Описание книги
Es gibt Geschichten, von denen mancher wünscht, sie stünden besser nicht in der Bibel. Die Erzählung von «Jiftach und seiner Tochter» aus dem Buch der Richter gehört zu ihnen. Kaum ein Prediger, der den Mut hat, sie seiner Gemeinde zuzumuten. Die Urteile, die die Ausleger der zurückliegenden Jahrhunderte über Jiftach fällten, können widersprüchlicher nicht sein. Wer oder was war dieser Richter aus Israel? Glaubensheld oder Kindermörder, Täter oder Opfer, Sieger oder Verlierer? Oder war er vielleicht beides in einer Person? Verdichtet sich in seiner Gestalt und der seiner Tochter die Paradoxie des Glaubens, in dem der Unglaube wohnt, des Glücks, in dem das Unglück rumort, des Sieges, der zur Niederlage wird? Es gibt kaum einen zweiten Text in der Bibel Israels, der sich diesen Fragen in aller Radikalität stellt und seine Leser herausfordert, selbst nach Antworten zu suchen, nach einem Sinn im scheinbar sinnlosen Geschehen. In Jiftach und seiner Tochter begegnet uns das Phänomen des Tragischen, wie es auch Lion Feuchtwanger in seinem letzten Roman von 1957 («Jefta und seine Tochter») bewegend beschrieben hat, das den Menschen, sei er religiös oder nichtreligiös, nie zur Ruhe kommen lässt.
[Jephthah and his Daughter. A Biblical Tragedy] There are stories that many would wish were better not in the Bible. The story of «Jephthah and his daughter» from the Book of Judges is one of them. There is hardly a preacher who has the courage to expose it to his congregation. The judgments that the exegetes of the past centuries made about Jephthah could not be more contradictory. Who or what was this judge from Israel? Hero of faith or child murderer, perpetrator or victim, winner or loser? Or was he perhaps both in one person? There is hardly a second text in the Bible of Israel that confronts these questions in all their radical nature and challenges its readers to search for answers themselves, for a meaning in the seemingly senseless events. In Jephthah and his daughter we encounter the phenomenon of the tragic, as also Lion Feuchtwanger described it movingly in his last novel of 1957 («Jephthah and his Daughter»), which never allows the reader, religious or non-religious, to come to terms with it.
[Jephthah and his Daughter. A Biblical Tragedy] There are stories that many would wish were better not in the Bible. The story of «Jephthah and his daughter» from the Book of Judges is one of them. There is hardly a preacher who has the courage to expose it to his congregation. The judgments that the exegetes of the past centuries made about Jephthah could not be more contradictory. Who or what was this judge from Israel? Hero of faith or child murderer, perpetrator or victim, winner or loser? Or was he perhaps both in one person? There is hardly a second text in the Bible of Israel that confronts these questions in all their radical nature and challenges its readers to search for answers themselves, for a meaning in the seemingly senseless events. In Jephthah and his daughter we encounter the phenomenon of the tragic, as also Lion Feuchtwanger described it movingly in his last novel of 1957 («Jephthah and his Daughter»), which never allows the reader, religious or non-religious, to come to terms with it.