scholarly journals Historien og fortællingen

Author(s):  
Per Bilde

In his doctoral dissertation, “Den Kristne Grundfortælling” (The Fundamental Christian Story), Svend Bjerg pleads for the intimate connexion between Christianity and narrative. Christian belief is created by narrative, and the New Testament texts have to be understood as narrative, and treated as such. At the same time Historical Criticism of the Bible is rejected as a false way of treating Biblical narrative.In his article, the author proves that Svend Bjerg uses the category “story” with so wide a content that is loses its value as a concise category. Secondly, he shows that Svend Bjerg’s picture of Historical Criticism is not adequate. He critizises Svend Bjerg’s contraposition of story and history and he demonstrates how Svend Bjerg himself is unwilling to draw the consequences of his own view of Historical Criticism. The contraposition of story and history, therefore, is not helpful.

1973 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Käsemann

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.


Think ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (35) ◽  
pp. 83-91
Author(s):  
George A. Wells

Bishop John A.T. Robinson's Honest to God was exceptionally successful. In the decade following its publication more than a million copies were sold in seventeen different languages. Robinson was aware that numerous awkward questions were being asked about traditional Christian beliefs, which it was no longer possible to ignore. His purpose was not so much to question traditional ideas of God as to suggest alternatives for those who found them unsatisfactory (8). He wanted to convince such persons that an inability to believe what is stated in the Bible or the prayer book does not disqualify them from calling themselves Christians and presenting themselves at church. He speaks of traditional Christian beliefs, as stated in the New Testament, as a ‘language’ (24) and thinks that Christianity should be conveyed to people in a variety of languages. By employing, as he does, the language of such Christian scholars as Bonhoeffer, Tillich and Bultmann, an atheist may find himself able to call himself a Christian. But the old familiar language of the Bible remains more pleasing to most of God's children, particularly to his ‘older children’ (43), so we must not give it up, although he allows that it is becoming increasingly unpopular, so that without ‘the kind of revolution’ he is advocating, ‘Christian faith and practice … will come to be abandoned’ (123).


Author(s):  
Dale B. Martin

When the subject is the Christian view of the holy spirit, it is even more difficult to find an orthodox doctrine of the spirit if the Bible is read only through the method of modern historical criticism. Read historically, the Bible does not teach a doctrine of the trinity, and the Greek word for “spirit,” pneuma, refers to many different things in the New Testament. Moreover, the pneuma was considered in the ancient world to be a material substance, though a rarified and thin form of matter. Yet those ancient notions of pneuma may help us reimagine the Christian holy spirit in new, though not at all unorthodox, ways. The spirit may then become the most corporeal person of the trinity; the most present person of the trinity; or alternatively, the most absent. The various ways the New Testament speaks of pneuma—that of the human person, or the church, of God, of Christ, and even of “this cosmos”—may provoke Christian imagination in new ways once the constraints of modernist methods of interpretation are transcended. Even the gender of the spirit becomes a provocative but fruitful meditation for postmodern Christians.


2021 ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Ириней Пиковский

Цель настоящего исследования - показать, каким образом немецкий учёный Ганс-Иоахим Краус (1918-2000 гг.) совместил теологический подход к исследованию Писания с историко-критическим. Это делается на примере его экзегезы 109 и 131 псалмов, входящей в известнейший труд Крауса - трёхтомный комментарий на Псалтирь. Для решения поставленной задачи проводится анализ предпосылок научного подхода Крауса, которые связаны с верой Бога, открываемой Ветхим Заветом. Далее демонстрируется методология Крауса по реконструкции исторической и культовой среды, в которой формировались библейские поэмы. Как показывает исследование, Краус активно использует небиблейские источники, проводит текстологический анализ рукописей, показывая какую роль могли играть псалмы в культе почитания Сиона и иерусалимского царя. Краус избегает использование типологии и аллегории и осторожно подходит к вопросу об исполнении ветхозаветных пророчеств в Новом Завете. Как учёный, он доказывает, что Писание содержит фактологическую информацию, которой можно верить. Его строго академический и в то же время по-христиански благоговейный подход к исследованию Библии, на наш взгляд, может служить ответом на вопрос, как может сочетаться вера с научным познанием Библии. One of those German scholars who tried to combine the theological with the historical-critical approach to the Scriptures studies was Hans-Joachim Kraus (1918-2000). Kraus’s most famous work is a three-volume commentary on the Psalter. Using the exegesis of Psalms 109 and 131 as an example, the author of this article shows how Kraus balanced between theology and historical criticism. For this, an analysis of his premises of the faith in the living God is carried out. I try to demonstrate Kraus’s methodology in reconstructing the historical cultic environment in which the biblical poems were formed. As my study shows, Kraus actively uses non-biblical sources, conducts theological analysis of manuscripts, showing what role the psalms could play in the veneration of Zion and Jerusalem king. Kraus avoids the use of typology and allegory and is cautious about fulfilling Old Testament prophecy in the New Testament. As a scientist, he argues that Scripture contains factual information that can be believed. His strictly academic and at the same time Christian-reverent approach to Bible study, in my opinion, can serve as an answer to the question: how can faith be combined with scientific investigation of the Bible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-137
Author(s):  
Mika Sulistiono

Until now, challenges on the validity of the Bible based on the use of the Gnostic Gospels are still rampant, especially by anti-orthodox Christians and liberals. For this reason, this study attempts to answer the question of how the historical description of the Gnostic Gospels was dismissed in the century of its appearance, so that it did not enter the New Testament canon. Through a qualitative-descriptive research method, it was found that the answer to the rejection of the Gnostic Gospels as part of the canon was due to: 1). there is a significant time gap between the appearance of the Gnostic Gospels and the canonical ones, 2). its distribution was secret, and was not common among the early Christian congregations. 3). his teachings that contradict the teachings of the canonical gospels about the life of the Lord Jesus and the way of human salvation, 4). several important figures of the second to third centuries such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clemens, Origens, and Esuibius firmly rejected the Gnostic Gospels to enter the canon. The result of this research certainly confirms the Christian belief in the acknowledgment of the validity of the New Testament canon.


Author(s):  
Дмитрий Евгеньевич Афиногенов

Трактат 1 из сборника «Амфилохии» св. патр. Фотия на примере истолкования конкретных мест из Библии объясняет методологию библейской экзегезы вообще. Во внимание должен приниматься не только богословский или исторический контекст, но также чисто филологические аспекты: семантика, интонация, языковой узус Нового Завета и Септуагинты, возможные разночтения и т. д. Патриарх убеждён, что при правильном пользовании этим инструментарием можно объяснить все кажущиеся противоречащими высказывания Св. Писания таким образом, что они окажутся в полном согласии друг с другом. The first treatise from «Amphilochia» by the St. Patriarch Photios expounds the general principles of the biblical exegesis on a specific example of certain passages from the Bible. It is not just the theological or historical context that has to be taken into consideration, but also purely philological aspects, such as semantics, intonation, the language usage of the New Testament and Septuagint, possible variant readings etc. The Patriarch is convinced, that the correct application of these tools makes it possible to perfectly harmonize all seemingly contradictory statements of the Scriptures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-140
Author(s):  
David J. Neumann

AbstractSwami Vivekananda was the most influential pioneer of a Yogi Christ, illustrating well over a century ago how the life and teachings of Jesus might be incorporated within a larger Hindu worldview—and then presented back to Western audiences. Appropriation of Jesus, one of the central symbols of the West, might be viewed as the ultimate act of counter-Orientalism. This article begins by providing a brief biography of Vivekananda and the modern Hinduism that nurtured him and that he propagated. He articulated an inclusivist vision of Advaita Vedanta as the most compelling vision of universal religion. Next, the article turns to Vivekananda's views of Christianity, for which he had little affection, and the Bible, which he knew extraordinarily well. The article then systematically explores Vivekananda's engagement with the New Testament, revealing a clear hermeneutical preference for the Gospels, particularly John. Following the lead of biblical scholars, Vivekananda made a distinction between the Christ of the Gospels and the Jesus of history, offering sometimes contradictory conclusions about the historicity of elements associated with Jesus's life. Finally, the article provides a detailed articulation of Vivekananda's Jesus—a figure at once familiar to Christians but, in significant ways, uniquely accommodated to Hindu metaphysics. Vivekananda demonstrated a robust understanding and discriminating use of the Christian Bible that has not been properly recognized. He deployed this knowledge to launch an important and long-lived pattern: an attractive, fleshed out depiction of Jesus of Nazareth, transformed from the Christian savior into a Yogi model of self-realization. Through his efforts, Jesus became an indisputably Indian religious figure, no longer just a Christian one. The Yogi Christ remains a prominent global religious figure familiar to Hindus, Christians, and those of other faiths alike.


2017 ◽  
Vol 129 (4) ◽  
pp. 149-157
Author(s):  
Cherryl Hunt

Ordinary Christians’ responses to a dramatized reading of the New Testament, together with reflection on research in the area of performance criticism, suggests that understanding of the Bible and spiritual encounter with its texts may be promoted by the reading aloud of, and listening to, substantial portions of the Bible in an unfamiliar format; this might be found in a dramatized presentation and/or a previously unencountered translation. This practice should form part of any programme designed to promote biblical engagement within churches.


1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 406-416
Author(s):  
R. McL. Wilson

In the Gospel according to St. John it is written that ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever-lasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.’ In these familiar words is summed up the message of the Bible as a whole, and of the New Testament in particular. In spite of all that may be said of sin and depravity, of judgment and the wrath of God, the last word is one not of doom but of salvation. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is a Gospel of salvation, of deliverance and redemption. The news that was carried into all the world by the early Church was the Good News of the grace and love of God, revealed and made known in Jesus Christ His Son. In the words of Paul, it is that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’.


2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-145
Author(s):  
Ian Christopher Levy

AbstractAs an ardent advocate for Church reform in the late fourteenth century, John Wyclif found in Jewish history and practices a wealth of material upon which to draw when chastising the present Christian clerical class. Wyclif likens modern friars and prelates to the Jews of the Bible, and concludes that in their avarice and zeal for unscriptural human traditions they have in fact have proven themselves even greater enemies of Christ than the Jews themselves. Though Jews are consistently used as foils, they are not the recipients of gratuitous epithets. Noteworthy is the fact that Wyclif most often employs the term perfidia when speaking of Christian clerics rather than Jews. When he does speak of avarice, treachery, and murder on the part of the Jews those occasions are largely limited to the clerical class, and then in an effort to admonish the Christian clergy of his own day. As Wyclif read the New Testament accounts of Christ and the apostles, thereby forming his vision of an ideal Church, so he read of their adversaries and accepts them as the model for all who oppose his idealized Church.


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