What Are The Odds?

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
Sean F. Everton
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Statistical Models ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Jesus Seminar ◽  
Rules Of Evidence ◽  
Sayings Of Jesus

In 1985 a group of New Testament scholars, who came to be known as the Jesus Seminar, gathered to vote on the authenticity of the sayings of Jesus. Although the Seminar argued that it followed objective rules of evidence, critics have claimed that it did not. This paper investigates these claims using statistical models to evaluate the Seminar’s own voting records. It finds that although the Seminar’s Fellows did follow widely accepted criteria, they were also influenced by their own assumptions about who Jesus was. In particular, they appear to have assumed that Jesus was a non-apocalyptic enfant terrible who spoke in aphorisms and parables and occasionally uttered things that later embarrassed the early Church.

Does Jesus have a say in the kerygma? A critical remembrance of Bultmann

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-103
Author(s):  
Michael D. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Rudolf Bultmann ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
Sayings Of Jesus

This article is an examination of the theological conception of the ‘kerygma’ and its relation to the Synoptics presentation of the preaching and deeds of Jesus, as posited by New Testament theologian Rudolf Bultmann. At issue is a query into whether, according to Bultmann, the historical words or sayings of Jesus of Nazareth occupy a place in the theological formulation of the kerygma by the early Church. As Bultmannian interpretation continues to figure in New Testament studies, the purpose of the paper is to weigh the full implications of Bultmann's theological category of ‘kerygma’ and the consequence of the person of Jesus to this category, and the question of theological warrant.

scholarly journals The command to love the neighbour in Paul and the Synoptics

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz A. Hiestermann ◽  
Gert J. Steyn
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
Great Commandment ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Verbal Agreement ◽  
Sayings Of Jesus

When sayings of Jesus are compared between the Pauline letters and the Synoptic Gospels in an attempt to locate parallels, Galatians 5:14 and Romans 13:8�10 have frequently been put forward as possible parallels to the Synoptic renditions of the great commandment of Mark 12:28�34 (Mt 22:34�40; Lk 10:25�28). These Pauline and Synoptic texts all contain the command to love the neighbour, but the Synoptic texts have added the command to love God to the command to love the neighbour. Paul never quoted the great commandment. Consequently, a relationship between the verses is normally rejected. However, not all possibilities have been explored. In the search for parallels between Pauline and Synoptic Jesus traditions it has been overlooked that Paul and Matthew render the command to love the neighbour more than once. Matthew delivers the command to love the neighbour three times. Only once he has connected it to the command to love God. Matthew renders the single command to love the neighbour twice, resembling the Pauline use of the command. Using the criteria for validating parallels between Pauline and Synoptic Jesus traditions, including verbal agreement and the unique use of the command to love the neighbour by Paul and Matthew, it is argued that a connection between Romans 13:9 and Matthew 19:18�19 is likely.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The research explores the use of Leviticus 19:18b by the New Testament authors. It is argued that the command to love the neighbour was given high prominence in the early church, as it was used by the Synoptic authors and by Paul to summarise Jesus� ethical teachings.

scholarly journals The wisdom and apocalyptic layers of the Sayings Gospel Q: What is their significance?

1994 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Hartin
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Past ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Sayings Of Jesus ◽  
Sayings Gospel Q

New Testament scholarship over the past three decades has shown a growing interest in the Sayings Gospel Q. Vielhauer’s thesis on the secondary nature of the future Son of man sayings led to the conclusion that the apocalyptic element within the Sayings Gospel Q was also secondary. This paper follows the work of Kloppenborg and examines the wisdom and apocalyptic layers of the Sayings Gospel Q. The examination argues that the proclamation of Jesus was directed first of all to the proclamation of a kingdom that was present. The apocalyptic understanding of a future, immediate end of the world was a later appropriation within a deuteronomistic framework that developed from sayings of Jesus that were interpreted in this way by the early church.

On the Evidence for the Creative Role of Christian Prophets

1974 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hill
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Creative Role ◽  
Sayings Of Jesus ◽  
The Church

It has become almost a commonplace in New Testament scholarship to attribute to Christian prophets in the early Church a creative role in respect of sayings which the Gospel tradition presents as dominical utterances. The authority, among modern scholars, for this view is to be found in the formcritical analyses and conclusions of Rudolf Bultmann. Christian tradition, he affirms, took over certian Jewish materials and put them on the lips of Jesus (e.g. the Marcan Apocalypse): the Christian community also revised or reworked elements from older traditions (e.g. the interpretation of the Sign of Jonah in connection with the person of Jesus, Matt. xii. 40) and even formed logia which reflect its own interests and concerns. Such logia are ‘inauthentic’ (in the sense that they are not genuine dominical sayings) and, according to Bultmann, they may originally have gained currency as utterances of the Spirit in the Church, without their ascription to Jesus being initially intended. Sayings like Rev. xvi. 5 (in which the risen Christ speaks) and Rev. iii. 20 show clearly the process of the creation (or, reformulation) of such logia (den Prozeβ der Neubildung solcher Herrenworte). These sayings would only gradually (erst allmählich) have been regarded as prophetic words of the historical Jesus. ‘The Church drew no distinction between such utterances by Christian prophets and the sayings of Jesus in the tradition, for the reason that even the dominical sayings in the tradition were not the pronouncements of a past authority, but sayings of the risen Lord who is always a contemporary for the Church.’

Soteria

1953 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 406-416
Author(s):  
R. McL. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Good News ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Wrath Of God

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’.

‘Verba Christi’ in I Peter: Their Implications concerning the Authorship of I Peter and the Authenticity of the Gospel Tradition

1967 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Gundry
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Common Stock ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The New Testament

The Epistle of I Peter has occupied a rather large place in recent critical studies of the New Testament. E. G. Selwyn has advanced the view that the epistle draws from four primary sources: a liturgical document, a persecution fragment, a primitive Christian catechism, andverba Christi. E. Lohse prefers to think that the early church had a common stock oforalparaenetic tradition, from which the epistolary writers drew. F. W. Beare has popularized in English the liturgical-homiletical hypothesis widely accepted in Europe, namely, that the major part of I Peter (i. 3–iv. 11) is the transcription of a baptismal liturgy-homily, transformed into an epistle by the addition of i. 1 f. and iv. 12–v. 14. The view has been carefully worked out by F. L. Cross, but has encountered increasing resistance.

scholarly journals Death After Life or Life After Death?

Scrinium ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
David C. Sim
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Gospel Of Luke ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Christian View ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Church

The early Church Fathers accepted the notion of an intermediate state, the existence of the soul following death until its reunification with the body at the time of the final resurrection. This view is common in the modern Christian world, but it has been challenged as being unbiblical. This study reflects upon this question. Does the New Testament speak exclusively of death after life, complete lifelessness until the day of resurrection, or does it also contain the notion of life after life or immediate post-mortem existence? It will be argued that, while the doctrine of future resurrection is the most common Christian view, it was not the only one present in the Christian canon. There are hints, especially in the Gospel of Luke and the Revelation of John, that people do indeed live again immediately after death, although the doctrine of resurrection is also present. These two ideas are never coherently related to one another in the New Testament and it was the Church Fathers who first sought to  systematise them.


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