Norman k gottwald biography meaning

Norman Gottwald was my teacher when I was doing graduate studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California in the early 1970s.  One of the courses I took with Gottwald was a class on Old Testament Theology.

In preparation for class discussion, Gottwald gave the students three weeks to read Gerhard von Rad’s two volumes Old Testament Theology and Walter Eichrodt’s two volumes Old Testament Theology.  Then, we spent two weeks discussing the content and methodology of these two classical works in Old Testament theology.

The rest of the quarter we spent studying the first five chapters of Gottwald’s magisterial work, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel 1250-1050 B.C.E. It was a great experience being there when Gottwald was using his class to provide feedback on a book that made a great impact on Old Testament studies.  A few years later, when I was working on my Ph.D. at The Southern Baptist Seminary, our Old Testament colloquiu

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Será que existe alguém aqui no Brasil que lida com Bíblia Hebraica / Antigo Testamento e/ou com História de Israel que ainda não conhece Norman K Gottwald? E sua teoria da revolta camponesa ou da retribalização, para explicar as origens de Israel? E que nunca tropeçou em seu “tijolaço” de quase mil páginas chamado The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.C.E. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1979 [2. ed. 1999], em português: As Tribos de Iahweh: Uma Sociologia da Religião de Israel Liberto, 1250-1050 a.C. 2. ed. São Paulo: Paulus, 2004 [1. ed. 1986]?

Roland Boer, Professor no Departamento de Teologia da Universidade Newcastle, Austrália, autor do blog Stalin’s Moustache, publicou ontem, 29/04/2011, na Monthly Review, o artigo:

Norman Gottwald: A Pioneering Marxist Biblical Scholar

Assim começa o artigo:
Norman Gottwald belongs to a rare breed — an American Marxist biblical scholar. More than one jarring jux

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Norman Gottwald belongs to a rare breed — an American Marxist biblical scholar.  More than one jarring juxtaposition in that epithet!  Unfortunately, he is less well known outside the relative small circle of biblical scholars than he should be.  In beställning to introduce him to a wider audience, let me säga a little about his scholarly achievements and then some more concerning his activism.

Marxism and Ancient Israel

In contrast to the flowering of Marxist approaches to the Bible today, Gottwald first began work in the 1950s, when the US academy was largely hostile to such approaches.  After a few relatively conventional starts — an introduction to the Bible and a study of the biblical book of lamentations¹ — Gottwald set his mind to a comprehensive study of the origins of ancient Israel.  The result, after more than a decade of work, was The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the tro of Liberated Israel 1250-1050 B.C.E., first published in 1979 and reprin