Bundestheologie im Alten Testament. Ein Buch von Lothar Perlitt und seine Folgen

The article discusses the influential book by Lothar Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament, 1969, and its impact on Old Testament scholarship. Four examples are given of its lasting influence: 1) that present research on the Pentateuch as a rule applies a redaction critical rather than a source critical approach, 2) that Joshua 24 is almost unanimously regarded as a thoroughly deuteronomic-deuteronomistic text which does not contain any kernel of older tradition from pre-monarchical times, 3) that the concept of a covenant between God and Israel as the basis of Israel's relationship with her God nowadays is widely regarded as a creation of the deuteronomic-deuteronomistic movement, and 4) that there has been development in Biblical studies of the last decades that may be called a »return to Wellhausen«, concerning the overall view of Israelite-Jewish religious history, emphasizing the fundamental change after the fall of the monarchy in Israel and Judah, i.e. the development from a regular West-Semitic state religion of the two monarchies to the Jewish religion that dominates the Old Testament writings.