Introduction

Summary

The author of the collection of essays in this third volume of the Changing Perspectives series is widely known as the founder of the ‘Copenhagen School,’ a term that has become synonymous with rather radical and ‘minimalist’ views to many in biblical scholarship, especially in North America, and often without any clear idea about Lemche's contributions to scholarship. Niels Peter Lemche conducted his theological studies and graduate research at the University of Copenhagen during the period of 1964 to 1978, and from there he had his first teaching appointment at the University of Aarhus, during 1978 to 1986. It was there that he published his very important doctoral thesis, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the Monarchy (in Danish, 1984, and English, 1985), and shortly thereafter became Professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen (1987), where he has remained even since. It was primarily through this work, Early Israel, with its strong emphasis on anthropological and sociological approaches to Israelite history, that he became known to the English-speaking world of scholarship.

I wish to call special attention to this period of the mid-1980s because in the chapters that follow in this collection, this time period constitutes a significant divide between the first six, which would appear to most scholars as rather conservative in method and conclusions, and the rest, which reflect the various themes for which he is now famous.