Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
It is the most authoritative specialized German journal for anti-Christian studies, founded by B. STADE (1848-1906), professor at Giessen, and published by the Ricker publishing house (later Töpelmann) in Giessen and from 1934 by the Töpelmann publishing house in Berlin.
The journal has two periods: one up to 1923, with editors B. STADE and K. MARTI, and the other from 1924 onwards under the direction of H. GRESSMANN and J. HEMPEL. During the war and the immediate post-war period, volumes 59 (1942-43); 60 (1944); 61 (1945-48); 62 (1949-50) were published; from volume 63 (1951) the publication resumed its annual rhythm. It is accompanied by a series of “Beihefte”; it does not include reviews. In the first period, B. STADE determined the character of the journal: one of WELLHAUSEN (v.), heir moreover to the “rational-mythical” school (v. STRAUSS, D), he believed in a linear evolution of the religion of the Old Testament (cf. Z.f.d.a.W., 4 [1884], p. 296 ff.) from a “crude natural religion” to the heights of “ethical monotheism.” He was also an “Orientalist” in the sense that he gave this term to the pre-cuneiform and pre-archaeological age. Under his successor K. MARTI (1885-1925), the journal lost much of its prestige, although the editor managed to save it amid the difficulties of the First World War and the inflation (1922-23) and even continued the current bibliography, already curated by STADE until 1903, by A. V. GALL from 1903 to 1906 and by MARTI himself from 1907 to 1919, a bibliography that in some ways anticipated the Elenchus bibliorum Biblicus, published in Biblica from 1920 onwards.
H. GRESSMANN, author of a manual of ancient Oriental texts illustrated by the Bible, sought to introduce new directions into the journal, succeeding in regaining esteem for the periodical and the cooperation of the British “Society for Old Testament Study.” His successor even had some Catholic collaboration (Algieer, Stummer, J. ZIEGLER) and introduced detailed summaries of journals and collections. Moreover, the journal shows a very lively interest in new excavations and discoveries.