STEUERNAGEL, CARL°

STEUERNAGEL, CARL ° (1869–1958), Protestant German Bible critic. Born in Hardegsen, Steuernagel taught Bible at the University of Halle. In 1914 he was appointed professor at Breslau. A prolific writer, he wrote the commentaries on Deuteronomy (1899; 1923²) and Joshua (1899; 1923²) for the Handkommentar zum Alten Testament in addition to a general introduction to the Hexateuch (1900), and the volumes of Job (1923), Proverbs (1923), and Esther (1923) for Die Heilige Schrift des Alten Testaments. His Der Rahmen des Deuteronomiums (1894) and Die Enstehung des deuteronomischen Gesetzes (1895, 1901²) are attempts to explain the composition of Deuteronomy as a composite redaction of a number of Deuteronomic strands which are characterized by forms of address and the usages of singular and plural elements of speech. He maintained that Isaiah 40–55 was written at the same time by the same hand, immediately before the Return (538 b.c.e.); that "the Servant of the *Lord" is a personification of the people Israel, a view which later influenced R. Kittel, L. Gautier, T.H. Robinson, O. Eissfeldt, and others; and that Hosea 3 is an account by the prophet of the incident reported in chapter 1 by people from his environment. In the K. Marti Festschrift (in: bzaw, 41 (1925), 266–73), he pleaded for the importance of biblical theology as a historical discipline in its own right which complements the historical study of the Hebrew religion.

From 1903 he edited the Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins, and he wrote an introduction to the study of the Bible, Apocrypha, and Pseudepigrapha (Lehrbuch der Einleitung in das Alter Testament, mit einem Anhang ueber die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen, 1912) which stressed archaeological and textual insight. Besides numerous articles, he produced the following works: Die Einwanderung der israelitischen Staemme in Kanaan (1901); Hebraeische Grammatik (1903; 1948¹¹); Methodische Einleitung zum hebraeischen Sprachunterricht (1905); and Neue Beitrage zu Colonia Agrippinensis (1916, with R. Schultze).

bibliography:

M. Noth, in: zdpv, 74 (1958), 1–3; W. Schmauch, in: Theologische Literaturzeitung, 83 (1958), 547–50.

[Zev Garber]