Jörg Jeremias

Jörg Jeremias (born April 15, 1939 in Göttingen ) is a German Protestant theologian and professor emeritus for the Old Testament at the University of Marburg .

Life

Jeremias - whose father, Joachim Jeremias , was a prominent theologian - studied a. a. in Göttingen , Zurich and Heidelberg as well as at Yale University Protestant theology and oriental languages. He submitted a master's thesis on a Ugaritic topic at Yale and received his doctorate in Bonn in 1964 with a thesis on Old Testament theophany texts, with Martin Noth as his supervisor .

He then worked as an assistant to Hans Walter Wolff in Mainz and Heidelberg, where he received his habilitation in 1969 with a thesis on “Cult prophecy and the proclamation of justice in the late royal era”. From 1972 to 1994 he was a full professor of the Old Testament at the newly founded Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , and from 1994 until his retirement in 2005 in the Protestant Theology department of the Philipps University of Marburg . He took on foreign teaching assignments as part of the theological academic year at the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem and at the Lutheran Theological Institute in Sibiu in Transylvania . Today he lives as an emeritus in Munich.

research

Jeremias' research interests relate on the one hand to the ancient Israelite religious history in the ancient oriental context, which is reflected in the monograph in the work on the Theophany texts and a further work ( The Kingship of God in the Psalms ), which deals with the reception of Canaanite myths in the Yahweh. King Psalms busy.

On the other hand, Jeremias focused on Israelite prophecy. He was particularly interested in the emergence and development of the phenomenon of written prophecy, i.e. the phenomenon, unique in the ancient Orient, that prophetic words that were originally preached orally in a specific situation were fixed in writing and, over time, into larger compositions processed and updated with comments up to cross-book editorial offices. Jeremiah had been among the oldest books of the prophets, Hosea and Amos , early literary references and also has books with comprehensive editorial in the Minor busy. For the later books of the prophets Joel and Obadja he pointed out that they essentially contain written prophecy from time immemorial, which draws on older books of the prophets. His research on the dodecaprophetone is closely linked to the commentary on the first six of the "little prophets" (Hosea to Micha ) in the popular Old Testament German series .

As a third focus of interest, Jeremias names the question of the peculiarity of speaking about God in the Old Testament, on which the study “The repentance of God. Aspects of the Old Testament Concept of God ”makes a contribution. This is about observations of how a concept from the human realm of experience takes on different nuances when it is related to God. Thus, God's “repentance” is not to be understood in terms of human repentance, but a way of preserving people who have fallen prey to judgment. As such, it is one of the deepest mysteries of biblical God.

Apart from his research and teaching activities, Jeremias was a member of the theological committee of the VELKD for six years and of a dialogue commission of the EKD and the Romanian Orthodox Church for over twenty years .

Bibliography (selection)

• Theophany . The history of an ancient Israelite genre, WMANT 10, Neukirchen-Vluyn (2nd edition) 1977.
• Cult prophecy and proclamation of judgment in the late royal era , WMANT 35, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1970.
• The Authority of the Prophet in the Old Testament , EvTh NF 26 (1971), 305–322.
• The Prophet Hosea , ATD 24/1, Göttingen 1983.
• The kingship of God in the psalms . Israel's encounter with the Canaanite myth in the Yahweh-King Psalms, FRLANT 141, Göttingen 1985.
• The Prophet Amos , ATD 24/2, Göttingen 1995.
• Hosea and Amos . Studies on the beginnings of the dodecapropheton, FAT 13, Tübingen 1996.
• The Beginnings of Scripture Prophecy, ZThK 93 (1996), 481–499.
• The repentance of God . Aspects of the Old Testament Concept of God, BThS 31, Neukirchen-Vluyn (2nd extended edition) 1997.
• Recent Trends in Research on the Little Prophets , in: Perspectives in the Study of the Old Testament and Early Judaism . Festschrift for AS van der Woude, Leiden 1998, 122–136.
• (together with F. Hartenstein): JHWH and his Aschera. “Official religion” and “popular religion” at the time of the classical prophets ; in: B. Janowski / M. Köckert (eds.): Religious history of Israel . Formal and material aspects, publications of the Scientific Society for Theology, Vol. 15, Munich 1999, 79–138.
• Learned prophecy. Observations on Joel and Deuterosacharja , in: Ververstellungigung der Alten Testament. Contributions to Biblical Hermeneutics . Festschrift for Rudolf Smend , Göttingen 2002, 97–111.
• Four Decades of Research on the Old Testament - A Review , VuF 50 (2005), 10–25.
• Genesis 20–22 as a theological program , in: On the way to the final form from Genesis to II Regum . Festschrift for Hans-Christoph Schmitt , supplements to the journal for Old Testament science 370, Berlin (among others) 2006, 59–73.
• The essence of Old Testament prophecy , ThLZ 131 (2006), 251–263.
• The prophets Joel, Obadja, Jona, Micha , ATD 24/3, Göttingen 2007.
• Old Testament Theology , GAT 6, Göttingen 2015.
• Nahum , BK XIV / 5,1 (revision), Göttingen 2019.

Self-presentation in:

• S. Graetz / BU Schipper (Ed.): Old Testament Science in Self- Representations, Göttingen 2007, 250–263.
• Festschrift: F. Hartenstein / J. Krispenz / A. Schart (ed.): Schriftprophetie. Festschrift for J. Jeremias on his 65th birthday ; Neukirchen-Vluyn 2004.

Web links

• Literature by and about Jörg Jeremias in the catalog of the German National Library