Martin Noth (August 3, 1902 - May 30, 1968 was a German scholar of the Hebrew Bible who specialized in the pre-Exilic history of the Hebrews.
He was born in Dresden, Germany and moved to Israel.
He first attracted widespread attention in 1930 with Das System der zwölf Stämme Israels (“The Scheme of the Twelve Tribes of Israel”), positing that the Twelve tribes of Israel that constituted a unified people of Israel did not exist prior to the covenant assembly in Canaan, at Shechem. The book and further refinements in his thinking pioneered a new approach to understanding the developing traditions that were embodied finally in the composition of the Pentateuch, or Torah. Instead of viewing the Pentateuch as composed of four written sources, Noth argued that blocks of traditional material accreted round some key historical experiences. His mature work resulted in A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, 1948 (English translation 1972). Thus his introduction and commentary on Numbers also gives a critical account of the growth of the traditions that lay behind it.
Essentially, Martin Noth recognized several major themes of the tradition embodied in the written Pentateuch, which he termed "Guidance out of Egypt," "Guidance into the Arable Land," "Promise to the Patriarchs," "Guidance in the Wilderness" and "Revelation at Sinai." He saw the details of the narrative as serving to fill out the thematic outline.
Even more revolutionary and influential, quite reorienting the emphasis of modern scholarship, was the work of Noth regarding the understanding of the books that encompass Joshua to 2 Kings as the "Deuteronomistic history" (see The Deuteronomist). He recognized in Joshua a sixth book in the same tradition as the Pentateuch, giving impetus to the term the "Hexateuch".
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Last updated: 10-13-2005 22:49:26
