Ernst Kutsch

Ernst Kutsch (born June 17, 1921 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 26, 2009 in Erlangen ) was a German Protestant theologian . Most recently, he taught as a professor for the Old Testament at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg .

Life

Ernst Kutsch was born as the son of Ferdinand Kutsch (1889–1972) and his wife Elsi, b. Knees born. As a prehistorian and Roman provincial archaeologist, his father headed the Wiesbaden Museum from 1927 to 1956 . After his military service as an officer and his return from Soviet captivity, Kutsch studied Protestant theology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz from 1948 to 1953 . There he was repetent in 1953 and received his doctorate in 1955 under Friedrich Horst (1896–1962). theol. From 1954 to 1957 he worked as editor of the 3rd edition of the concise dictionary Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). In 1957 he became an assistant at the University of Mainz, where he completed his habilitation in 1960 and was appointed private lecturer. In 1963 he accepted the chair for Old Testament science and biblical archeology at the University of Vienna . From 1966 until his retirement in 1986 he was full professor for Old Testament theology at the theological faculty of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Kutsch was Associate Member of the Society for Old Testament Study and chairman of the ecumenical Rhein-Main-Exegeten meeting. He last spent his retirement in Erlangen, where he died on May 16, 2009 at the age of 87 after a long illness. He was married to Margarete, geb. Rasche (1914–1993) and had two children.

plant

Kutsch integrated his research work into the whole of theology and always knew that he was closely connected to the church's preaching mission. He distinguished himself in particular through detailed historical and philological research. The focus of his scientific work lay in the following areas:

• History and Archeology of Israel
• Feast and rite in the Old Testament
• Old Testament piety and theology
• Federal theology.

Kutsch became internationally known for his work on the covenant concept in the Old Testament. On the basis of his semantic studies , he came to the conclusion that the Old Testament word b ^e rit originally means “obligation”, which is also reflected in the Greek word diatheke as (testamentary) disposition. That is why the translation with “federal government” is a misunderstanding, since b ^e rit is not about a contractual agreement between equal partners. However, his findings were only partially able to gain acceptance in research.

Publications (in selection)

• Anointing as a legal act in the Old Testament and in the Old Orient, Berlin 1963.
• Promise and law. Investigations on the so-called "Bund" in the Old Testament, Berlin 1973.
• New Testament - New Covenant? A mistranslation is corrected, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1978.
• The chronological data of the Ezekiel Book, Freiburg - Göttingen 1985.
• Small writings on the Old Testament: Edited by Ludwig Schmidt and Karl Eberlein on his 65th birthday, Berlin 1986 with bibliography.

literature

• Marianne Otte: The term berît in more recent Old Testament research. Aspects of the history of research with special consideration of the semantic question in Ernst Kutsch, Lang-Verlag Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 978-3-631-53923-1
• Biographical-Bibliographical Church Lexicon, Volume 36, Bauz-Verlag Nordhausen, 2015, ISBN 978-3-88309-920-0