hypotheses in modern biblical scholarship, proposed by Gerhard von Rad in his Theologie des alten Testaments. We will divide von Rad’s analysis into steps, since it has partly held up in subsequent scholarship and partly not. Von Rad observed, as is indeed obvious once pointed out, that 5b–9 is a confession of faith explicitly appointed for liturgical use (5a), and that it and the second article of a three-article Christian creed are in much the same style. Moreover, he isolated confessional formulas