Benedikt Otzen – författare

The two apocryphal books, Tobit and Judith, are Jewish legends presumably created in the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, the first in the Eastern Diaspora, the other in Palestine. The events related are placed in the Assyrian epoch in the 7th century BCE. This text discusses the problems between real history and historical fiction, the genres and purposes of the two books, and the literary and religious motives of the tales. The book also deals with textual problems (the Greek text in the Septuagint versus Hebrew and Aramaic Tobit-fragments from Qumran).

This book is published as a Festschrift on the occasion of the 70th birthday of professor Eduard Nielsen (Copenhagen). In accordance with the main themes of Eduard Nielsen's scholarly works the articles concentrate on the history of early Israel, i.e. Israel before the classical prophets in the 8th century B.C., and on literary traditions referring to this phase of Israelite history. The articles are concerned with topics in the Books of the Pentateuch, with the epoch of King David, as well as with archaeology, Canaanite traditions etc. Eduard Nielsen's bibliography is included at the end of the book.