“Distinct but Not Separate”: Historical Research in the Study of Jesus and Christian Faith

“Distinct but not separate” is a venerable formula whose origins go back to the Council of Chalcedon's confession of 451 that Jesus' humanity and divinity are each distinct realities, yet at the same time united in the one person of the Savior himself. Jesus' singular personhood (= “not separate”) protected the New Testament insight that God really united himself with all humans in their historical and earthly condition through the deeds and words of Jesus himself. God's utterly personal oneness with Jesus was the way in which God became adoptively one with the whole human family and world. But this could only be a true union between God and humans if neither was swallowed up in the other, or reduced to the other. Union (we might say communion as well) presupposes oneness and difference. And so Chalcedon speaks of Jesus' divinity and humanity as remaining distinct. By our adoption in grace through Jesus (Rm 8:14–17) we ourselves are not pantheistically swallowed up in God, but retain our distinctiveness as humans as well.

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Galiläa oder Jerusalem? : Ein Ordnungsversuch in den Erscheinungsorten des Auferstandenen im Markusevangelium, im Lukasevangelium und in der Apostelgeschichte

European Journal of Theology ◽

10.5117/ejt2021.1.005.dorp ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 61-86

Author(s):

Jens Dörpinghaus

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

The Other ◽

Sich Eine ◽

Other Hand ◽

The New Testament ◽

The One ◽

Form Criticism

Zusammenfassung Markus 14,27-28; 16,7 und Lukas 24,49 bzw. Apostelgeschichte 1,4 sprechen jeweils unterschiedliche Erwartungen für die Erscheinungsorte des Auferstandenen aus und insbesondere für das Verbleiben der Jünger. Markus spricht von Galiläa als Erscheinungsort, nach Lukas 24,49 sollen die Jünger jedoch in Jerusalem bleiben. Dieses Spannungsfeld wird häufig durch Methoden der Form- und Traditionskritik untersucht. Hier soll dieser Ansatz nicht nur diskutiert, sondern es sollen auch die theologischen Implikationen untersucht werden. Anhand eines neuen literarisch-chronologischen Ordnungsversuchs in den Evangelien kann herausgearbeitet werden, dass sich beide Aussagen auf die Nachfolge der Jünger Jesu in bestimmten Abschnitten der Zeit vor und nach der Auferstehung Jesu und seiner Himmelfahrt beziehen. Damit findet sich eine neue Perspektive auf die nachösterliche Nachfolge im Neuen Testament.SummaryMark 14:27-28 and 16:7 on the one hand and Luke 24:49 with Acts 1:4 on the other hand mention different locations where the disciples will meet Jesus after the resurrection or where they should stay. Mark mentions Galilee, Luke Jerusalem. Most scholars try to solve this conflict with the methods of form criticism or tradition criticism. This article discusses the shortcomings of this approach and discusses the resulting theological implications for both Jerusalem and Galilee. It introduces a new literary approach for ordering the post-resurrection appearances in the Gospels and Acts. The results provide new perspectives on discipleship in the period after Easter in the New Testament.RésuméMarc 14:27-28 et 16:7 d’un côté et Luc 24:49 avec Actes 1:4 de l’autre mentionnent différents lieux où les disciples rencontreront Jésus après la résurrection ou devront attendre. Marc cite la Galilée, Luc Jérusalem. La plupart des exégètes s’efforcent de résoudre ce conflit en recourant aux méthodes de la critique des formes ou de la tradition. Cet article traite des faiblesses de cette approche et aborde les implications théologiques qui en résultent pour à la fois Jérusalem et la Galilée. Il introduit une nouvelle approche littéraire pour ordonner les apparitions post-résurrection dans l’Évangile et les Actes. Les résultats ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives sur le discipulat en cette période importante du Nouveau Testament.

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Jewish fish (ΙΧΘΥΣ) in post-supersessionist water: Messianic Judaism within a post-supersessionistic paradigm

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies ◽

10.4102/hts.v72i4.3331 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 72 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Joel Willitts

Keyword(s):

Ethnic Identity ◽

New Testament ◽

The Body ◽

The Other ◽

Messianic Judaism ◽

The New Testament ◽

The One ◽

The Church

This article defines, explains and argues for the necessity of a post-supersessionistic hermeneutical posture towards the New Testament. The post-supersessionistic reading of the New Testament takes the Jewish nature of the apostolic documents seriously, and has as its goal the correction of the sin of supersessionism. While supersessionism theologically is repudiated in most corners of the contemporary church through official church documents, the practise of reading the New Testament continues to exhibit supersessionistic tendencies and outcomes. The consequence of this predominant reading of the New Testament is the continued exclusion of Jewish ethnic identity in the church. In light of the growing recognition of multiculturalism and contextualisation on the one hand, and the recent presence of a movement within the body of Messiah of Jewish believers in Jesus on the other, the church’s established approach to reading Scripture that leads to the elimination of ethnic identity must be repudiated alongside its post-supersessionist doctrinal statements. This article defines terms, explains consequences and argues for a renewed perspective on the New Testament as an ethnic document; such a perspective will promote the church’s cultivation of real embodied ethnic particularity rather than either a pseudo-interculturalism or the eraser full ethnicity.

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The Use of evangelicus in the Paraphrases

Erasmus Studies ◽

10.1163/18749275-03702001 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 37 (2) ◽

pp. 137-160

Author(s):

Dean Simpson

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

Historical Context ◽

The Other ◽

Word Study ◽

Semantic Categories ◽

The New Testament ◽

The One

This article is a word study that analyses and interprets how Erasmus uses the adjective evangelicus, -a, -um in his New Testament Paraphrases. The development of the idiom ‘gospel-blank’ (evangelicus + noun) is analyzed diachronically; the phrases denoting gospel things are divided into six semantic categories. The study shows, on the one hand, that there is a general consistency in how evangelicus is used, the most common pairings predominating in most Paraphrases on the Epistles and Gospels, while, on the other, there is some broadening and lowering of the nouns with which evangelicus is joined, moving from the Paraphrases on the Epistles to the Gospel Paraphrases. Erasmus’ changing attitude to the project of paraphrasing the New Testament provides biographical and historical context in which to place the study’s findings. The study concludes by highlighting the New Testament Paraphrases as Erasmus’ humanistic response to worsening divisions in the early 1520s.

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Was the Text of the Septuagint Christianized?

10.1093/oso/9780192898098.003.0004 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 69-92

Author(s):

Gilles Dorival

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

The Other ◽

Jewish Origin ◽

Other Hand ◽

The New Testament ◽

The One

On the one hand, all of the deuterocanonical books and all of the supplements to Daniel, Esther, Jeremiah have Jewish origin. In fact, there are only five Christian texts within the Septuagint, perhaps six, if Job 42:17a originated from a Christian circle (which is less likely than from a Jewish milieu). The five texts are found in the Psalter. After Psa 13:3ab, Psa 13:3c–j gives a lengthy quotation of Paul’s Rom 3:12–18. In the Odes, there are four Christian texts: three passages of Luke and one ecclesiastical composition. On the other hand, New Testament verses are introduced into the Septuagint. There are, at most, 159 possible Christianized verses listed for the whole of the Septuagint of which twenty-five occur in Psalms. Of these twenty-five, nine have very limited Christianization: the verses that align with the New Testament text occur only in one, two, or three manuscripts. There are twelve cases of partial Christianization attested in more than three manuscripts and there is only one example of a complete Christianization: Psa 39:7b (40:7b MT), but even this is debated among scholars. Finally, it happens that a few words (less than half a verse) are added into the verses of the Septuagint. There are just six potential Christian additions of this kind. Of these, Psa 65:1a has to be removed. Five cases remain: Psa 37:14a; 37:21c; 49:6a; 50:9a, and 95:10a. The latter is the most famous example: instead of ‘say among the nations: “the Lord became king”’, the Coptic versions, some manuscripts and some Fathers offer ‘say among the nations: “the Lord became king from (the) wood”’. So, a connection is established between the Lord of the Psalm and the wood of Jesus’ cross. In sum, the Septuagint text is very little Christianized: the translation remains remarkably close to its Jewish origin.

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Greatness of Soul Across the Ages

The Measure of Greatness ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198840688.003.0012 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 292-318

Author(s):

Robert C. Roberts

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

Mutual Exclusion ◽

Abraham Lincoln ◽

Thomas Aquinas ◽

The Other ◽

Scottish Enlightenment ◽

The New Testament ◽

Greatness Of Soul ◽

The Way ◽

Strength And Toughness

That a virtue should be called magnanimity suggests that souls come in sizes. But what makes for this sizing? This chapter is framed between the Homeric heroic ideal embodied in the megalêtôr and the gentle but resolute American hero, the magnanimous Abraham Lincoln, interacting along the way with the other chapters in the volume. This chapter compares conceptions of greatness of soul (heart, spirit, mind), touching on Socrates, Aristotle, the New Testament, Stoicism, Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī and al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, the Scottish Enlightenment, Kant, and Nietzsche. The story is one of diversity, indeed in some cases mutual exclusion, with overlap and continuities. But in the end the chapter suggests a certain evolution of our conception of human greatness in which the virtues of strength and toughness are integrated with those of generosity and compassion.

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Kingdom Sayings and Parables of Jesus in the Apocryphon of James: Tradition and Redaction

New Testament Studies ◽

10.1017/s0028688500011085 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 1-24 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Charles W. Hedrick

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

Hedgehog and Fox: Anderson as Historian and Philologist

Harvard Theological Review ◽

10.1017/s0017816010000696 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 103 (3) ◽

pp. 373-382

Author(s):

Benjamin D. Sommer

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

New Testament ◽

The Other ◽

Academic Disciplines ◽

Constructive Theology ◽

Biblical Scholarship ◽

Religious Dialogue ◽

Positive Sense ◽

The New Testament ◽

The One

To sin or transgress, according to one dictionary definition, is to go beyond a limit, to cross what is supposed to be a clear border. In this sense, one can say that Gary Anderson has succeeded in writing a very sinful book. Like Sennacherib as the rabbis describe him, Anderson is (he “erases boundaries between nations”)—only I use this phrase to describe Anderson in rather a more positive sense than the rabbis intended it when they applied it to the Assyrian emperor.2 Throughout this book we are discussing, Anderson crosses boundaries between academic disciplines: biblical criticisms that study the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, Qumranic scholarship, rabbinics, patristics, the study of both medieval Catholic and early Protestant theology. He crosses boundaries within some of these fields, as well: for example, by attending to modern Israeli biblical scholarship in a way that is, alas, all too rare among non-Jewish scholars in North America and Europe; or by showing scholars of rabbinics what they can learn from the study of the New Testament, especially when that study is conscious of its roots in medieval and early modern theology. Most importantly, Anderson tears down artificial barriers that separate historical, philological, descriptive scholarship on the one side from constructive theology and inter-religious dialogue on the other.

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No More Zealots in the House of the Lord

Novum Testamentum ◽

10.1163/15685365-12341402 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 55 (1) ◽

pp. 22-30

Author(s):

Joel Marcus

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

The Other ◽

Military Occupation ◽

Ethnic Cleansing ◽

Ancient Judaism ◽

Other Hand ◽

The New Testament ◽

The One ◽

The Temple

Abstract The word כְּנַעֲנִי in Zech 14:21b (“there will no longer be a כְּנַעֲנִי in the house of the Lord of hosts”), has usually been interpreted either in an ethnic (“Canaanite”) or in a mercantile sense (“trader,” “merchant”), and it is possible that in its original context it was a double entendre. In later exegesis, the mercantile interpretation comes to predominate, but the ethnic sense is never completely eclipsed. The New Testament allusions to the Zecharian text reflect both interpretations. On the one hand, the Markan and Johannine Jesus utilizes the mercantile interpretation when he forbids the commerce in the Temple to continue (Mark 11:15-17; John 2:14-17). On the other hand, Mark also seems to reflect the ethnic interpretation, at least indirectly, since he seems to be responding to revolutionaries who used it to justify their ethnic cleansing and military occupation of the Temple. But Mark, for his own part, may have employed the sort of punning exegesis common in ancient Judaism to interpret Zech 14:21b as a prophecy of the eschatological expulsion of these revolutionaries from their Temple headquarters: on that day, there will no longer be קַנְאָנִין (“Zealots”) in the house of the Lord of Hosts.

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Die gebruik van die Ou Testament in die volkslewe

In die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi ◽

10.4102/ids.v29i4.1559 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 29 (4) ◽

Author(s):

J. L. Helberg ◽

H. F. Van Rooy

Keyword(s):

Empirical Study ◽

New Testament ◽

Old Testament ◽

The Other ◽

The New Testament ◽

Contemporary Situation ◽

The Way

The aim of this study was to determine the use of the Old Testament by members of the Gereformeerde Kerke in Suid-Afrika and the way in which the Old Testament is applied to the contemporary situation. An empirical study was undertaken to determine the approach of members of these churches to the Old Testament. In the first part of the paper issues necessary to evaluate the empirical study are discussed, while the second part presents the results of the empirical study. It is clear from the survey that the Old Testament is not used to the same extent as the New Testament by the ministers and other members of these churches. The views of the ministers on the application of the Old Testament to the situation of the Afrikaners are more nuanced than those of the other members of these churches.

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Die ‘Duisternis’ as Mag in die Nuwe Testament

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies ◽

10.4102/hts.v68i1.1075 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 68 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Gert J. Steyn

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

The Other ◽

General Survey ◽

Four Dimensions ◽

The Earth ◽

Other Hand ◽

The New Testament ◽

The One

The purpose of this contribution is to present a general survey of darkness as power in the New Testament. It is generally accepted that darkness functions on a symbolic-metaphorical level on the one hand and on a literal level on the other hand. The former receives attention in this study where darkness is almost exclusively connected with the domain of power of the evil. The issue of darkness is investigated from four dimensions (1) as an opposing power to light in a dualistic worldview, (2) as a ruling power with a grip on death and the grave, (3) as a power of the evil and the struggle for liberation and (4) as a symbol and instrument of judgement of God in an apocalyptic worldview, with darkness eventually becoming the condemned. It is concluded that there seems to be at least two New Testament perceptions regarding the position of darkness as power: The domain of evil’s darkness is located in the ‘underworld’, but gradually this view changed to also include a space in the layers of heaven above the earth. Earthlings found themselves in the midst of the struggle between Belial and Christ – the latter who finally conquers the power of darkness and now rules above the dark forces of evil.

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