ALT, ALBRECHT

OT scholar and Biblical historian; b. Stübach, Bavaria, Sept. 20, 1883; d. Leipzig, April 24, 1956. From 1922 until his death he was a member of the OT faculty at the University of Leipzig. But he often sojourned in Palestine. For some time he edited the Palästinajahrbuch. He knew Palestine well, and this familiarity pervaded his geographical and topographical studies; in such historical studies as Die Landnahme der Israeliten in Palästina (1925) Alt made much of regional or territorial history and its continuity. In his celebrated collection of historical essays, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel (1953–59), Alt's competence extended to the histories of the neighboring peoples also, especially to the histories of Egypt and Syria. A master epigraphist and philologist, he interpreted not only Semitic and cuneiform material but also late Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sources. He was a coeditor of the fourth edition of R. Kittel's Biblia Hebraica. In 1929 he published Der Gott der Väter on the early religion of the Hebrews.

Alt made major contributions to the understanding of Israelite legal and political institutions. In Die Ursprünge des israelitischen Rechts (1934) he distinguished clearly between the types of apodictic law and casuistic law in the Pentateuchal legislation. Die Staatenbildung der Israeliten in Palästina (1930) and related studies advanced understanding of Israel's political institutions.

Bibliography: k. h. mann, "Bibliographie Albrecht Alt," Beiträge zur historischen Theologie 16 (1953) 211–223. "Festschrift A. Alt zum 70. Geburtstag," Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 3 (1953–54) 173–178. m. noth, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 7 v. (3d ed. Tübingen 1957–65) 1:247–248. m. kÖckert, Vätergott und Väterverheissungen: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Albrecht Alt und seinen Erben (Göttingen, 1988). j. dus, Israelitische Vorfahren: Vasallen palästinischer Stadtstaaten?: Revisionsbedürftigkeit der Landnahmehypothese von Albrecht Alt (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1991).

[t. w. buckley]