Gerhard Von Rad - Appraisal By Other Biblical Scholars

Appraisal By Other Biblical Scholars

  • Victor Premasagar, a Cambridge tripos and past Principal of the Andhra Christian Theological College, Secunderabad, India in introducing critical methods and tools used in Biblical interpretation writes about von Rad as:
“ .....a major contributor to Old Testament studies following the literary-critical tradition of Wellhausen and the form-critical and the traditio-historical approach of Hermann Gunkel as developed by Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth. ”

Prof. Premasagar concludes by saying that

“ the Bible for von Rad, in the final analysis, is neither history nor literature, but rather the confessions of a community. ”
  • Henning Graf Reventlow of Ruhr University, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany in introducing a book of von Rad makes the following observations:
“ ...a number of von Rad's innovative papers prepared the way for the blossoming of Old Testament studies in Germany during the first decennia after the Second World War. ”
  • Gerhard Hasel of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary of Andrews University, Michigan, United States in writing about the approaches to OT studies makes mention about von Rad with the words....,
“ A new methodological approach for OT theology, one that deserves to be put in a class by itself, is that of Gerhard von Rad. His OT theology needs to be understood as the theology of the historical and prophetic traditions. ”
  • John H. Hayes, Professor at Candler School of Theology of the Emory University in Atlanta, United States writes about von Rad as...
“ In his theology, with its challenge of previous methodologies and with its new proposals, von Rad (1901-71) inaugurated a new epoch in the study of Old Testament theology. He argued against any organization of Old Testament theology along the lines of central concepts, pervasive topics, assumed structures of Israelite thought or world of faith, or systematic theological categories which had been characteristic, in one way or another, of all the theologies of the twentieth century since this was to impose an alien structure on the material. ”
  • G. Henton Davies, past President, Regent's Park College in Oxford University, Oxford, England, writes about Prof. von Rad thus
“ Gerhard Von Rad has been a regular contributor to Old Testament studies since 1929, although his main works were published between 1947 and 1960. His major writings include his studies on Deuteronomy; his commentary on Genesis; his two volumes of Theology of the Old Testament and a representative selection of his essays, extending from 1931 through 1964, which were translated and published as The Problem of the Hexateuch and other Essays in 1966, though the bulk of these were written in the late 1940s. ”

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