Die departement Ou Testament, 'n halwe eeu

Abstract

The department of Old Testament, fifty years The department of Old Testament (Section B) at the University of Pretoria is celebrating its fiftieth year. At the beginning of 1938 the faculty opened with four professors and six students. This article briefly investigates the contribution of four professors who taught the Old Testament. As a rather conservative theologian J H Kritzinger strongly emphasized the importance of a scientific approach to Old Testament and of sound exegetical study. He was succeeded by A H van Zyl who had a more historical approach to the Old Testament, took the historical critical method seriously and made its results useful to the church. W S Prinsloo focussed on the text as we have it today and paid much attention to its structure by means of syntactical analysis. To a certain extent W Vosloo continued the line of Van Zyl and Prinsloo: he emphasized the importance of a historical approach, but also investigated the structure of a text to determine its theology.