Arvid Schou Kapelrud (14 May 1912 - 23 October 1994) was a Norwegian professor, theologian and biblical scholar. He was noted for his research on the Old Testament prophet Joel and the religion of the old

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Biography

Kapelrud was born in

Lillehammer Lillehammer () is a municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Lillehammer. Some of the more notable villages in the municip ...

in 1912. He graduated from the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

in 1938 with a degree in theology. Among his teachers were the Norwegian biblical scholar

Sigmund Mowinckel Sigmund Olaf Plytt Mowinckel (4 August 1884 – 4 June 1965) was a Norwegian professor, theologian and biblical scholar. He was noted for his research into the practice of religious worship in ancient Israel. Life Mowinckel was born at Kjerri ...

. Kapelruds early research interest was with oriental languages, including the Babylonian

Code of Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hamm ...

. He went to

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...

in 1939, and returned after the war, where he continued his theological studies with the Uppsala-school of Biblical Studies. He completed his thesis on Joel in 1948, which he submitted to the Theological Faculty at Uppsala. Later works include studies of Amos and

Zephaniah Zephaniah (, ) is the name of several people in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Tanakh, the most prominent one being the prophet who prophesied in the days of Josiah, king of Judah (640–609 BCE) and is attributed a book bearing his name among the ...

. In 1949-50 he went to the United States to undertake work at the Babylonian Collection at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. In this period he collaborated with

Albrecht Goetze Albrecht Ernst Rudolf Goetze (January 11, 1897 – August 15, 1971) was a German-American Hittitologist. Goetze was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1897. His father, Rudolf Goetze, was a psychiatrist. He began studies in Munich in 1915, but left to ...

. As a result of these studies he published ''Baal in the Raas Shamra Texts'' (1952), one of his more influential works. This publication was followed up by a companion volume, ''The Ras Shamra Discoveries and the Old Testament'' (1963), based on lectures given at the University of Oslo in the early 1950s. In this period he also got involved with research on the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the nor ...

. Kapelrud returned to the study of Ras Shamra texts in the late 1960s when he published ''The Violent Goddess. Anat in the Ras Shamra Texts'' (1969). In 1981, at the end of his career, he published ''God and His Friends in the Old Testament'' (1981). Kapelrud retired in 1982 after having served as Professor at the University of Oslo since 1954.

Academic work and theories

Kapelruds main contribution to Biblical Studies is his work on the prophets and the ancient texts of Ras Shamra.

The Prophets

Kapelruds first major work was a treatise on the book of Joel. Kapelrud sees the

book of Joel The Book of Joel is collected as one of the twelve minor prophets of the Nevi'im ("Prophets") in the Hebrew Bible, and as a book in its own right in the Christian Old Testament. Content After a superscription ascribing the prophecy to Joel (s ...

as a work of

liturgy Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...

, closesly connected to the cultic context originating from the

temple in Jerusalem The Temple in Jerusalem, or alternatively the Holy Temple (; , ), refers to the two now-destroyed religious structures that served as the central places of worship for Israelites and Jews on the modern-day Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusa ...

. He also suggests a later dating of the book of Joel than his contemporaries, arguing for a possible date around the year 600 B.C. In his discussion of Amos Kapelrud suggested that the prophet spoke from an ethical viewpoint, and that all nations were aware of the ethical standards of Yaweh. This universalism was, according to Kapelrud, a central idea in the

book of Amos The Book of Amos is the third of the Twelve Minor Prophets in the Old Testament (Tanakh) and the second in the Greek Septuagint tradition. Amos, an older contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, Harris, Stephen L., ''Understanding the Bible''. Palo Alto ...

. Kapelrud also studied other old testament prophets, such as

. According to Fensham Kapelrud managed to throw fresh light on the prophecies of Zephaniah by suggesting that the prophet used the ideas of older prophets, such as Amos, in order to come up with new expressions.

The Ras Shamra texts

One of Kapelruds main interests was the study of the Ras Shamra texts, and the ancient Canaanite religion. He was of the opinion that there was a close connection between the Ras Shamra texts, which reflected Canaanite religion, and the text of the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

. According to Merrill Kapelrud puts forward the theory that the goddess Anat and the god

Baal Baal (), or Baal,; phn, , baʿl; hbo, , baʿal, ). ( ''baʿal'') was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during Ancient Near East, antiquity. From its use among people, it cam ...

are intimately related, and that there is a cultic context for the major Ras Shamra texts. Kapelrud also suggests an affinity between Baal and the Amorite storm-god Adad, also called

Hadad Hadad ( uga, ), Haddad, Adad (Akkadian: 𒀭𒅎 '' DIM'', pronounced as ''Adād''), or Iškur ( Sumerian) was the storm and rain god in the Canaanite and ancient Mesopotamian religions. He was attested in Ebla as "Hadda" in c. 2500 BCE. ...

. According to Kapelrud the Baal ritual and myth was celebrated annually.

Published works

* ''Joel Studies'' (1948) * ''Baal in the Raas Shamra Texts'' (1952) * ''Central Ideas in Amos'' (1956) * ''The Ras Shamra Discoveries and the Old Testament (1963)'' * ''The Violent Goddess. Anat in the Ras Shamra Texts'' (1969) * ''The Message of the Prophet Zepaniah: Morphology and Ideas'' (1975) * ''God and His Friends in the Old Testament'' (1981)

References