Bulletin for Biblical Research (BBR) 1996
Bulletin for Biblical Research 6 (1996) 67-86 [© 1996 Institute for Biblical Research]
Tasks of New Testament
Scholarship*
MARTIN HENGEL
TÜBINGEN UNIVERSITY
New Testament scholarship must move beyond its current preoccupation
with faddish methods (as evidenced by several variations of the so-called
new literary criticism) and return to a solid grounding in history, primary
source materials, archaeology, and competence in the pertinent languages.
This also entails familiarity with early Judaism, the Greco-Roman world,
and early patristics. The exemplary contributions of major biblical scholars
of the last century are reviewed.
Key Words: Tübingen School, New Testament world, primary sources
The Göttingen natural scientist and author Georg Christoph Lichten-
berg observed self-critically, "The person who understands nothing
but chemistry doesn't understand even it."1 Would we not have to say
something similar with regard to our own discipline? A New Testa-
ment scholar who understands the New Testament alone cannot
rightly understand it at all. Still, the datum of New Testament schol-
arship is only a single book of 680 pages in its small format.2 Among
the disciplines in the humanities taught in universities, the field called
"New Testament" surely has the most limited datum. One need only
compare its neighbor, church history. Over against this one little book
stands the complete Migne, with 378 volumes, along with countless
other sources. A glance at Old Testament study, Jewish studies, and
* This paper is a slightly revised version of my 1993 SNTS presidential address,
delivered in Chicago. It has been translated by P. E. Devenish and C. A. Evans. The latter
edited it for the BBR. A somewhat expanded German version of this address has been
published as "Aufgaben der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft," NTS 40 (1994) 321-57.
1. G. C. Lichtenberg, Werke in einem Band (ed. P. Plett; Hamburg: Hoffmann and
Campe, 1967) 148 = 1 (Schmierbücher 1789-93) no. 838.
2. R. Morgenthaler, Statistik des neutestamentlichen Wortschatzes (Frankfurt am
Main: Gotthelf Verlag, 1958) 164: with 137,490 words and 657 pages on the basis of the
21st edition of Nestle. The recently published 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland text
runs to 680 pages.
68 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
classical philology (that is, at other neighboring fields of study) like-
wise reveals the same disparity. In the one instance, a vast number
of sources from one or two millennia, in the other, twenty-seven
documents, some brief, the first testimonies to a Jewish messianic sect
covering a period of some sixty years, between 50 and 110 CE.
Of course, this striking disparity is bound up with the extraordi-
nary claim to truth made by this little book and with a history of
its influence that fills countless volumes. But a different, apparently
opposite, problem immediately becomes evident here as well. In his
aphorisms Lichtenberg, as an Enlightenment skeptic, is furious over
"the time and trouble that have gone into interpreting the Bible."
Somewhat hyperbolically, he suspects "a million octavo folders" (cf.
John 21:25!), the result of "these efforts after hundreds and thousands
of years" being that "the Bible is a book, written by human beings like
all other books—by human beings who were somewhat different
from us, since they lived in other times . . ."3
The Göttingen scholar and pastor's son wrote this two hundred
years ago, as what had recently been coined the historical-critical
approach to the New Testament was taking its first, tentative step.4 To
what extent its results have been successful is still a matter for dispute
today. That the Bible "written by human beings" is to be interpreted
with the aid of philological-historical methods, as are other texts of
the ancient world, is scarcely a matter of controversy for us now, and
this without prejudging the question of its extraordinary claim to
truth. Yet if, unlike then, there is today a worldwide Studiorum Novi
Testamenti Societas, this is a refutation of the sharp-tongued skeptic
who concludes with the words, "The more an interpretation of the
Bible turns it into a completely ordinary book, the better this inter-
pretation is."5 For when the New Testament is examined today by
means of the same methods that are applied to the rest of ancient lit-
erature, it does not become "a completely ordinary book" at all. If it
did, we would not be here.
Yet, after over two hundred years of critical interpretation, how
are we today to do justice to this little book that gives its name to our
discipline? With what tasks does it confront us at the end of the
twentieth century? It is worth pondering this, and in doing so we
must look back over how our field of study has developed. I beg your
indulgence in concentrating chiefly on German Protestant scholar-
ship. The radical, even in part destructive, criticism that has made the
3. Especially inaugurated by Johann Salomo Semler (Lichtenberg, Werke, 118 = 1
no. 12).
4. Especially inaugurated by Johann Salomo Semler (Lichtenberg, Werke, 118 = 1
no. 12).
5. Lichtenberg, Werke, 118 = 1 no. 12.
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 69
deepest imprint on our discipline has (I might almost say, unfortu-
nately) come from Tübingen.6
Lichtenberg already saw the disparity between this one little
book and the flood of exegetical literature. This has only grown since
then. An example of this: Malatesta's catalogue of the literature on
the Fourth Gospel between 1920 and 1965 runs to 3,120 items; van
Belle's bibliography of that between 1966 and 1985 lists 6,300 titles.7
The total altogether since the Second World War may reach 15,000,
and as it extends, it is shaped like a parabola. The computer makes
this possible, even if we can scarcely physically keep us with the
reading and writing anymore. Literature can be filed away unread
and thereby "acknowledged."
They were happier times when Bishop Lightfoot gave a student
the advice, "If you write a book on a subject, you have to read every-
thing that has been written about it."8 Moreover, unlike us, both in
England and in Germany, the greatest representatives of our field in
the last century were not "New Testament scholars" at all. As von
Dobschütz said of H. J. Holtzmann, their field of study "included the
whole of theology."9
Indeed, chairs of New Testament did not yet exist. These were first
established in the last decades of the previous century, in Tübingen, in
1898 for Adolf Schlatter, who was not only an exegete, but also a dog-
matician, ethicist, and Judaist.10 Lectures in New Testament were
offered by all professors of theology, whether they were Old Testament
scholars, church historians, dogmaticians, or practical theologians.
The greatest impetus to the advance of the young discipline of
New Testament along historical-philological lines came from the
6. The radical conclusions of D. F Strauss (Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet [2 vols.,
Tübingen: C. F Osiander, 1835-36]) and the even more radical conclusions of B. Bauer
(Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte and der Synoptiker [2 vols., Leipzig: Wigand, 1841-42;
2nd ed., 1846]) lent support to the theories about earliest Christianity propounded by
F Engels.
7. E. Malatesta, St. John's Gospel. 1920-1965 (AnBib 32; Rome: Pontifical Biblical
Institute, 1967); G. van Belle, Johannine Bibliography 1966-1985 (BETL 82; Leuven:
Peeters and Leuven University, 1988).
8. G. R. Eden and F. C. Macdonald (eds.), Lightfoot of Durham (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University, 1932) 135. Cf. M. Hengel, Bishop Lightfoot and the Tübingen School on
the Gospel of John and the Second Century (DUJ Extra Complimentary No. for Subscrib-
ers, January 1992: The Lightfoot Centenary Lectures to Commemorate the Life and
Work of Bishop J. B. Lightfoot [1828-89], ed. J. D. G. Dunn; Durham: Durham Univer-
sity Press, 1992) 23-51.
9. RE3 23.658.
10. A. Schlatters Rückblick auf seine Lebensarbeit: Zu seinem hundertsten Geburtstag
herausgegeben von Th. Schlatter (BFCT Sonderheft; Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1952) 194;
W. Neuer, Adolf Schlatter (R. Brockhaus Taschenbuch 101; Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 1988)
121-22.
70 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
theologians whose primary work was done in Old Testament or in
church history, in the first place from F. C. Baur, who both in lectures
and in books treated not only the New Testament, but also the whole
history of theology, philosophy of religion, canon law, and symbolics.
We meet this combination of research in New Testament and church
history in Hilgenfeld, Overbeck, Zahn, Harnack, Bousset, Lietzmann,
and Klostermann, the last two of whom were classical philologians as
well. Our discipline is also indebted to numerous Old Testament
scholars for decisive suggestions, for instance, to de Wette, Ewald,
Yatke, Tholuck, Delitzsch, Bleek, Reuss, Wellhausen, and Gunkel,
and in more recent times Brevard Childs, James Barr, Klaus Koch, and
Hartmut Gese. On the other hand, the "pure New Testament scholars"
have provided precious little stimulation to these neighboring fields.
That one and the same scholar, such as R. H. Charles, should not
only have edited the most important pseudepigrapha,11 but also have
written unsurpassed commentaries on Revelation12 and Daniel,13
would have been impossible in Germany from the time of the First
World War on, due to the organization of scholarship. By contrast, in
the Anglo-Saxon world the connection between the two Testaments
was furthered by means of the peculiar discipline of biblical studies,
while in the German-speaking world the formulation "biblical the-
ology," which had been in use since Spener's day, was more and more
pushed to one side. Behind this stands a general distancing from the
Old Testament on the part of German idealism. Typical thereof is the
prizing of Marcion that is not restricted only to Harnack, as well as a
widespread devaluation of Judaism and of its influence on Chris-
tianity, a tendency which after 1933 produced fearful results among
many German theologians. It is always deadly for our discipline when
it comes under the power of an alien, political ideology.
As for these specific errors that have affected my own country,
today one may say that among the most important insights of our
field of study since the Second World War belongs the recognition of
how deeply rooted earliest Christianity is in Judaism as its native soil.
This implies that the study of the pre-Christian Judaism of the Hel-
lenistic period as a whole, that is, from the fourth century BCE on, is
to be included in our field of study. Here Old and New Testament
scholars must work hand in hand.
11. R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Volume II:
Pseudepigrapha (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913).
12. R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John
(2 vols., ICC; Edinburgh: Clark, 1920).
13. R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1929).
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 71
The real impetus to the emergence of New Testament scholarship
as an independent theological discipline came from the radical criti-
cism of the Tübingen school, beginning with the thunderclap of the
Life of Jesus by D. F. Strauss in 1835-36 and with the appearance of
publications on the New Testament from that time on by Baur and his
students, who energetically demanded a "purely historical" approach.
The controversy thus ignited resulted in individual scholars con-
centrating largely on the New Testament and on the writings that
stemmed from it in their discussion with the new school. I would
reckon disciples of Baur such as Gustav Volkmar and Adolf Hilgen-
feld among these,14 but also mediating scholars like Carl Weizäcker
and H. J. Holtzmann, who excelled them all, as well as opponents
such as Bernhard Weiss and Theodor Zahn. Even Lightfoot's epoch-
making publication of the Apostolic Fathers15 is a reaction to the radi-
cal theses of the Tübingen scholars. The same can be said of Ernest
Renan's seven-volume Histoire des Origines du Christianisme.16
While, on the one hand, our discipline has gradually become
independent as the result of radical criticism that was meant to be con-
sistently "historical," at the same time it was thereby called into ques-
tion as "New Testament scholarship." For this criticism had made the
canon of the New Testament as the ecclesiastically approved collec-
tion of "apostolic" writings obsolete as an historical entity. For those
who, like Baur and his students, dated the Gospel of John at 170, the
canon had to become a purely formal entity that could no longer be
authorized historically. Since then, the problem of the canon has be-
come a matter for controversy. In his 1892 polemic, Das Dogma vom
Neuen Testament, Harnack's student Gustav Krüger made "the exis-
tence of New Testament scholarship . . . as a distinct theological-
historical discipline . . . the chief obstacle . . . to a fruitful study of
early Christianity leading to secure results." He challenged our guild
to extend its field of study to the "appearance of the Catholic
Church."17
14. See the assemblage of their essential publications in H. Harris, The Tübingen
School (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975) 279-83.
15. J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, Part I: S. Clement of Rome (2 vols., London:
Macmillan, 1869; 2nd ed., 1890); idem, The Apostolic Fathers, Part II: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp
(3 vols., London: Macmillan 1885; 2nd ed., 1889); idem and J. R. Harmer, The Apostolic
Fathers: Revised Greek Texts with Introductions and English Translations (London: Mac-
millan, 1891; repr. Grand Rapids; Baker, 1984). Now see the new revised and updated
edition by M. W. Holmes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989).
16. E. Renan, Histoire des Origines du Christianisme (7 vols., Paris: Michel Lévy
Frères, 1863-99).
17. G. Krüger, Das Dogma vom Neuen Testament (Giessen: Curt von Münchow,
1892) 4 (author's emphasis).
72 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
Such challenges have been levied from the earliest period. In place
of Introduction to the New Testament we are to have the History of
Early Christian Literature; in place of a New Testament Theology, the
History of the Religion of Earliest Christianity.18
To be sure, I cannot share this fear of the concept "theology," the
Christian understanding of which is ultimately grounded in the Pro-
logue of John. It is not by chance that an irreducible connection
between the word of God, faith, and history is presented to us in this
particular passage. The concepts qeolo/goj, qeologi/a, and qeologei=n enter
at first on the basis of the Johannine lo/goj in the language of the early
Church Fathers and preserve over against the Greek environment a
wholly new meaning.19 Our discipline would self-destruct were it to
give up the question of truth pressed by Pauline and Johannine theo-
logical thinking and transform itself into a merely descriptive history
of religion. For this is the salt that seasons our work and warrants its
existence.
To the question of the canon I would reply with a sic et non, a yes and
no. Let us begin with the "no." Our field of study must by all means be
more comprehensive than the twenty-seven canonical texts we call the
New Testament. A restriction to this narrow range of materials would
be disastrous. It would mean strangling ourselves. Not restriction, but
expansion should be our goal. As with regard to the Old Testament and
the study of Judaism, I advocate broadening out to the beginnings of
the Hellenistic period, so also with regard to patristics, I advocate
moving the boundary up to the third century CE. The competition
between the disciplines can only be salutary here. For this reason, it
is a good sign when the commentaries on the apostolic fathers are
written by New Testament scholars today, but we should not be
satisfied with this since, as the first expositors, all the fathers up to
Cyprian and Origen are of fundamental importance for our work. The
history of the canon, too, including that of the LXX, ought again to
receive special attention. In my reading on the Johannine question, I
18. For example, see W Wrede, Über Aufgabe und Methode der sogenannten neutes-
tamentlichern Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897); idem, "Das theol-
ogische Studium und die Religionsgeschichte," in Vorträge und Studien (Tübingen:
Mohr [Siebeck], 1907) 64-83; and the more recent example, as seen in G. Lüdemann,
"Die Religionsgeschichtliche Schule und ihre Konsequenzen für die Neutestament-
liche Wissenschaft," in H. M. Müller (ed.), Kulturprotestantismus: Beiträge zu einer Gestalt
des modernen Christentums (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1992) 311-38. The latter work hearkens
back to H. Räisänen, Beyond New Testament Theology (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trin-
ity Press International, 1990).
19. Cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 5.28.4-5, on the Christian writers from Justin to
Clement of Alexandria. On the history of the idea, see F. Kattenbusch, "Die Entste-
hung einer christlichen Theologie: Zur Geschichte der Ausdrücke qeologi/a, qeologei=n,
und qeolo/goj," ZTK 12 (1930) 161-205.
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 73
was appalled by the widespread ignorance today in this area—in
stark contrast to the basic works of our grandfathers. Zahn's four-
volume history of the canon appeared a bit more than one hundred
years ago. It has not been surpassed, despite all mistakes. The same
thing holds true of von Harnack's monumental history of literature
and last but not least, his Marcion.20 The bibliography to this first
expositor of Luke and Paul in the new Anchor Bible Dictionary shows
how little work has been done on him in the last seventy years.21 Only
if we fully include the second and third centuries in our work can we
as New Testament scholars meaningfully engage gnostic texts, since
the gnostic system-builders and their communities lived during this
time. Gnosis, so-called, is rather a peripheral problem for earliest
Christianity. It belongs to its effects and not, as was mistakenly
believed, to its antecedents. The texts affected by it—the Pastoral
Epistles, Jude, and 2 Peter—are, as the latest writings of the New
Testament, to be dated in the beginning of the second century. This
means that we must energetically expand the chronological bounda-
ries of our field, in order to be able appropriately to integrate gnosis
into our work. The same holds true, moreover, for the Hermetica or
for middle Platonism, through which a line of development in the phi-
losophy of religion leads from Philo, by way of Basilides, Valentinus,
his school,22 and the apologists, over to Clement and Origen, that by-
passes the earliest Christian texts. This is the development that Har-
nack held responsible for the real "hellenizing" of Christianity.
For all that, one may also affirm precisely on historical grounds the
decision of the ancient church as to the writings it took to be authori-
tative for itself. The decisive boundary-markers for the canon have
already been erected by Irenaeus by 180, for around this time a con-
sensus already exists from Gaul, through Rome and Carthage, over to
Alexandria. The Baur school erred in its dating of the New Testament
writings, and Lightfoot, Harnack, and others set this right. On the
20. A. von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom unbekannten Gott (TU 45; 2nd
ed., Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924).
21. Cf. J. J. Clabeaux, "Marcion," ABD 4 (1992) 514-16.
22. Cf. C. Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus (WUNT 65; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck],
1992); and W. Löhr, Basilides und seine Schule (WUNT; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], forth-
coming). See also the foundational investigation of S. Pétrement, Le Dieu séparé: Les
origines du gnosticisme (Paris: Cerf, 1984). I cannot accept the conjecture that Cerinthus
is a fiction. He belongs, as do Menander and Saturninus, to the earliest witnesses of an
incipient Gnosis that has been strongly influenced by Christianity, sometime around
the turn of the century. See the older work by E. de Faye, Gnostiques et gnosticisme (Paris:
E. Leroux, 1913); and the more recent work by K. Beyschlag, Simon Magnus und die
christliche Gnosis (WUNT 10; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1974). On Philo's influence, see
D. T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature (CRINT 3.3; Assen: Van Gorcum; Minne-
apolis: Fortress, 1993).
74 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
whole, we have no extracanonical writings that are older than the
essential New Testament ones. While 1 Clement might perhaps be con-
temporary with 1 Peter and the Corpus Johanneum and the letters of
Ignatius with the Pastoral Epistles, today's popular attempt to fix ear-
lier dates for later, so-called apocryphal gospel texts, above all the
Gospel of Thomas or the Egerton Papyrus and the Gospel of Peter, have
not convinced me at all.23 The stability of New Testament writings,
already present before 200, while it does not, to be sure, give us direct
access to the apostolic testimony, does to the immediately following,
manifold post-apostolic testimony of the second and third genera-
tions. The theological quality of this selection is also undeniable. One
has only to compare Hebrews with 1 Clement, Revelation with Hermas,
or the four gospels with the later products. And that the genuine Cor-
pus Paulinum and Johanneum together with the synoptics represent the
basis of Christian theology—who would doubt this? And on what
would it base itself otherwise, if it expects to be and to remain Chris-
tian theology? And what authorizes the existence of our Societas, if
these things were no longer so? These texts do certainly form the cen-
ter of our efforts, but we shall only do them justice if we draw the cir-
cle around them more broadly, so that we grasp them in relation to
their Jewish and Hellenistic antecedents as well as to their early
Christian effects.
Gustav Krüger saw in the restriction to the New Testament
canon "the chief obstacle . . . to . . . a study of early Christianity lead-
ing to secure and universally acknowledged results."24 Here we run into
a wonderful optimism that was typical of the "historicism" of the
nineteenth century. It believed—I mentioned F. C. Baur—that it was
able ever more clearly to grasp "objective historical truth." The con-
troversy over this "objective historical truth" has been going on for
over 150 years. Have we really come decidedly closer to it? On a
series of essential points a consensus was reached, if never a com-
plete one. Thus, with regard to Markan priority and the existence
of Q, that is, the "two source theory" over against Baur, Zahn, and
Schlatter, who together with the ancient church continued to argue
for the priority of Matthew, or in the recognition of seven genuine
Pauline letters—in a certain sense, a compromise between Baur and
Zahn. Also, the Gospel of John and the birth stories in Matthew and
23. An amazing creativity for "discovering" primitive and independent gos-
pel sources has been demonstrated by J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of
a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991) 427-30. See also
idem, Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon (Sonoma: Polebridge, 1992).
Crossan treats the Gospel of Thomas, the Egerton Papyrus, Morton Smith's Secret Gospel
of Mark, and the Gospel of Peter. I find Crossan's claims of antiquity and independence
for these writings wholly unconvincing.
24. Krüger, Das Dogma vom Neuen Testament, 328 n. 25 (author's emphasis).
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 75
Luke are no longer understood today as historical reports, and the
first and fourth gospel are only rarely traced back to an apostolic
author. To be sure, this consensus is more nearly negative than posi-
tive and often very circumscribed.25 This goes along with the fact
that, due to the fragmentary character of our sources and the nar-
rowness of the evidence, we have to work much more with hypothe-
ses than do other disciplines. This leaves no room for any sort of
optimism, whether critical or conservative. New Testament scholar-
ship has always been in good part a science of conjecture and has
become even more so. This fact should make us more modest. It is
frequently a matter only of weighing probabilities, plausibilities, or
even mere possibilities, and too often there exists the danger of con-
fusing what is precisely possible with what in fact is really probable.
An equation with several unknowns cannot be solved!
This is the case above all in the province of literary criticism. Here
we mostly fumble in the dark with ancient texts if we cannot directly
compare parallel texts and possess no trustworthy reports. We can-
vass the thousandfold possibilities of how these texts might have
emerged, identify our logic with that of the ancient authors, intro-
duce our own wishes and antipathies nolens volens or allow ourselves
to be led astray by the argumentum e silentio—the most deceptive of
all arguments. Who can say what inconsistencies and contradictions
an ancient author is to be thought capable of? Who is right about the
aporias in the Fourth Gospel? The "seamless garment" of Christ of a
D. F. Strauss or the innumerable modern sources and redaction theo-
ries—in a text, the stylistic unity of which is unsurpassed in any
other literary work of antiquity?26 Or is a division of the two letters
to the Corinthians into nearly thirty different fragments belonging to
seven different letters to be thought probable?27 How do we know
that these letters were all sent to Corinth, and that these fragments
all derive from Paul? And what fool of a redactor are we to think per-
petrated all this? Or today's flourishing Q scholarship, overgrown
with hypotheses—not only one Q community (the existence of which
25. Cf. W. G. Kümmel, at the conclusion of his overview of scholarly research, Das
Neue Testament im 20. Jahrhundert (SBS 50; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1970) 146:
"of continuing recognized results one can only speak in limited measures." Cf. also
P. Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments 1: Grundlegung. Von Jesus zu
Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992) 1-39, esp. 13-15, 29-30.
26. For recent discussion of the literary and stylistic unity of the Fourth Gospel, see
E. Ruckstuhl, Die literarische Einheitlichkeit des Johannesevangeliums (Studia Friburgensia
3; Freiburg: Paulus, 1951; repr. Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 5; Freiburg:
Paulus; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987); P. Dschulnigg, Stilkritik und Ver-
fasserfrage im Johannesevangelium (Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 17; Freiburg:
Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991). See also M. Hengel, Die
johanneische Frage (WUNT 67; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1993) 466.
27. W. Schenk, "Korintherbriefe," TRE 19 (1990) 620-32.
76 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
I doubt), but several, with up to five different layers of redaction, in
a text that can itself only be reconstructed in very fragmentary fash-
ion.28 Why may it not simply be a collection of Jesus-sayings, gath-
ered by a disciple who, as Jesus himself, was a master of the form?
And if, as a skeptic, one denies this, would it not be more honest to
point to the aporias and to issue a non liquet? Do not these and other
hypothetical castles in the air rather testify to a Babylonian confusion
in language and method?
Dealing with the book of books ought to be too serious a busi-
ness to end up abandoning it to a playground of hypothesis in the
style of "anything goes." We must learn to recognize our limits at the
point at which we can no longer establish probability, but can only
guess. We should not therefore be ashamed to speak candidly of our
great uncertainty.
No, the narrowness of the framework constructed by hypotheses
and overinterpretation of the texts points us outside, where we have
great examples who give us courage and whose rigorous approach
and scholarly demeanor put us under an obligation. In what follows,
I shall mention just two names. First, a Catholic exegete who was a
biblical theologian, philologian, historian of religion, student of Juda-
ism and of patristics all in one and who prepared for the new era in
Catholic exegesis after the Second World War as did no one else:
Marie-Joseph Lagrange, the founder of the École Biblique in Jerusa-
lem.29 Here I can only refer to his oeuvre, which goes beyond every-
thing it might be compared with in our time of epigones.30 Next to
28. F. W. Horn, "Christentum und Judentum in der Logienquelle," EvT 51 (1991)
344--64; J. S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987). In my
opinion much of Q scholarship betrays inadequate knowledge of the Jewish Palestin-
ian context and is often too quick to claim parallels with literature that stems from a
wholly different environment.
29. On Lagrange as an Old Testament scholar, see H. W. Seidel, Die Erforschung
des Alten Testaments in der Katholischen Theologie seit der Jahrhundertwende (BBB 86;
Frankfurt am Main: Anton Hain, 1993) 72-74, 85-87, 101-3. Seidel calls Lagrange the
"founder of historical-critical work in the Old Testament" in Catholicism.
30. J. Murphy-O'Connor, The École Biblique and the New Testament: A Century of
Scholarship (1890-1990) (Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 13; Freiburg: Univer-
sitatsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992) 6-28. One sentence should
make us German New Testament scholars reflect: "German scholarship paid little or no
attention to Lagrange's work in New Testament. Moreover radical German critics
rarely if ever visited the Holy Land, where they could have made personal contact with
Lagrange; contact with reality apparently was not considered to be either useful or
necessary" (p. 28). See also his bibliography on pp. 153-61. In the second edition of RGG
one article was dedicated to him; in the third edition nothing more. The latter is the
case with respect to TRE. Also, his name is not found once in the index to vols. 1-17 (see
p. 325)! His significance for Catholic exegesis in that very important first decade of the
twentieth century cannot be assessed too highly. He died in 1938, the same year in
which Adolf Schlatter died.
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 77
him, I mention a Protestant New Testament scholar, of the "liberal"
persuasion, over twenty years younger than he, Walter Bauer, a
student of H. J. Holtzmann, to whom we are indebted for the New
Testament lexicon. For this, in essence his life's work, and herein
only Wilamowitz-Moellendorf is to be compared to him, he read all
ancient Greek literature in a labor of renunciation. He proves himself
to be a scholar of the patristic tradition in the classic work, Das Leben
Jesu im Zeitalter der neutestamentlichen Apokryphen,31 as also in his pro-
vocative Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum.32 And yet
how many know that he prepared an edition of not only the Syrian
Odes of Solomon, but also of two books of the Mishna, Pea and Demai,
along with a first-rate commentary?33 I could continue on at length
with this "cloud of witnesses" that breaks off only after the Second
World War.34
To be sure, although these witnesses warn us again and again to
break out of the oppressive narrowness of hypothesis-castles and
alienating overinterpretations into the open landscape of broader sur-
roundings, in order to bring in its fruits for our work on the New Tes-
tament, we still cannot simply return to our grandfathers of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Here I would like first to mention a negative factor that stands in
our way, the worldwide disintegration of philological education. The
times are irretrievably past when nearly every biblical theologian of
rank in the English-speaking world first studied "the greats" in Cam-
bridge or Oxford or, as Wilamowitz and Harnack, bet on who could
learn a page of Greek prose by heart more quickly—and Harnack
won. The few fortunate exceptions among us who still unite thorough
study of classical philology with biblical exegesis prove the rule. In my
numerous conversations with local and foreign doctoral students, the
issue of knowledge of the Latin, Greek, and Semitic languages is a
major problem. As a rule, our grandfathers lectured more regularly
on Greek and Latin texts, they knew a broader range of sources and
so possessed a greater feeling for language and style than we do
31. W. Bauer, Das Leben Jesu im Zeitalter der neutestamentlichen Apokryphen
(Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1909; repr. 1967).
32. W. Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (BTH 10;
Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1934; 2nd ed., 1964); ET: Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest
Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971).
33. Cf. G. Strecker, "Walter Bauer—Exeget, Philologe, Historiker," in Eschaton
und Historie: Aufsätze (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979) 360-66.
34. One must not overlook the great English scholar C. H. Dodd; cf. G. Strecker,
TRE 9 (1982) 15-18; idem, "C. H. Dodd, Person und Werk," in KD 26 (1980) 50-58. In
his Cambridge inaugural lecture, "The Present Task in New Testament Studies" (1936),
Dodd gave direction to a whole generation in England. Other important scholars who
should be mentioned include A. D. Nock, André-Jean Festugière, and Günther Zuntz.
See now my small biography of this great scholar in: PBA 87, 493-522.
78 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
today. It is no wonder that editions of texts by New Testament schol-
ars have become relatively infrequent. Few of us still work with
manuscripts or are knowledgeable in papyrology. All the more reason
to call special attention to editorial achievements such as the way the
Nag Hammadi texts have been made accessible by scholars at Clare-
mont. In this whole area, the labor of perseverance of developing the
next generation of scholars, the leadership of universities, or even
boards of trustees in church seminaries is pressing. What good is it if
nearly all Greek texts are readily accessible to us on CD-Rom, if one
cannot translate them properly? In an ahistorically-minded post-
modern world, classical philology and historical theology more than
ever share a common fate. The relapse into the barbarism of the loss
of language threatens both.
Thorough knowledge of languages is therefore the fundamental
presupposition for a continuing and broad reading of sources in the
wide area I have sketched, let us say, between Alexander the Great
and Diocletian, Poseidonios, Qumran, Nag Hammadi and Origen,
and between Philo and the Talmud. But here I can also point to a
priceless advantage that we have over our grandfathers. The number
of sources in the environs of the New Testament itself has become in-
comparably richer than in the time of an F. C. Baur. It is an advantage,
which should directly press upon us, to become again better philolo-
gists and historians. Only as such can we truly break new ground.
There have been new discoveries of sources that have toppled the
Tübingen School's hypothetical construction of early Christianity.
In 1851, Hippolytus' Refutatio, in 1846, the Armenian translation of
Ephraem's commentary on the Diatessaron—today we have nearly
the complete Syrian text—the conclusion of the pseudo-Clementine
Homilies, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Didache.35 The list continues
on to Melito's Passover Homily, to the great Tura discovery, to the even
greater surprise of the Nag Hammadi texts, and to the smaller one of
the Mani codex, indeed, down to the giant new papyrus find from the
oasis of Dakhleh.36 In addition, there are innumerable smaller discov-
eries, fragments of apocryphal gospels and acts of apostles, liturgical
and homiletical texts. They all force us today to become patristics
scholars, at least to some degree, which our fathers of the nineteenth
century already were. Alongside the Christian and gnostic texts
comes the immense number of secular and literary papyri of Egypt
35. Cf. Hengel, Bishop Lightfoot, 32-38.
36. See the concise references by C. A. Hope, in The Australian Centre for Egyptology
1 (1990) 43-54, esp. 44, 51, 53; 2 (1991) 41-50, esp. 42-43. Hopefully we shall soon have
an overview of all of the newly discovered texts and their contents. The catalogue of the
texts discovered in a "Genizah" of the Sinai monastery, which was supposed to appear
sometime in 1980, should today serve as a warning: vestigia terrent!
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 79
and the steadily growing number of Greek inscriptions between
Rome and Syria that have radically altered New Testament lexicography
in the last hundred years. Unfortunately, the available auxiliary
resources, the lexicon of Moulton and Milligan,37 Deissmann's Licht
vom Osten,38 and even the revised lexicon of Bauer, only provide us
with a basis for research that belongs to one or even two generations
ago. We may be similarly thankful that young Australian philologians
have made a start on the "New Documents,"39 to classify this mass of
data, and we eagerly await the new Moulton-Milligan.
In the time since the hectic and speculative early years of the
founding of the history of religions school, papyri, inscriptions, and
other archaeological monuments have opened up to us the compli-
cated world of late antiquity, syncretism, magic and astrology, the
originally Greek and later "oriental" mysteries in both their proximity
to and their distance from early Christian texts.
Nevertheless, in this area, research on the text of the New Testament
has brought us the most impressive progress that directly affects the
New Testament, now enjoying the support of 98 papyri (cf. the 27th
edition of Nestle/Aland [1993]; in the 26th edition [1979] there were
only 89) and 300 majuscules (instead of 274), flanked by the ancient
translations. Here, in comparison with the situation of the first Nestle
in 1898, we have come nearly 200 years closer to the original text and
are separated from it by barely 100 years. We all anxiously await the
appearance of the first deliveries of the editio critica maior. Unfortu-
nately, the work of text criticism has become a separate specialty, and
it must once again become a shared task, especially since burning his-
torical issues lurk behind it. To mention just a few questions: When,
where, and how did the secondary endings of the Gospel of Mark
come into existence? What did Marcion's "purified" text look like?
How much nearer has Ephraem's Syriac commentary brought us to
the Diatessaron? Here, too, one could lengthen the list of questions.
New tasks stand out here that might lead us off the merry-go-round
of unproductive (because ultimately they are untestable) hypotheses.
Still, we have not yet even mentioned the two greatest advances
since the time of the Tübingers and the history of religions school.
These are advances that possess an ecumenical character and that
37. J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament Illus-
trated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1930; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974).
38. A. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten: Das Neue Testament and die neuentdeckten Texte
der hellenistisch-römischen Welt (4th ed., Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1923); ET: Light from
the Ancient East (New York: Harper & Row, 1927; repr. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978).
39. G. H. R. Horsley et al. (eds.), New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity
(7 vols., North Sydney: Macquarie University, 1981-94). More volumes will follow.
80 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
again conceal within them an abundance of new possibilities. These
have to do with the positive evaluation of the unique significance of
Judaism as the mother religion of early Christianity and the philo-
logical-historical and theological interpretation of the texts entrusted
to us as a common, indeed ecumenical task of Protestants, Catholics, Ortho-
dox, and Jews. The rediscovery and reevaluation of Judaism, as well as the
common investigation of our early history by Catholic, Orthodox, and
Protestant New Testament scholars, constitute the most important
events during the last fifty years of New Testament scholarship. Here
a development has occurred that separates us in the most significant
way from the German Protestant scholarship of the nineteenth cen-
tury that was disturbed by old prejudices and by the modernist
conflict and that viewed Judaism in an inadmissible way as a dark foil
for the beginnings of Christianity.
Let us begin with Judaism. The bases of an historical investigation
into ancient Judaism were certainly already laid at that time, as with
the great work of Emil Schürer, the enduring significance of which is
documented by its revision in English.40 In contrast, the investigation
of syncretism in early Christianity that was inaugurated by the his-
tory of religions school had one-sidedly placed pagan elements in the
foreground and had viewed the Hellenistic community prior to Paul
as predominantly heathen-Christian. A latent tendency persisted to
underrate the significance of the Jewish sources, above all the rabbinic
ones.
The third and greatest textual surprise, the discovery of the
library of Qumran, with its pre-Christian originals, brought a new
development, and the signs of a new Qumran spring show that its end
is not yet in sight. The question of the messiahship of Jesus or that of
the background of the Pauline and Johannine theology looks different
on the basis of these texts from the way it did fifty years ago. In
addition, there are the far-reaching disclosures of the pseudepigrapha
and the steadily growing number of Jewish inscriptions and papyri
that mediate to us an ever more detailed portrayal of Judaism, a
portrayal that no longer corresponds in any way to the earlier carica-
ture of a legally stultified community, but rather reveals a folk re-
ligion that was creative and versatile in vigorously maintaining its
identity. The LXX, the Essene Qumran texts, and the rabbinic sources
are unique literary collections in the ancient world and challenge
us to intensive study. This largely new, fascinating world of Juda-
ism extends from the newly discovered, already Hellenized coins of
the Persian provinces of Jehud and Schomeron in the fourth cen-
40. E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (3 vols., rev.
and ed. by G. Vermes, F. Millar, and M. Black; Edinburgh: Clark, 1973-87).
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 81
tury BCE.41 to the newly published Hekhalot and Jewish magical lit-
erature from the Byzantine period.42
It is especially promising that today Christian and Jewish scholars
alike work in this area and seek hand in hand for a better understand-
ing of early Jewish and Christian history. For Jewish scholars have,
since Joseph Klausner,43 now discovered not only the Jews Jesus and
Paul of Tarsus,44 but also the early Christian texts in general as sources
for the Judaism of the first and second centuries. I take this common
labor, which does not disavow differences, but that at the same time
sees the fundamental connections, to show especially the way of the
future. It urges us, if we actually have a mind to discover the truth
of faith in the texts we study, to reconsider anew the problem of a
biblical theology that also includes the Jewish sources "between the
Testaments" (I do not like this manner of speaking, for according to
Luke 16:16: "the Law and the Prophets" go until John the Baptist)—
or, as one might also say, "the Old in the New."45 A startling result,
to my mind, is the observation that the New Testament texts scarcely
anywhere require the admission of direct pagan influence on ear-
liest Christianity. What we detect as "Hellenistic-syncretistic" fea-
tures might be due to Jewish mediation. No oriental religion, except
41. Cf. L. Mildenberg, in H. Weippert, Palästina in vorhellenistischer Zeit (Hand-
buch der Archäologie in Vorderasien 2.1; Munich: Beck, 1988) 721-28; Y. Meshorer and
S. Qedar, The Coinage of Samaria in the Fourth Century BCE (Jerusalem: Numismatics
Fine Arts International, 1991).
42. P. Schäfer (ed.), Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (TSAJ 2; Tübingen: Mohr
[Siebeck], 1981); idem, Hekhalot-Studien (TSAJ 19; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988).
Schäfer, through a concordance and through translations, has made these text acces-
sible in a synoptic edition. He is now preparing an edition of the magical texts from the
Cairo genizah.
43. J. Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1925 [Hebrew orig., 1922]).
44. Recently two interesting but very different Jewish studies of Paul have
appeared. The first has been produced by A. F. Segal (Paul the Convert: The Apostolate
and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee [London and New Haven: Yale University, 1990]) and
the second, appearing posthumously, was produced by the Berlin philosopher of reli-
gion J. Taubes (Die politische Theologie des Paulus [A. and J. Assmann, eds.; Munich:
Wilhelm Fink, 1993). They have continued the Jewish research on Paul begun by
J. Klausner (From Jesus to Paul [London: Macmillan, 1943 (Hebrew orig., 1939)]) and
L. Baeck ("The Faith of Paul," BS 3 [1952] 93-110). See also D. R. Schwartz, Studies in
the Jewish Background of Christianity (WUNT 60; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1992) 1-26.
45. "The older the better" was the general rule in antiquity; cf. P. Pilhofer, PRES-
BYTERON KREITTON: Der Altersbeweis der jüdischen und christlichen Apologeten und seine
Vorgeschichte (WUNT 2.39; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1990). The concept kaino/j in
early Christianity of course did not have a "this-world" meaning but an eschatological
meaning. See also my "Die Septuaginta als 'christliche Schriften sammlung . . . '" in
M. Hengel and A. M. Schwetke (eds.), Die Septuaginta zwischen Judentum und Christen-
tum, WUNT 72, 1994, 182-284 (282 ff.).
82 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
for Judaism, engaged in conversation with Hellenistic civilization
with such intensity, integrated so much that was new, and still
held fast to its identity. Early Christianity inherited this power of
integration.
From another point of view, I could also speak of the collaboration
between Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant exegetes. When I studied in
Tübingen forty-five years ago, despite a common basis in the Bible,
the ditch separating confessions seemed nearly unbridgeable, not
least because, as I believed, philological-historical approaches were
rejected. That a radical shift had already been prepared, for, above all
in the field of Old Testament scholarship; perhaps at the École Biblique
in Jerusalem, the student did not notice at this point. Since then,
something like a continuous revolution has been taking place. The
confessional, differences that had dominated previously have nearly
completely disappeared in the methods and results of scriptural
interpretation. In many areas (I think of the research on the gospels
that is being undertaken in Louvain,46 or of the work on commentar-
ies in German47) Catholic scholars have taken over a leadership role.
This is clearly illustrated by the major commentaries on John by
Rudolf Schnackenburg and Raymond Brown and on Luke by Joseph
Fitzmyer.48 One can often no longer say on the basis of an author's
exegetical work whether he or she is Protestant or Catholic. Indeed,
just this interconfessional exegesis can serve as a salutary corrective to
one-sided deformations, as well as to an unproductive conservatism
or to wildly radical critiques. At the same time, it has become a basis
of ecumenical discussion. Precisely in our Societas, this increasingly
close collaboration has stimulated New Testament work during the
last forty years more than anything else and, I hope, will do so in the
future. For it is during this period that it has become truly interna-
tional for the first time and has also borne its fruit in the third world.
Both Catholic and Orthodox exegesis could help us rebuild bridges
to the fathers of the ancient church, a connection that was still self-
evident to Harnack and his generation, but this has long since become
lost in the Protestantism of the twentieth century in the field of New
Testament. The exegesis of the Fathers is, as a rule, taken into account
only marginally. What treasure we possess—to name only a few
46. One immediately thinks of Frans Neirynck and his colleagues.
47. The only big commentary series in the German language really "flowering"
besides the catholic Herders theologischer Kommentar is the protestant-catholic EKK
Series (Neukirchener Verlag/Patmos).
48. R. Schnackenburg, Das Johannesevangelium (3 vols., HTKNT 4.1-3; Freiburg;
Herder, 1965-75); ET: The Gospel According to St. John (3 vols., New York: Crossroad,
1980); R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (2 vols., AB 29 and 29A; Garden City:
Doubleday, 1966-70); J. A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (2 vols., AB 28 and
28A; Garden City: Doubleday, 1981-85).
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 83
examples—in the patristic commentaries on the gospels and Paul pro-
duced by Josef Reuss and Karl Staab.49 What we need is a completely
new, comprehensive patristic commentary, a modern catena that
brings together the exegesis of the Fathers.50 This unfortunately finds
insufficient expression in modern, so-called critical commentaries
(and in dissertations and scholarly monographs as well). And since
confessional differences are from the outset largely tied to develop-
ments in the long and troubled history of exegesis, this should also
come into view at particular crucial points. In this way, the isolation
that threatens our limited field could be compensated for in promot-
ing biblical interpretation in the states of the former Soviet Union af-
ter the end of a seventy--year ice age. Here our Societas needs to
consider what initiatives it can seize.
What is more important than specific issues is that, in our daily
work, we not forget to reflect on what Paul characterized as the a)lh/qeia
tou= eu)aggeli//ou,51 that is, the abiding truth of the early Christian mes-
sage. 1 Cor 15:11 contradicts the widespread opinion today that such
a thing did not exist in the early period, but rather only a multitude
of contradictory messages. The astonishing cohesiveness of the com-
munity at the end of the first century also speaks against this. I am not
ashamed to speak here of an original unity of the church given through
the Christ-event that came into being not through state coercion, but
rather, amidst all tensions and disputes, through the assurance,
brought about by the Spirit, of the truth of the revelation of God in
Christ. When we cease to pose this question, our discipline will have
lost the warrant for its existence in an archival-archaeological effort at
digging and drilling for an obscure object of the past that has become
obsolete.
In the end, our common philological-historical, which is to say,
exegetical task in regard to the ancient texts entrusted to us is a her-
meneutical one. The definitive starting point remains, despite "reader
response," the early Christian author, that is, what he meant and
intended in view of his addressees, hearers, and readers.52 However,
49. J. Reuss, Matthäus-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche (TU 61; Berlin: Akad-
emie, 1957); idem, Johannes-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche (TU 89; Berlin:
Akademie, 1966); idem, Lukas-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche (TU 130; Berlin:
Akademie, 1984); K. Staab, Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche (NTA 15; Mün-
ster: Aschendorff, 1933; 2nd ed., 1984).
50. For preliminary work on the scriptural hermeneutics of the Fathers, see I. Pa-
nagopoulos, H EPMHNEIA THS AGIAS GRAFHS STHN EKKLHSIA TWN PATERWN,
vol. 1 (Athens: Ekdoseis Akritas, 1991). An English translation is in preparation.
51. Cf. Gal 2:5, 14; also O. Hofius, Paulusstudien (WUNT 51; Tübingen: Mohr
[Siebeck], 1989) 155-56.
52. Cf. H. Gese, "Hermeneutische Grundsätze der Exegese biblischer Texte," in
Alttestamentliche Studien (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1991) 249: "A text is to be under-
stood as it wants to be understood, that is, as it understands itself."
84 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
and particularly if we are to preach about these texts, we can hardly
neglect the question of what they mean for us today and what they
have meant for those who went before us. How can we discharge this
task today other than ecumenically?
Now, as I draw to a close, I might be reproached for having failed
to speak about much that is essential. I have consciously avoided this.
Thus, I have not spoken about old and new methods. The necessary
multiplicity of philological-historical methods becomes clear on its
own during a continual process of testing through its own application
in practice. What has actually stood the test over ten, twenty, thirty
years shows its durability (in principle, of course, put in its proper
place and with restrictions), namely, the form-critical method. This is
also true of those methods that are especially favored today—the
sociological point of view, the diverse forms of textual linguistics, nar-
rative analysis, the new literary criticism and many others. May we
yet have ten to twenty years worth of patience! Time will deliver its
verdict. Absolute pronouncements are dangerous, as are frequently
changing fashions. Fashion is the opposite of method. One is tempted
to quote George Bernard Shaw, "Fashion is hideous. That is why it has
to be changed every six months." All the same, it is necessary to break
out of our too narrowly specialized field. How is a young doctoral stu-
dent to learn to do good historical-philological work, when only
mountains of hypotheses in the secondary literature are made avail-
able to him and precious little of abiding source material? Ought he
not at the outset sharpen his wits on Qumran, Josephus, Philo, Dio-
dore, Plutarch, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, based on his knowledge of
the sources, in order then, to speak with Ernst Troeltsch, properly to
make use of the "omnipotence of analogy"?53
Also doubtful is today's widespread formalism that mainly, if not
exclusively (dangerous is the "exclusively"), looks for formal parallels,
forms, literary genres and rhetorical markers. Is this not in certain
cases the kind of labeling that supposes to have understood something
if it has put a tag on it? Understanding is more than merely schematic
ordering. This is especially true when we impose our modern catego-
ries taken over from other fields on ancient texts that are innocent of
them. This is quite a different thing from analyzing the logical struc-
ture of a text and its strategy of argumentation for the text's own sake.
But, in order to do this, is it always absolutely necessary to collect the
53. E. Troeltsch, "Über historische und dogma tische Methoden in der Theologie,"
in G. Sauter (ed.), Theologie als Wissenschaft (TB 43; Munich: Kaiser, 1971) 105-27, esp.
108. See also P. Stuhlmacher, Vom Verstehen des Neuen Testaments (GNT 6; Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986) 24-27; M. Hengel, Zur urchristlichen Geschichtsschreib-
ung (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1979) 107-10; ET: Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity
(London: SCM, 1979; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980).
HENGEL: Tasks of New Testament Scholarship 85
concepts in H. Lausberg,54 and might this not also lead one astray in
some cases, since such artificial nomenclature was foreign to the bib-
lical rhetoricians? Should we not prefer instead to read the ancient au-
thors in their original texts and carry on, at the same time, research on
forms of argumentation? To be sure, this is a lifelong task which com-
pels us to transcend the small area of New Testament writings and
work as literary critics in a wider context.
I have also quite consciously not spoken of the tasks of specific sub-
disciplines—the synoptics, Acts, the study of Paul and John or the
quest of the historical Jesus. They proceed laboriously forward in the
form of a spiral, and the weight of hypotheses becomes even greater.
Nevertheless, amazingly indeed, new and solid discoveries are being
made again and again. Certain topics temporarily receive too little
exposure, others get worn out. Thus, "Paul and the law" is in vogue
and party lines get tightly drawn. Perhaps new insights would be pos-
sible if we were to investigate with somewhat greater precision the
topic of law and life or law and liberty in Qumran, among the Tan-
naim, and in Hellenistic Judaism, or if we were to pursue the history
of interpretation backwards from Luther's exegesis of Galatians or
Romans to the historical Paul. Perhaps Luther understood the exis-
tential problem better as it impinges on each individual believer for
not focusing in historicizing fashion on the Jewish law, but rather on
the law in the human heart, the demand of conscience and human
self-assertion before God.
Let me conclude and sum up. My perhaps somewhat too loosely
formulated topic threatens, like biblical exegesis itself, to become a
never-ending theme.
1. Through a flood of literature that has become impossible to
survey and the immense number of hypotheses associated with this,
the limited framework of our discipline, concentrated as it is on one
little book, threatens to become too constructed and to overwhelm
our datum, the New Testament.
2. Therefore, within this framework that has become too re-
stricted, we must exercise a certain self-restraint and, for its sake,
broaden our field of study, into the Old Testament and Judaism, the
ancient church and the Hellenistic-Roman world, as also in the area
of history of exegesis, and not only within the modern period. Every
New Testament scholar should seek to find one or more areas of com-
petence outside the New Testament. In view of what has become the
54. H. Lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik: Eine Grundlegung der Liter-
aturwissenschaft (2 vols., Munich: Heuber, 1960; 3rd ed., Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1990);
idem, Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik (Munich: Hueber, 1949; 10th ed., 1990). The
somewhat rich rabbinic literature is in essence named by only three basic forms: hala-
kah, mashal, and macaśäh.
86 Bulletin for Biblical Research 6
threat of pernicious overspecialization, we may all be permitted as a
counterweight to risk a certain amount of "dilettantism." For all that,
the New Testament ought to remain the center of our work. Thereby,
this will receive new impulses and become more productive.
3. Moreover, in the interest of truth of the faith that encounters
us in the New Testament, it behooves us to guard against overspecial-
ization and to lay down bridges toward a biblical theology, to church
history, and to systematic theology, so that something of the ecu-
menical unity of theology as a whole may again become apparent in
our work. The conversation with Judaism must also be a part of this
bridge-building.
4. Much more than we are conscious, texts newly discovered
since the days of the Tübingen school have furthered progress in our
discipline and have forced us to correct mistaken judgments. The
great library finds from the second half of this century have funda-
mentally altered the picture of early Christianity. For this reason, it is
important to pay attention to such small and large finds in the future
and to seek to have them published and made known quickly.
5. It belongs to the ecumenical task of our discipline to defend
the necessity of clear-headed philological-historical criticism over
against both fundamentalist retrenchments and fanciful pseudo-
criticism. The questions of historical and theological truth, rightly
understood, are bound together and may not be rent asunder without
injury--fides quaerens intellectum. Together, they are the salt that sea-
sons the work of exegesis. This twofold question of truth poses itself
precisely when we follow, in a self-critical way, how our own disci-
pline has evolved over the last century. Inseparably connected with
this are the hermeneutical questions that we can only answer in col-
laboration with the other theological disciplines.
Having begun with him, I shall conclude with a critical observa-
tion of Lichtenberg's on the interpretation of the New Testament.
The New Testament is an autor classicus, the best little manual for aid
and for distress ever written. This is why there has rightly been
attached to every village in Christendom a professor to expound this
author. That there are many of these professors who do not understand
their author is something this author shares in common with others. But
in, this way that book distinguishes itself from all others, in that even
the mistakes in its exposition have been 'sanctified'.55
It falls to each one of us to demonstrate to this astute critic that he is
not correct.
55. Lichtenberg, Werke, 130 = L (1796-99) no. 27.