Studies. In addition the booklet stresses the many very fine German contributions to the provision of study resources, to the masterly techniques of manuscript reconstruction, to the analysis of the scrolls in relation to the New Testament and Early Judaism, and to the popularization of scholarship for a thirsty public. It concludes that German scholarship has had much that is distinctive in its study of the Dead Sea Scrolls.