Reinhard Gregor Kratz (* July 25, 1957, in Offenbach am Main) is a German biblical scholar, historian of ancient Judaism, and Protestant theologian. He currently serves as professor of Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Göttingen, in Germany. In his various authorial, editorial, advisory, and administrative capacities, Kratz has had a sizeable impact on research into the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism.
After studies in theology and classics at the universities in Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and Zürich (1977–82), Kratz became scientific assistant to Old Testament professor Odil Hannes Steck in Zürich (1982–86). Following a requisite internship (Vikariat) in the Evangelical-Reformed Church of the Canton of Zürich, he was then ordained as Verbi Divini Minister, in 1987. That same year, Kratz earned his doctor of theology with a dissertation on the Aramaic portions of the book of Daniel, and three years later, in 1990, he secured habilitation for his work Kyros im Deuterojesajabuch. While serving as Privatdozent in Zürich, from 1991–95, he obtained fellowships from the Deutsches Evangelisches Institut für Altertumswissenschaft des Heiligen Landes and the Heisenberg-Programm. Since 1995, Kratz has held a chair in Old Testament Studies at the University of Göttingen.[1]
In 1999, Kratz became a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. During the 2002–03 academic year, he was fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Kratz also spent 2006–07 as Fowler Hamilton Visiting Research Fellow at Christ Church College, University of Oxford, and 2014–15 as Overseas Visiting Scholar at St. John's College, University of Cambridge. In 2015, he was appointed honorary member of the British Society for the Old Testament.
He has declined professorships at the University of Kiel (1995), University of Heidelberg (2003), Humboldt University of Berlin (2008), and University of Oxford, as Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture (2014).[2]
Kratz's work concentrates on the literary and redaction history of the Old Testament. With such research, he has revitalized an historical account of the Old Testament literature that traces back to Julius Wellhausen—Wellhausen himself having furthered theses already advanced by such figures as Wilhelm Vatke, Eduard Reuss, Karl Heinrich Graf, and Abraham Kuenen. Kratz has also devoted considerable attention to ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament prophecy. Recently, however, he has focused more and more on the history of Judaism in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, especially in its manifestation at the communities of Elephantine and Qumran.
A member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Kratz currently serves as chairman of the board for the Academy's Septuaginta Unternehmen[3] and director of its longterm lexicon project Hebräisches und aramäisches Lexikon über die Texte vom Toten Meer.[4] [5] He also directs the Division for Qumran Research at the Institute for Special Research, located at Göttingen's Faculty of Theology,[6] and the Centrum Orbis Orientalis (CORO), an interdisciplinary center supported by the University as well as the Academy.[7] In addition, he acted as vice-speaker for the German Research Foundation Research Training Group (Graduiertenkolleg) 896 "Concepts of the Divine – Concepts of the World"[8] [9] and co-organizer for the joint project "The Interpretation of the Book of Genesis in the Dead Sea Scrolls," funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in cooperation with the Deborah Dimant of the University of Haifa.[10] Kratz sits on a number of editorial boards, for series and journals alike, and on the steering committee for the Northern European research network Old Testament Studies: Epistemologies and Methods (OTSEM). For many of these activities, Kratz works closely with his Göttingen Old Testament colleague, Hermann Spieckermann.