Abstract
During the First World War Hermann Gunkel wrote a study of ancient Israelite attitudes to warfare. The reader is introduced to a wild, warlike people, fighting for survival. Instead of folktale as the interpretative key he draws on real experiences of war. In the years that followed, German scholarship came to see war sagas as having their origins in the cult. Gunkel's book would have been out of place in this intellectual atmosphere. Another reason for the subsequent neglect of this study is that its occasional reference to contemporary experience of warfare could have been an embarrassment to his scholarly successors.
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