Showing papers in "New Testament Studies in 1970"

Observations on the Targumic Character of the Prologue of John

Abstract: Recent analyses of the Prologue of John have to a large degree centred around two questions, (1) the question of poetic and prose forms of styles, and (2) the question of unity or disunity of thought, both within the Prologue itself and between the Prologue and the rest of the Gospel. Several scholars, such as R. Bultmann, E. Kasemann, R. Schnackenburg and R. E. Brown, have reached the conclusion that the Evangelist has used and partly reshaped and supplemented a hymn.1 This hyposthesis has drawn criticism from scholars who stress that this distinction between poetry and prose is impossible to maintain. Thus E. Haenchen and W. Eltester have characterized the style as hymnic prose.

The Spirit and the Dove

Abstract: Probably no detail of the account of Jesus' baptism has evoked so diverse a range of suggestions as has the dove. That the critics did not invent the problem is shown by the ancient texts themselves. (a) Mark's report is ambiguous: (Jesus) eίδeν…τό πνe⋯μα ώσ πeριστeράν καταβαῖνον e;ἰσ αὐτόν, for ‘as a dove’ could modify either the noun that precedes it or the participle that follows. (b) Matthew has not completely removed the ambiguity: eιδeν πνe⋯μα Φeο⋯ καταβαῑνον ὡσe⋯ πeρισeρ⋯ν έρχoμeνον έπʾ αὐτν (c) But Luke is more explicit: καταβ⋯ναι τo πνe⋯μα τo ἃγιον σωματικῷ eἲδeι ὡσ πeριστeρ⋯ν ⋯π’ αὐτoν. ((d) According to the Fourth Gospel, the Baptist reports that he saw the Spirit καταβαῑνον ὡσ πeριστeρ⋯ν ⋯ξ οὐρανο⋯ κα⋯ ἔμeινeν ⋯π’ αὐτν and that previously he had been alerted to expect such a phenomenon (though the dove is not mentioned in the report of what God had previously said). (e) The Ebionite Gospel says Jesus saw τo πνe⋯μα τo ἂγιον ⋯ν eἴδι πeριδτρ⋯σ κατeλθοὑσησ κασ eἰσ αὐτoν, thereby answering the question of what happened to it. (f) However, the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Nazarene Gospel) has no dove at all but instead speaks of ‘the whole fount of the Holy Spirit’: descendit fons omnis Spiritus Sancti et requievit super eum, etc. These ancient variations, and the diverse textual readings, reveal that there is no single tradition of the dove, and that its meaning was problematic from the start. Nor has modern scholarship, equipped with tools and collected data, been persuasive in its understandings. Nevertheless, the history of interpretation can close doors to unfruitful hypotheses and move the discussion of Jesus' baptism forward.

‘People of God’ in St John's Gospel

Abstract: ‘Do you not understand that it is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that not all the nation perish?…he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather the scattered children of God into one’.

Elijah and Moses in Mark's account of the Transfiguration

Abstract: The story of the Transfiguration has received some attention in the past few decades, and the significance of Elijah and Moses has not been neglected. But their prominence in the Marcan narrative has not always been sufficiently recognized, and where it has been recognized it does not seem to have been correctly evaluated.

Gethsemane in The Tradition of The Passion

Abstract: The agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (as we usually describe it in English, in typically eclectic fashion, for the agony comes from Luke, the garden from John, and Gethsemane from Mark and Matthew) holds an important place within the Passion narrative. But what is that place? There are strong grounds for holding that the original Passion narrative which lies behind the Marcan and Matthean records began with the arrest of Jesus; the same is probably true of Luke, and very possibly of the Fourth Gospel also. The Gethsemane scene stands outside, or on the fringe of, such primitive Passion narratives, and in certain respects does not accord well with them; it may well be, as Bultmann, 2 Kuhn 3 and others have supposed, that it was adopted into the Passion narrative at a fairly late stage and inserted between the story of the Last Supper (itself not an integral part of the primitive Passion narrative) and the arrest, If this be so, we must ask to what extent, and in what way, the introduction of the Gethsemane scene into the Passion story and the handling of it within that context reflect the theologies of the evangelists of their immediate predecessors.

Wunder und Christologie

Abstract: Es ist zur Zeit eine liebgewordene Gewohnheit, auf die druckende Last des noch ungelosten johnneischen Ratsels hinzuweisen. Kein anderer als Ernst Kasemann hat dieses jungst erneut zum Ausdruck gebracht; freilich nicht ohne zugleich seines Ratsels Losung zu umreisen. Das sein viel beachteter Diskussionsbeitrag vor allem Rudolf Bultmann mit seiner Deutung des Johannesevangeliums zum Gesprachspartner wahlt, ist die einzing angemessene Entscheidung. Dabei last sich die Antwort des gegen seinen Lehrer rebellierenden Schulers in ihrer Gegensatzlichkeit zum Wort des Meisters kaum extremer denken. Solche Antithetik ist fur den Exegeten allemal ein Stachel, der zu erneuter Textinterpretation reizt. Dabei gilt es festzuhalten, das dieser Gegensatz neben dem historisch-exegetischen auch seinen theologiegeschichtlichen Aspekt besitzt: Bultmann interpretiert mit Hilfe der durch die Existentialanalyse bereitgestellten Begrifflichkeit und zu einem nicht unwesentlichen Teil auch unter Ruckgriff auf die Paradoxchristologie Soren Kierkegaards. Kasemann hingegen greift auf die alte liberale Johannes-Interpretation zuruck, wenn er den johanneischen Christus als uber die Erde schreitenden Gott darstellt. Der Aufweis theologiegeschichtlicher Bedingtheit sollte dem Exegeten stets ein Achtungszeichen sein. Doch ist uber die Angemessenheit der herangezogenen Interpretationshilfen damit noch nichtentschieden. Allerdings mussen die Denkmodelle im Blick auf den auszulegenden Text ihre Bewahrungsprobe bestehen. Diese Kritik soll an einem entscheidenden Punkt johanneischer Theologie vorgefuhrt werden, namalich an dem Verhaltnis von Wunder und Christologie.

Observance of the Law and Charismatic Activity in Matthew

Abstract: The topic of my paper is particularly suitable for a Presidential Address to our Society, because so many of you have contributed, in no inconsiderable way, to the elucidation of its problems. What I shall try to do is simply to bring together some of the results of your work and then to build upon them. We have, in our common research, reached a point where it makes sense to look back on what we have discovered and to put up some signposts to mark our future course. When I say so, it is not merely an act of politeness; it is rather the expression of my appreciation of so many contributions from you without which my understanding of the first Gospel would not have been possible.

I Peter and the Gospel Tradition

Abstract: Recently renewed attempts have been made to argue that resemblances between I Peter and Gospels indicate authorship of the epistle by the Apostle Peter. We shall attempt to re-assess the evidence both from the point of view of authorship and in relation to the state in which the gospel tradition existed at the time of its use by the author of I Peter. Since many of those who argue for Petrine authorship of the epistle take a conservative view of the transmission of the gospel tradition, we shall try to allow for this angle, though not necessarily adhering to it.

People and Community in the Gospel of Matthew

Abstract: A number of recent works have attempted to deal with the theological thought of the evangelist Matthew using the method of ‘Redaktionsgeschichte’. But as yet Hans Conzelmann's Matthew has not appeared. Certainly the joint work of G. Bornkamm, G. Barth and H. J. Held, the works of R. Hummel, G. Strecker, K. Stendahl, W. Trilling and others have contributed considerably to this field of study. But at the present time there is no agreement among scholars on the fundamental problem of what is the essential concern of Matthean theology. It is true that the Law of Moses and accordingly the problem of the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies is one of the most important problems for Matthew, and that the present state of the church and the expectation of the eschaton, especially of the last judgement, are also elements indispensable for understanding the thoughts of the evangelist. But the fundamental problem is how to discover the basis of Matthew's theology, by means of which the interpreter can understand these individual elements as organically combined.

Zu den sogenannten Sätzen Heiligen Rechts

Abstract: Im Zusammenhang mit Gesetzesauslegungen Jesu begegnen in der synoptischen Tradition Satze, fuur die E. Kasemann in dieser Zeitschrift erstmalig den Terminus ‘Satze heiligen Rechts’ entwickelt hat. Den Ausgangspunkt fur die Bestimmung derartiger Satzformen bildete die grundlegende formgeschichtliche Untersuchung R. Bultmanns. Unter Herrenworte zahlte Bultmann neben Logien, prophetischen, apokalyptischen und ‘Ich’-Worten als 3. Gruppe ‘Gesetzesworte und Gemeinderegeln’. Diese Einteilung wurde freilich in erster Linie nach inhaltlichen Gesichtspunkten vorgenommen; die sprachlichen Formen blieben von untergeordneter Bedeutung. Zu der genannten Gruppe III rechnete Bultmann 1. Worte, die zum Gesetz oder zur judischen Frommigkeit Stellung nahmen, 2. Satze, ‘die als ersten Teil eine Bedingung und als zweiten Teil einen Imperativ oder eine Aussage (manchmal ein Futurum) enthalten, die den Sinn einer gesetzlichen Bestimmung hat’.—In diesem Zusammenhang werden dann auch die Antithesen der Bergpredigt behandelt. Andererseits aber rechnet Bultmann 3. unter Gesetzesworte auch diejenigen, die ‘mittels eines Schriftwortes oder doch unter Berufung auf die Schrift die neue Anschauung gegenuber der alten rechtfertigen oder begrunden’— dazu kann dann Bultmann Mt. v. 17 ebenso zahlen wie Mk. xii. 26–7. Die Kriterien fur die Einordnung unter Gesetzesworte waren rein inhaltlicher Art gewesen: Es handelt sich um Worte, die zum atl Gesetz Stellung beziehen, sie konnen auch in ahnlich kasuistischem Stil abgefast sein.

Two Parables in John

Abstract: One of the most fruitful aspects of recent study of the Fourth Gospel has been the recovery of traditional sayings of Jesus embedded in Johannine discourses. They are often the starting point of the whole argument. The classic example of this is the Parable of the Apprenticed Son in John v. 19 f. This was isolated as a parable from earlier tradition by both C.H. Dodd and P. Gachter, working independently of each other. In this case it is easy to see how the entire exposition of the work of Jesus as the Son of man, with which the Son and the Slave in viii. 35 has a similar relation to the discourse in which it is enclosed, even though this may not be so obvious at first sight. These and other examples of parables in John have been conveniently collected in the popular work of A. M. Hunter, According to John (1968), pp. 78–89.

Mark, Acts and Galilean Christianity

Abstract: Mark and Acts disagree, sometimes quite sharply, about Jesus' career, his teaching, and the faith of the young Church.

A Caesarean Text in the Catholic Epistles

Abstract: In giving their appraisal of the host of then unexamined minuscule codices of the Greek New Testament, Westcott and Hort wrote these intriguing words: ‘Valuable texts may lie hidden among them; many of them are doubtless sprinkled with relics of valuable texts now destroyed.’. 1 Beside this supposition should be set a well-attested fact, that ‘the Precedence of manuscripts depends, not on their age, but on their Pedigree’. 2 These two statements kept on recurring to the writer's mind as she concentrated on a group of six minuscule codices in the area of the Catholic Epistles: MSS 69, 1243, 1319, 1424, 1739, and 1874. 3 The Leicester Codex, MS 69, has long been known to Preserve an ancient lineage even though it was actually copied in the fifteenth century. Might not others of this group, less well known, also Perpetuate a rich heritage? It is the opinion of this writer that one of them does.4

Two Texts In I Corinthians

Abstract: This article is concerned to demonstrate the possibility that two texts in I Corinthians (xii. 3 and xvi. 22) were at a very early date misunderstood by a copyist unfamiliar with a formula which St Paul was using, and which he changed, perhaps unconsciously and certainly without tendentiousness, to the nearest lettering which would be known to him.

ΚΟΡΒΝ, Ο ΕΣΤΙΝ ΔωΡΟΝ

Abstract: It is said that Jesus’ comments (Matt. xv. 4_6, Mark vii. 9_13) are unfair, or incompetently reported. 2 It is desirable to clarify the practice and the law to which he referred.