1. Fundamental Questions of Old Testament Anthropology
True and substantial wisdom principally consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.1.1
Thinking about human beings of the past, considering their needs, hopes, and passions, one imagines what human beings desire and what their needs are. The natural sciences as well as the humanities have for a long time been trying to answer the question what or who a human being is; they have always developed new images of humanity according to the condition of their times.1 Theological anthropology and biblical anthropology in particular also confront this challenge, contributing their own specific perspective, without losing or dismissing the connection to neighboring disciplines. But what do we mean when we speak of an Old Testament human being, with needs, hopes, and passions? Is it even possible to develop an image of such a being?
a. The Image of the Human Being
Already the singular form âthe human beingâ proves to be problematic, because it suggests the existence of a basic, anthropological constant that has remained the same across times and spaces.2 But is it possible to discover the same type of human being in Jerusalem, in Samaria, in the Negev, in Galilee, in Elephantine, and by the ârivers of Babylonâ (Ps. 137:1)? Moreover, is this Old Testament human being the premonarchic hero of the book of Judges, or rather the radically different type of human being envisioned by the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries, or by priests of the sixth and fifth centuries? The image of the human being, like all manifestations in nature and society, is also subject to historical change. An Old Testament anthropology that incorporates this insight can rely on the research of historical anthropology.
α. Historical Anthropology
To avoid the danger of an ahistorical perception of human beings in ancient Israel,3 while keeping open the question of their nature, this study will examine a limited body of literatureâindividual psalms of lament and of thanksgivingâand consider the life situations in which a human being in ancient Israel is portrayed as harassed, persecuted, ill, or dying, but also as saved, praising, or giving thanks. It is therefore not a matter of general characteristics of human nature or of âbasic anthropological constants,â but rather of the unique experiences and behavior patterns that show the speakers of these psalms in existential conflict situations, which they seek to overcome through lament and prayer.
The problem associated with the term âbasic anthropological constantsâ has been of concern to the humanities and social sciences for some time now. Thus the question of human nature, which moved to the center of natural and human sciences with the âanthropological revolutionâ4 of the eighteenth century, has been categorically relativized by twentieth-century philosophical anthropology,5 and especially through a growing familiarity with human biology, psychology, and sociology. If we are both nature and history, as Wilhelm Dilthey thought,6 is it reasonable to expect a definitive answer to the question of human nature? Is it possible, asks Helmuth Plessner in following Dilthey,
to define definitively a being whose evolution from prehuman life-forms can be doubted as little as the open-endedness of its future possibilities and whose origin and destiny are equally obscure to us? Can the different ways in which human beings have understood themselves in the course of history and in many cultures which are not part of one history be passed over through a generalizing process and fit into a formulaic nature?7
On the other hand, the evolutionary derivation of the human species from prehuman life-forms not only had repercussions for traditional anthropology, but also gave rise to an exploration of a dimension encompassing the âentireâ nature of humanity. Here we find, beginning in the 1920s (Max Scheler, Arnold Gehlen, Adolf Portmann), the discoveries and insights of medicine, biology, psychology, sociology, linguistics, and history, as well as religious and cultural studies.8
In the past few decades, cultural studies have turned increasingly toward the reciprocal relationships between body and soul, society and individual, person and world, as well as self and others; through the incorporation of these aspects, such studies have learned to ask the basic anthropological question âWhat is a human being?â both more comprehensively and with more specific detail.9 A philosophical anthropology that excludes medical, psychological, sociological, and cultural experiences, and therefore does not acknowledge human openness toward the world, will not be able to answer the question of human nature and destiny. In other words, âan answer to the question of humanity without reference to the human sciences is now no longer realistically possible.â10 The same is true for theological anthropology, as Wolfhart Pannenberg has rightly emphasized.11 In the twentieth century, philosophical anthropology learned to express its insights with new terminological tools gained by the cognitive sciences and to apply them to their own question of human nature; thus it became increasingly evident that human nature is itself historical. Human self- perceptions and self-expressions seen throughout the course of history can therefore not be subsumed by a single formula but need to account for historical change.
This also applies to biblical views of humanity. Here too we must note differences in our ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, which may still be so familiar that they appear completely natural to us. âThe dictum of every assessment of the past,â argues legal historian Wolfgang Schild, âmust be: everything was different than it is today, different even from the way it can be understood.â12 Whoever ignores this dictum runs the risk of assuming too readily a consistent context and experience for the ancient world, or a âmore or less uniform anthropology (and by implication psychology) applicable to all times.â13 It is essential to understand the conceptual autonomy and dissimilarity of biblical texts and ideas in comparison to our own thought. âFor it is the dissimilarity of the text, rather than our affirmation of it, that constitutes the basis of a critical function to correct our view of God and the world.â14
To attempt to do justice to the distinctiveness of Old Testament anthropology, it is therefore essential to combine âobjective analysis and empathetic considerationsâ15 and to look at the texts and their view of the human being, sometimes up close and other times from a distance. What is called for is the historical work of understanding,16 which in itselfâin the spirit of the historian Peter Brown17âcannot and must not dispense with either an âexpanded sensitivityâ nor a âdeeper sense of empathy.â Anyone who is only concerned with the similarities between our own views and those of the Old (and New) Testament, or who even judges ancient texts on the basis of our own moral understanding, as frequently happens with the so-called Enemy Psalmsâsuch a person forfeits the opportunity to bring the Bibleâs dissimilar and at times strange view of reality into conversation with our own, and thus to understand that which is different. Yet precisely that must be the goal of an...