Is there A Place for Historical Criticism?

1991 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Price
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
The World ◽  
Christian Origins ◽  
Logical Extension

Modern historical criticism of the gospels and Christian origins began in the seventeenth century largely as an attempt to debunk the Christian religion as a pious fraud. The gospels were seen as bits of priestcraft and humbug of a piece with the apocryphal Donation of Constantine. In the few centuries since Reimarus and his critical kin, historical criticism has been embraced and assimilated by many Christian scholars who have seen in it the logical extension of the grammatico-historical method of the Reformers. The new views of New Testament exegesis and of early Christian history are important and well known. Many New Testament scholars would now hold with Schweitzer and Bultmann that Jesus was a preacher of the imminent end of the world. He may have secretly considered himself to be the Messiah, or he may have simply sought to pave the way for another, the apocalyptic Son of Man. After his execution, his disciples' experiences of his resurrection forced on them a conclusion already implicit in his teachings and personal piety: that Jesus was indeed, or had become, the Messiah, and was in fact God's Son. They expected he would soon return as the Son of Man he had predicted.

scholarly journals Responses to Apocalypse: Early Christianity and Extinction Rebellion

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 384
Author(s):  
Cullan Joyce
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Community Strategies ◽  
Cultural Movement

The Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement has grown rapidly in the past two years. In popular media, XR has sometimes been described using religious terminology. XR has been compared to an eco-cult, a spiritual and cultural movement, and described as holding apocalyptic views. Despite XR lacking the distinctive religiosity of new testament and early (pre-150ACE) Christianity, the movement resonates with the early Christian experience in several ways. (1) A characterization of events within the world as apocalyptic. (2) Both feel vulnerable to the apocalypse in specific ways, though each responds differently. (3) Both experience the apocalypse as a community and develop community strategies in response to the apocalypse. The paper sketches certain features of new testament Christianity and compares some of these to XR. The main difference between the two movements is that XR makes decisions to actively become vulnerable, whereas new testament Christianity was more often passively vulnerable. Elements of new testament Christianity provide a context for understanding XR as a response to an apocalypse.

Re-enchanting a Disenchanted Universe – Post Modern Projects in Theologies of Space

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Anthony Balcomb
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The World ◽  
Spiritual Reality

Abstract'Disenchantment' was an expression coined by Max Weber to describe a process whereby the world was rid of all spiritual reality and subjected to the power of the calculating and rational human mind. An enchanted universe was one in which space was presenced with spiritual agency, where things were subjects, not objects, and in which an epistemology of engagement, not disengagement, operated. Disenchantment involved, amongst other things, the emptying of space, the objectification of being, and the linearizing of time. Christian theology from the seventeenth century became associated with a disenchanted, modernizing agenda through early Christian scientists such as Bacon, Newton, and Descartes. While modernity has brought unprecedented levels of supremacy over nature the association of Christian theology with the modern agenda of disenchantment has been questioned in the postmodern context. Theologies of place and space are now being sought that take seriously an agenda that places God and spirituality back in the world and not beyond the world, that emphasizes an organic and not a mechanistic universe, and that resuscitates the notion of agency in the world.

The Problem of a New Testament Theology

1973 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Käsemann
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Church

In the Protestant tradition the Bible has long been regarded as the sole norm for the Church. It was from this root that, in the seventeenth century, there sprang first of all ‘biblical theology’, from which New Testament theology later branched off at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Radical historical criticism too kept closely to this tradition, and F. C. Baur made such a theology the goal of all his efforts in the study of the New Testament. Since that time the question how the problem thus posed is to be tackled and solved has remained a living issue in Germany. On the other hand, the problem for a long time held no interest for other church traditions, although here too the position has changed within the last two decades. In 1950 Meinertz wrote the first Catholic exposition, while the theme was taken up in France by Bonsirven in 1951, and by Richardson in England in 1958. Popular developments along these lines were to follow.

Creation

2019 ◽  
pp. 511-524
Author(s):  
Paul M. Blowers
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Many ◽  
Sacred History

Early Christian interpretation of Scripture on the theme of creation not surprisingly gave considerable attention to the Genesis account of the origins of the world, in part to counter the claims of Graeco-Roman cosmology, but more importantly to expound the latent theological meaning of the many details of the biblical cosmogony. But patristic exegetes were also keen on the fact that ‘creation’ in the Bible implied far more than beginnings; indeed, it designated the whole economy (oikonomia) of the Creator’s ongoing relation to the creation as set forth in sacred history and as requiring the further interpretative lenses of Christology, soteriology, and eschatology. Early Christian interpreters plumbed a wide variety of Old Testament texts beyond Genesis (especially the Psalms, Deutero-Isaiah, and the Wisdom literature). In their New Testament commentary they focused on such motifs as the subjection of creation to ‘vanity’, the work of Jesus Christ in recapitulating God’s creative purposes, and the eschatological renewal and transformation of the created universe in its relation to human salvation.

Servant of the Lord and Son of Man

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Black
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
The New Testament

The recognition that Isaiah's Servant of the Lord referred to the Messiah, and to himself as Son of man, goes back at least to the Founder of the Christian religion Himself. Does it go any further back, and has it any particular background in Hebrew thought and history? In other words, Is the New Testament doctrine of a Suffering Messiah unique to Christianity?

Psalms, Philippians 2:6-11, and the Origins of Christology

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adela Yarbro Collins
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Passion Narrative ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Worship

AbstractStudents of early Christianity recognized long ago that the canonical psalms of the Jewish Bible provided a framework of meaning in which the followers of Jesus could make sense of his crucifixion. This novel hermeneutic is evident in the allusions to the Psalms in the passion narrative of the Gospel according to Mark. It appears also in the Markan Jesus's explanation of the need for the Son of Man to suffer. Most students of the New Testament today understand Philippians 2:6-11 as a pre-Pauline hymn that was composed for early Christian worship. More recent studies suggest that it is exalted prose rather than poetry. The hypothesis of this article is that Paul composed it, either for worship or for the purposes of the argument of his letter to the Philippians. In doing so, he adapted a common social practice of the local culture. The "theologos" was an official in the organized worship of an ancient deity whose duty it was to compose brief speeches, sometimes in prose, sometimes in poetry, in honor of the deity. The organized worship of the emperor included such officials. Paul acted as a "theologos" in writing a brief speech in exalted prose honoring Jesus Christ, whom he had taught the Philippians to honor instead of the emperor.

Forgetting the power of leaven: The historical method in recent New Testament theology

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104
Author(s):  
Seth Heringer
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Ernst Troeltsch ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
Synthetic Work ◽  
At Will

AbstractErnst Troeltsch and Heikki Räisänen have raised significant challenges to the way New Testament theology handles the relation of history and theology. Troeltsch pushed Christian scholars to apply the historical method's three principles of criticism, analogy and correlation consistently to their work and thus embrace empiricism. Räisänen continues this trajectory by splitting New Testament theology into its descriptive and reflective tasks, resulting in a programme which questions the unity of the canon, the appropriateness of prescription and the role of church authority in New Testament theology. With these challenges in mind, this article examines four recent New Testament theologies to see how they use the historical method. It finds that these works exhibit different ad hoc ways of using the historical method, picking it up and setting it down at will. Peter Balla accepts New Testament theology as descriptive and historical while claiming it can also be theological by studying the content in the New Testament. Despite this embrace of the historical method, Balla remains uncomfortable with bare empiricism and pushes back on its naturalism. Georg Strecker splits the world into two: one part which can be investigated by the historical method and another part which lies outside its normal subject matter. The result is that he uses the historical method everywhere except where his main theological concern lies – Jesus’ resurrection. I. Howard Marshall similarly holds the historical method to be necessary for New Testament theology but largely ignores it in light of narrative-theological concerns. Frank Matera takes a purposefully literary approach to New Testament theology and generally ignores the historical method. He does invoke it, however, when the text becomes difficult and alternative readings must be found. The methodological inconsistency demonstrated by these New Testament theologies leads the article to conclude that this type of historical New Testament theology is a failed enterprise. A theological understanding of history based on work by Murray Rae is then proposed as an alternative which allows for methodological consistency in synthetic work on the New Testament.

scholarly journals New Testament Eschatology and New Testament Ethics

1909 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Francis Greenwood Peabody
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Kingdom Of Heaven ◽  
The World ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
Strange Phenomenon

The most important contribution of this generation to Biblical interpretation has been made, beyond question, through the appreciation and analysis of New Testament eschatology. Round the teaching of the Gospels, like an atmosphere which even though unconscious of it they breathe, lies, according to this view, a circle of apocalyptic expectation, with its literature, its vocabulary, and its inextinguishable hopes. Though Rabbinical orthodoxy might regard this literature as heretical, it may well have had a peculiar fascination for contemplative or poetic minds. When, therefore, after solitary reflection on his mission, Jesus came into Galilee ‘preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,’ it might be anticipated that he, like John the Baptist, would apply to that kingdom the language of apocalyptic hope, and would announce its approach as heralded by a catastrophic end of the world-age. This key of interpretation, once in the hands of German learning, has been applied with extraordinary ingenuity to many obscurities and perplexities of the Gospels, and has unlocked some of them with dramatic success. The strange phenomenon, for example, of reserve and privacy in the teaching of Jesus, becomes, in this view, an evidence of his esoteric consciousness of Messiahship, which none but a chosen few were permitted to know. ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’ The cardinal phrases of the teaching, ‘Kingdom of Heaven,’ ‘Son of God,’ and ‘Son of Man,’ all point, it is urged, not to a normal, human or social regeneration, but to a supernatural, revolutionary, and catastrophic change.

scholarly journals The wisdom and apocalyptic layers of the Sayings Gospel Q: What is their significance?

1994 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Hartin
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Past ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Sayings Of Jesus ◽  
Sayings Gospel Q

New Testament scholarship over the past three decades has shown a growing interest in the Sayings Gospel Q. Vielhauer’s thesis on the secondary nature of the future Son of man sayings led to the conclusion that the apocalyptic element within the Sayings Gospel Q was also secondary. This paper follows the work of Kloppenborg and examines the wisdom and apocalyptic layers of the Sayings Gospel Q. The examination argues that the proclamation of Jesus was directed first of all to the proclamation of a kingdom that was present. The apocalyptic understanding of a future, immediate end of the world was a later appropriation within a deuteronomistic framework that developed from sayings of Jesus that were interpreted in this way by the early church.

scholarly journals Mark 14:62: Substantial compendium of New Testament Christology1

2000 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean C. Loba Mkole
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Son Of Man

The confession in Mark 14:62 seems to be the most comprehensive Christological compendium of a very early Christian community. This passage reveals Jesus' identity as the Christ, Son of God and Son of man. It has a performative meaning that operates not only for Jesus' earthly life and death, but also for his resurrection and parousia: "You will see" (Mark 14:62b). Some theologiansportray Jesus Christ as Ancestor or African King. The purpose of this study is to show how far the African concepts of "ancestor" and "king" can be relevant and legitimate in the light of the Christology of Mark 14:62.

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