Après le déluge: Københavnerskolen eller kaos?

The article is bated on the author's farewell address at the University of Copenhagen and includes a review of recent scholarship in the light of the achievements of the Copenhagen School. The changes of paradigm from classical historical-critical scholarship to contemporary Old Testament scholarship after le deluge which was the Copenhagen School are considerable. First of all the link previously assumed between a text in the Old Testament and what really happened in Palestine in ancient times has been broken when we realized that there is actually in the case of the Old Testament so little that unites history with narrative that it is misleading to understand biblical historiography as "history". It is a story about the past, a kind of cultural memory, and to those who wrote these stories about the past, the real past was not very important. Another result of the contribution of the Copenhagen School relates to the dating of biblical literature that was hardly collectcd before the Hellenistic Period, and probably not in Jerusalem or in Palestine. Therefore, with the retirement of the last original member of the Copenhagen School it is a totally different scene in Old Testament studies which remains, not because everyone accepts the theses of the school but because it has set the agenda for present and future discussion.