Martin Noth

Martin Noth was a German scholar of the Hebrew Bible who specialized in the pre-Exilic history of the Hebrews and promoted the hypothesis that the Israelite tribes in the immediate period after the settlement in Canaan were organised as a group of twelve tribes arranged around a central sanctuary along the lines of the later Greek and Italian amphictyonies. With Gerhard von Rad he also pioneered the traditional-historical approach to biblical studies, emphasising the role of oral traditions in the formation of the biblical texts.