衮克尔的形式批评与以色列传统历史的重建

Hermann Gunkel's Form Criticism and the Reconstruction of the Traditional History of Israel

衮克尔是20世纪最伟大的圣经学者之一。通过鉴别口传文本的文体形式及这些文体与古代习俗生活场景的关系,以追溯这些口传文体的源头与历史生活场景,衮克尔重构了被威尔豪森所忽视和否定的上古世界,创建了著名的形式批评学理论。由于对文本的文体和语言形式分析相对确定性和有效性,形式批评的方法到现在仍被西方学界广泛运用。衮克尔之后,冯·拉德与诺斯将形式批评学成功运用到传统历史的重建中。通过辨认文本叙事的最初原型从而辨认出古老传统历史的源头,进而考察这一最初原型在不同历史场景中的变迁以重建传统历史的历程,冯·拉德与诺斯开创了传统历史批评学派,主导圣经学界达二三十年之久。虽然存在诸多问题,但形式批评作为一种有效的科学方法,在古史重建领域仍有广阔的运用前景。

Hermann Gunkel is one of the greatest Biblical scholars in the 20th century.Through identifying the literature genre of oral texts and examining the relationship between their sources and the ancient customs in the life context,Gunkel reconstructed the ancient world which was overlooked and denied by Wellhausen,and successfully created the famous‘form criticism’.Form criticism has been widely used by Western scholars until nowadays because the analysis of the literature genre and linguistic form is relatively objective and effective.After Gunkel,the form criticism was successfully applied by Von Lad and North to the reconstruction of the traditional history of Israel.Both of them recognized the original literature genre of textual narratives and examined their transformation and evolution in different historical contexts.This theory and method,the traditional history criticism,prevailed in Biblical academia for almost three decades.Although many problems still remained,the form criticism has a promising prospect in the field of the reconstruction of the ancient history,as one of the most effective scientific methods.