Lecture 4 & Luke Flashcards
When and where did Baruch Spinoza live?
What was his idea on the concept of revelation and biblican hermeneutics. What kind of God did he believe in?
Jewish decent. From Spain. Active in the Netherlands.
deliver the society from religious passion; stop priestly manipulation >> neutralise the Bible as revelation.
“Read the Bible as if God did not exist”; Spinozas God: “The Sum of immortal reality”
When did Reimarus live?
What was his view on Dogmatical religion?
What is “demythologization” and what was the result of it?
1699–1768
Dogmatical religion legitimates power. Since they say what is right and wrong, healthy and unhealthy they tap into power of others.
Reimarus starts “Demythologization”: no miracles, Jesus not divine, against redemption through the Blood
Result: a new religion: no Trinity; no original sin; no ‘high’ Christology; no Old Testament; non-ecclesiastical Christianity
When did Semler, Enlightenment theologian with Pietistic background, live?
What was did he want to do to Christianity in terms of exlusivity?
(1725–1791):
Wants to deliver Christianity from ‘old’ limiting elements and make it the true universal religion—consequences for e.g., the canon of Scripture. The revelation did not end with the NT
When did F.C. Baur (Tübingen School) live?
What does he mean by “Tendenzkritik”
1792 – 1860
Tendenskritik: He doesnt take the bible at face value, but look for the tendencies in the Bible.
A play between strong dichotomic forces is the motor of early Christian history, especially the conflict perspective Peter vs. Paul
When Did Strauss live?
What was his most famous work?
Whose disciple was he, and of what school?
What was his concept of the divine?
1808 – 1874
Extremely influential A life of Jesus (Leben Jesu), 1835.
Also Hegelian, disciple of Baur. Wants to liberate the historical Jesus from the mythical costume in which the Church had clothed him.
The divine is not a person, it is an idea of which Jesus is the true manifestation; true humanity
Around 1900: the School of the History of Religions (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule): Bousset (cristological work) , Reitzenstein (parallels between NT text and material in gnostics texts), Heitmüller
What is their goal?
Wishes to find extra-Jewish influences in the New Testament: Iranian, Gnostic, the Mystery religions.
They though NT was strongly dependent on Pagan Texts.
After World War I
What kind of theology arose from this time?
What part of the bible came in focus from about 1920?
What was key feauters of Bultmann?
Dialectical theology arose (God speaks to us from outside - revelation): Karl Barth, to a certain degree Bultmann (trying to formulate christian faith to appeal to his contemporary culture, through working with contemporary philospophy).
From 1920: Research in the Gospels
Bultmann: radical criticism of New Testament historicity and the ‘demythologisation’ program. (The gospel did not record any historical event.)
After World War II
In what respect what did a new interest of Jesus arise? (2 things)
Who arrived on the scene instead of German exergesis?
After WW II: new eyes for the Jewish Jesus. (because of the holocaust)
The New Quest for the historical Jesus early 50’s (bultmann’s disciple)
This has been among the most influential the last 50 years
German exegesis lost its supremacy
American exegesis growing in influence
Evangelical exegesis after 1945 (part of american)
What does a Postmodern method mean?
Multimethodology, seveal methods at the same time.
Polysemy: many possible meanings. Doesn’t want to state that there is one truth.
Reader-Response and Rhetorical Criticism (fading)
Jesus Seminar (red-pink-gray-black);
slow revaluation of the New Testament, especially its Jewishness
Therefore it is so important to understand the methods— 3 different positions:
- Historical-criticical exegesis is ungodly and should not be dealt with at all
- Historical-critical exegesis is the true way to get to the kernel of Christianity: the historical Jesus. (a bit too optimistic)
- Historical work with the Bible is natural to a historical religion, but the historical-critical methods are not holy; in fact, it is clear that they are dependent on the philosophy behind
To be able to meet such positions, we need to know 4 things, which 4 things?
Epistemology: It questions what knowledge is and how it can be acquired, and the extent to which knowledge pertinent to any given subject or entity can be acquired
Philosophy: what lies behind different theories
New Testament history
_Philology: _is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics.
What is the Sources and purpose of the Gospel of Luke?
He defines his project as “an orderly account” of that tradition (earlier gospel reports of “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word”) and states a purpose to convince his audience of its reliability (1:3-4).
How do we determine the authorship of the Gospel of Luke?
Luke and Acts must be written by the same person because both writings are dedicated to Theophilus and exhibit common interests and a common style of writing.
Acts are written by Luke because he is the only one of Paul’s traveling companions mentioned in the Pauline Letters who could ahve written the “we”-sections of Acts. All others are excluded by impossibility of harmonizing their geopgraphical movements according to the letters with the geographical movements in the “we”-sections of Acts.
Who was Luke?
Probably a Gentile (at least a hellenistic Jew). Luke’s name is Greek. The Greek language also suggests that he was a Gentile, more at home in the Greek language.
In Colossians Paul calls Luke “the beloved physician.”
What is Luke’s aim with the Gospel concerning Jesus and his followers?
It is to establish the religious piety, moral purity, and political innocence of Jesus and his followers.
