December 2014
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The article discusses the influential book by Lothar Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament, 1969, and its impact on Old Testament scholarship. Four examples are given of its lasting influence: 1) that present research on the Pentateuch as a rule applies a redaction critical rather than a source critical approach, 2) that Joshua 24 is almost unanimously regarded as a thoroughly deuteronomic-deuteronomistic text which does not containany kernel of older tradition from pre-monarchical times, 3) that the concept of a covenant between God and Israel as the basis of Israel's relationship with her God nowadays is widely regarded as a creation of the deuteronomic-deuteronomistic movement, and 4) that there has been development in Biblical studies of the last decades that may be called a "return to Wellhausen", concerning the overall view of Israelite-Jewish religious history, emphasizing the fundamental change after the fall of the monarchy in Israel and Judah, i. e. The development from a regular West-Semitic state religion of the two monarchies to the Jewish religion that dominates the Old Testament writings.