Professor of Theology at the University of Berlin. Member of the Archaeological Institute of the German Reich. The inquiry into the origins of the New Testament is a historical inquiry, a problem for the study of history. And this wealth of the early Imperial period manifests itself especially in the field of literature.
In the storms of the ages, much of it was blown away and lost forever. With the Law they formed the basis of the religious lessons in the Temple and in the synagogues. The later fate of the letters of Paul is the same as that of letters in general.
It is probably time that we finally talk about the New Testament or about one.
The pre-literary period of the Gospel of Jesus and of His Apostle, Paul
But this collection and publication did not alter the true character of Paul's letters in any sense; they remained genuine letters, whether in the possession of the little churches in Corinth and Galatia, or, a century later, known to all Christendom as part of the gradually forming New Testament. Paul is literary and not a man of letters; with Jesus belongs to the non-literary period of Christianity. We set out to describe the origin of the book, but, so far, we have only said that Jesus and Paul did not write any books.
I believe that most scholars have said far too little about the non-literary period of Christianity. Therefore, it will be in our best interest to put this aspect in the background for once and decide to imagine the origin of the New Testament in such a way that we see at the beginning not an age of books, but an age without books. creative personalities; the era, not of the letter, but of the Spirit of God working in the living words of the Master, the Spirit of Christ working in the words of His Apostle.
The literary period of the Gospels and other Apostolic books
But there is a very good reason why I dwelt so long on the non-literary period of early Christianity.
The period of the formation of the Canon, which brought together the non-literary and the literary remains of the Apostolic period into
THE ORIGIN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (B)
This John was the pre-eminent leader of the Church of Asia in the closing years of the first century. He wrote his book during a period of persecution and dispersal in the last decade of the first century. That is the belief that the return of the Lord will not take place in the near future.
And these two groups were the crystallization points in the creation of the New Testament. The genesis of the New Testament runs parallel to the genesis of the old Catholic Christian Church.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
Greek, turned out to be shackles in the study, and especially in the exegesis of the New Testament, where in endless cases the special. Now, as a rule, the language of the papyri and the ostraca is the unstylized language of the people. We have no documents, or at least only very few, in the vernacular of the old period, because it never found its way into literature.
And furthermore, the greatest of the ancient Bible students, Origen, had expressly asserted that the word did not previously exist in the Greek language. But the papyri teach us that plh>rhv had become improbable by the time of the New Testament and perhaps before that. But generally speaking, the New Testament, despite its Semites, is a book about the Mediterranean world, not about the ghetto.
And the weighty, universal human content of the Gospel corresponds to the simplest form. In sharp contrast to the style of Jesus' sayings is the style of Paul's letters. In all important matters, Paul's tongue does not rise above the heads of the masses.
I reject the idea that the peculiarity of John's style is Semitic grammar. But there is also much to be said about the style of other New Testament writers. The multitudes longed for simple, and God's revelation of the gospel demanded simple dress.
THE NEW TESTAMENT IN WORLD HISTORY
The number of copies of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament would probably reach several hundred. No part of an original manuscript of the New Testament belonging to this period has come down to us. Perhaps we would have fragments of the second century New Testament if Christianity had reached Egypt in the early period.
But the New Testament also began to conquer the soul of the Northern European peoples. For the march through this great world, the New Testament put on the garment of the English language. Whoever actively participates in the study of the New Testament receives daily proof of his unique position in humanity.
And then he added to the impressions of the modern history of the New Testament an insight into part of its history in the Middle Ages. For the ascent of the New Testament is one of the great chapters in human cultural history. Today, the New Testament is one of the biggest subjects of expert knowledge in colleges and universities around the world.
This method formed a theological teaching out of the flowing and declining religious life of the New Testament. The emergence of the New Testament in the sphere of science was thus both a danger to the Little Book and a protection. All these effects of the New Testament, which are inaccessible to history, are powerful in the Kingdom of God.
THE HISTORICAL VALUE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
That the tradition is intact and trustworthy;
That in the course of time it has been shortened, expanded, or altered in some way or other; namely, either through mere accident during its
But when a number of these miracle stories are considered secondary for strong reasons, this does not detract from the historical value of the tradition of the Synoptics as a whole. Using the modern terminology of the historical method, the Synoptic tradition as a whole contains both remnants of the history of Jesus and tradition of the history of Jesus. But practically we can add the vast majority of the words of Jesus in Greek.
In general, remnants, in the narrow or broad sense of the word, seem to me to occupy the foreground in the synoptic texts. What is the significance of these facts for the historical value of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John also shows the great influence of the historical personality of Jesus on the Apostolic Church, even where it does not contain remnants, we see behind him.
He did not know the contents of Paulin's letters; they had not yet been published when he wrote. Those who only estimate these letters as documents from the Imperial period will gain a lot of profit. The historical value of the New Testament as a whole lies in the fact that it gives us a fragmentary but reliable knowledge of the personalities of Jesus and Paul, and of the essence and nature of early Christianity.
It is a reliable remnant of a spiritual movement that refers to one center of spiritual power, Jesus Christ. In 1841, a scholar named Kirschbaum, who revived the old hypothesis, seriously defended the view that the work of Judas Philo of. To the right was the Aegean Sea with the bare rocks of the distant islands of Samos, Patmos and Cos.
THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
I cannot fully develop this problem of the relationship between the historical and the sacred. We shall also, it is true, gladly welcome the result of a historical survey of the New Testament in regard to its religious evaluation. Wouldn't it be more accurate, instead of talking about the religious value of the New Testament, to talk about the religious value of early Christianity?
It was certainly not the influence of the written New Testament that historically worked in the missions of the first centuries. It follows that in this reading "The Religion of the New Testament" means the same, at least in a certain sense, as "the religion of early Christianity". The historical study of the New Testament has not always made the historical approach to New Testament Religion easy.
Many scholars never spelled the subject, "Religion of the New Testament," with the emphasis on the word. Only during the last decades has the historical problem of the religion of the New Testament been raised. How to explain the fact that in the theological literature of the past so little was said about the Religion of the New Testament.
True, he was not the creator, but the organizer of the cult of Jesus Christ. And it is not the unqualified basis for today's personal appreciation of the New Testament. As simple as in the case of the Synoptic Gospels is the question of the religious value of Paul's letters.
THE END
FOOTNOTES
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