Professor Dr. Friedhelm Hartenstein
Senior Fellow, October 2024 to September 2025
Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
- 2002 - 2010 Professor of Old Testament and History of Ancient Near Eastern Religions at the University of Hamburg
- Since 2010 Professor of Old Testament Theology and Religious History of Ancient Israel at the Protestant Theological Faculty of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Fellow project: "Monotheistic theology of creation as the center of Old Testament theology"
During my stay at the Krupp Kolleg, I plan to complete a monograph on "Theology of the Old Testament". This work is designed to offer a new historical and systematic presentation of the development of theological thinking in the Old Testament scriptures. Particular attention is paid to the world views or cosmologies that initially shape the texts implicitly and – from the Exilic period (6th century BC) – are explicitly unfolded as a monotheistic theology of creation which is shared by nearly all of the writings of the later Jewish TANAK/Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. The new cosmology of a monistic all-encompassing world, ruled by YHWH, the God of Israel, as the sole creator, is the pre-modern world view that characterizes the religions of Judaism, Christianity and also Islam to this day, despite their respective enlightenments. The research project will develop the evolution, claims and issues of the underlying concept of creation and the anthropology associated with it and reconstruct it in its inner logic.