Abstract:
This article shows how dialectic theology caused a loss of interest in the history of religion, which
was seen as out of touch with the current world. The distinction between theology and the history
of religion became increasingly vague. The article focuses on the contribution of Rainier Albertz
in his two-volume Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit (History of Israelite religion in
the Old Testament period), 1992. Albertz proposed that the history of religion should be restored
to serve as the ‘more sensible discipline for abridging the Old Testament’. This article points out
several advantages to this approach, namely a different kind of Old Testament theology, starting
from current theological problems and searching through the thematic segments of Israel’s
religious history and that of early Christianity for analogous insights relevant to the problems
in question. This article develops the argument that Albertz’s suggestions open up possibilities
for establishing a vibrant theological environment in South Africa, where theologians from a
diverse society can start from different perspectives on current problems, consider the Bible as
part of a uniquely defined set of relevant factors and present a kaleidoscope of cross-balancing
‘African’ theological perspectives. The aim of this approach is to enhance the possibilities of
Albertz’s suggestions by relating them, in context, to insights from ethical theology in the hope
of reviving the debate regarding repositioning the history of religion in a different kind of
theological approach. This debate is long in coming: it may already have lost close to 20 years in
deserved attention.
