Die Entstehung des Zwölfprophetenbuchs: Neubearbeitungen von Amos im Rahmen schriftenübergreifender Redaktionsprozesse

This Marburg Habilitationsschrift (supervised by J. Jeremias) is an attempt to reconstruct the compositional history and concerns of the “Book of the Twelve Prophets” with a specific focus on the role of Amos within the broader context of the larger work. Schart argues that a literary-critical analysis of the book of Amos identifies the textual clues for a redaction- critical reconstruction of the various stages in the composition of the Book of the Twelve. These stages include an initial “two volume” work comprising earlier forms of Hosea and Amos; a “deuteronomic/deuteronomistic corpus” (DK) comprising early forms of Hosea, Amos, Micah, and Zephaniah; an expansion of DK by a “Nahum-Habakkuk corpus” (NHK); an expansion of NHK by a "Haggai-Zechariah corpus” (HZK); a further expansion by a “Joel-Obadiah corpus” (JOK); and finally, the additions of Jonah and Malachi.
The methodological roots of this study lie in a self-conscious attempt to refine redaction-critical analysis in relation to recent advances in the synchronic literary study of biblical texts. Schart correctly recognizes that synchronic literary study of the final form of a biblical text is the indispensable basis for a diachronically-oriented redaction-critical reconstruction of its compositional history and its theological perspectives. The Book of the Twelve is the product of many authors who worked at various times and with various hermeneutical viewpoints. Redaction-critical work necessarily traces the literary rather than the oral stage of compositional growth. Consequently, the interpreter must examine closely both the smaller literary units that comprise the prophetic books and the sequence of their arrangement within the broader literary context as a basis for exegesis. The meaning of a text may change as it is transmitted and interpreted within the context of later redactions, and the interpreter must be prepared to examine a text in relation to the other prophetic books within the Twelve in order to give a full accounting of the impact of literary context on the interpretation of individual units.