-
Preface to the English Edition
- Baylor University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Preface to the English Edition It is a great joy to me that the English translation of my book Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament will inaugurate the new series Baylor–Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity. The research communication across linguistic and confessional borders, which has now been firmly established in New Testament science for many years, thereby receives further confirmation and strengthening. This cooperation will be all the more successful if the specific characteristics of the German-language and English-language discourses are mutually recognized. Recent developments can easily illustrate this: it is no accident that the discourses about Jesus and Paul that have been initiated in recent decades have English designations: “Third Quest of the Historical Jesus” or “New Perspective on Paul.” In both cases the concern is with discussions that were initiated in English-language scholarship. In both cases, however, the discourses have deep roots in German-language scholarship, and a recognition of this is also beneficial for current discussions on these questions. In the current research situation, in which international cooperation has become a matter of course, knowledge of the respective research constellations and their backgrounds in the history of ideas and culture should especially be made fruitful for the work on the questions of our discipline . The new series founded by the publishers Baylor University Press and Mohr Siebeck will undoubtedly make a significant contribution here. The chapters of the present volume deal with areas that appear to me to be of fundamental importance for New Testament science as the discipline that investigates the emergence of Christianity in its ancient context. The hermeneutical and epistemological framework is formed by engagement with the science of history. The question of how we appropriate the past as history has been discussed since antiquity. In the modern period it has come into view in a new way under specific epistemological conditions. xii Preface to the English Edition How can—so it must now be asked—the remains of the past be joined together into a picture of history that satisfies current historical-critical history research and makes possible an access to the past that is based on this? How do the remains of the past relate to the critical interpretation of the male or female historian? What then is the relation between historical materials and the “constructive imagination” in the conception of a picture of history? These questions, which have been intensively discussed in recent research in the science of history, are also significant for the question of the emergence of a Christian view of history. In the present volume they are considered from various perspectives: with respect to the quest for the historical Jesus, the theology of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles as the first conception of a Christian picture of history, and finally with respect to the emergence of the New Testament canon as the document with which the Christian church obligated itself to a specific corpus of writings. In this way some aspects of the process that led from Jesus to the New Testament will be illuminated. Special thanks are due first to the translator of the book, Wayne Coppins. With great care and an astonishing sensitivity to my German text, he has produced an English edition that required not only an excellent knowledge of the German language but also a profound understanding of the subject matter in relation to questions of content. The rigorous and knowledgeable work of translation is an achievement that deserves my greatest respect. At the same time I thank the two editors of the series, Wayne Coppins and Simon Gathercole, for deciding to begin the new series with the English edition of my book. It is a great joy for me to intensify in this way the contact between Anglophone and German-language exegetical and historical scholarship. Last but not least, I thank the publishers Baylor University Press and Mohr Siebeck for the initiative of this new series and the possibility of publishing my book in an English version. Jens Schröter Berlin, September 2012 ...