astronomy

Martin Noth

Martin Noth is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Martin Noth rather than just read about it. In short: Martin Noth (3 August 1902 – 30 May 1968) was a German scholar of the Hebrew Bible who specialized in the pre-Exilic history of the Hebrews and promoted the hypothesis that the Israelite tribes in the immediate period after the settlement in Canaan were organised as a group of twelve tribes arranged around a central sanctuary along the lines of the later Greek and Italian amphictyonies. With Gerhard von Rad he also…

Key takeaways

Martin Noth belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Martin Noth to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Martin Noth from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Martin Noth (3 August 1902 – 30 May 1968) was a German scholar of the Hebrew Bible who specialized in the pre-Exilic history of the Hebrews and promoted the hypothesis that the Israelite tribes in the immediate period after the settlement in Canaan were organised as a group of twelve tribes arranged around a central sanctuary along the lines of the later Greek and Italian amphictyonies. With Gerhard von Rad he also pioneered the traditional-historical approach to biblical studies, emphasising the role of oral traditions in the formation of the biblical texts.

Life

Noth was born in Dresden, Kingdom of Saxony. He studied at the universities of Erlangen, Rostock, and Leipzig and taught at Greifswald and Königsberg. From 1939 to 1941 and 1943–45, Noth served as a German soldier during World War II. After the war he taught at Bonn, Göttingen, Tübingen, Hamburg, and University of Basel. He died during an expedition in the Negev, Israel.

Influence Noth first attracted widespread attention with "Das System der zwölf Stämme Israels" ("The Scheme of the Twelve Tribes of Israel", 1930), positing that the Twelve Tribes of Israel did not exist prior to the covenant assembly at Shechem described in the Book of Joshua. "A History of Pentateuchal Traditions" (1948, English translation 1972) set out a new model for the composition of the Pentateuch, or Torah. Noth supplemented the dominant model of the time, the documentary hypothesis, seeing the Pentateuch as composed of blocks of traditional material accreted round some key historical experiences. He identified these experiences as "Guidance out of Egypt", "Guidance into the Arable Land", "Promise to the Patriarchs", "Guidance in the Wilderness" and "Revelation at Sinai", the details of the narrative serving to fill out the thematic outline. Later, Robert Polzin showed that some of his main conclusions were consistent with arbitrary or inconsistent use of the rules that he proposed. Even more revolutionary and influential, and quite reorienting the emphasis of modern scholarship, was The Deuteronomistic History. In this work, Noth argued that the earlier theory of several Deuteronomist redactions of the books from Joshua to Kings did not explain the facts, and instead proposed that they formed a unified "Deuteronomic history", the product of a single author working in the late 7th century. Noth also published commentaries on all five books of the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Noth considered that the book of Deuteronomy was more closely related to the following books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (The Deuteronomistic History). This theory is widely accepted today, and provides the framework for current research on the historical books of the Old Testament.

Works

Books Noth, Martin (1957). Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien: Die sammelnden und bearbeitenden Geschichtswerke im Alten Testament. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. OCLC 6106170. ——— (1958). History of Israel: Biblical History. London: Adam & Charles Black. OCLC 750923003. - translation of Geschichte Israels ——— (1959). Exodus: a commentary. Old Testament Library. London: SCM Press. OCLC 913482441. - translation of Das Zzweite Buch Mose : Exodus ——— (1962). Leviticus: a commentary. Old Testament Library. London: SCM Press. OCLC 923331089. - translation of Das Dritte Buch Mose: Leviticus ——— (1968). Numbers: a commentary. Old Testament Library. London: SCM Press. ISBN 9780334011569. OCLC 925325336. - translation of Das Vierte Buch Mose : Numeri ——— (1972). A History of Pentateuchal Traditions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 9780133912357. OCLC 215462. ——— (1981). The Deuteronomistic History. Journal for the study of the Old Testament, Supplement series. Vol. 15. Sheffield, UK: University of Sheffield, Dept. of Biblical Studies. ISBN 9780905774251. OCLC 7642739. - translation of Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien

Articles ——— (1938). "Die Wege der Pharaonenheere in Palästina und Syrien. Untersuchungen zu den hieroglyphischen Listen palästinischer und syrischer Städte. III. Der Aufbau der Palästinaliste Thutmoses III". Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins. 61: 26–65. ——— (1962). "The Background of Judges 17-18". In Anderson, Bernhard W.; Harrelson, Walter J. (eds.). Israel's Prophetic Heritage: essays in honor of James Muilenburg. New York: Harper. pp. 68–85. OCLC 5717754.

References

External links Works by or about Martin Noth at the Internet Archive Review of Noth's A History of Pentateuchal Traditions, Robert Polzin, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 221, (Feb., 1976), pp. 113–120 Bruce C Birch, Methodology in writing Israel's early history: Martin Noth and John Bright Steven L. McKenzie, The History of Israel's Traditions: The Heritage of Martin Noth (JSOT Supplement)(1996) ISBN 1-85075-499-3 C. H. de Geus, The Tribes of Israel: An Investigation into Some of the Presuppositions of Martin Noth's Amphictyony Hypothesis (Studia Semitica Neerlandica) (1976) ISBN 90-232-1337-8 Steven L. McKenzie, review of Martin Noth—aus der Sicht der heutigen Forschung (Udo Rüterswörden (ed.), 2004) Archived 2011-06-12 at the Wayback Machine

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Martin Noth

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Martin Noth claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Martin Noth before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Martin Noth ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Martin Noth

In research: Martin Noth appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Martin Noth in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Martin Noth is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1902 births, 1968 deaths, 20th-century Christian biblical scholars, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Martin Noth outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Martin Noth in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Martin Noth means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Martin Noth out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Martin Noth in simple terms?

Why does Martin Noth matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Martin Noth?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Martin Noth.