The New Testament: A Literary History

by Theissen, Gerd; Maloney, Linda M.

• ISBN13: 9780800697853
• ISBN10: 0800697855
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-01
• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Pub

Summary

Gerd Theissen describes the emergence of the New Testament canon out of the wide variety of early Christian literature, drawing on Max Weber's discussion of the evolution of religious organizations. Theissen describes a series of phases in the life of the early Christian movement: the charismatic, the "pseudepigraphic," the "functional," and the "canonical."

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures	p. xiii
Preface	p. xv
Introduction: The Problem of a Literary History of the New Testament	p. 1
The Twofold Beginnings of a History of Early Christian Literature
The Charismatic Beginnings of Gospel Literature in Jesus
The Oral Prehistory of Early Christian Literature with the Historical Jesus
The Beginning of the History of Early Christian Literature	p. 19
Beginnings of Oral Tradition with the Historical Jesus?	p. 21
Three Tradents of the Jesus Tradition after Easter	p. 25
The Formal Language of Jesus' Proclamation	p. 27
The Sayings Source Q
The First Written Form of the Jesus Tradition	p. 32
The Structure of Q	p. 34
The Time of Q's Origins	p. 36
The Tradition-Critical and Theological Location of Q	p. 37
The Genre of Q: A Prophetic Book and More?	p. 40
The Gospel of Mark
The Second Written Form of the Jesus Tradition	p. 43
The Structure of Mark's Gospel	p. 43
Time and Place of Mark's Gospel	p. 48
Genre: A Biography with a Public Claim	p. 53
The Charismatic Phase of Paul's Epistolary Literature
The Historical Conditions for Paul's Letters	p. 61
The Pre-Pauline Oral Tradition	p. 64
Jesus Traditions in Paul	p. 64
Pre-Pauline Christological Formulae	p. 67
The Pauline Letter as Literary Form	p. 69
The Form-Critical Location of Paul's Letters: Models	p. 69
Development from Letter of Friendship to Community Letter by Means of Liturgical Stylization	p. 74
Development from Letter of Friendship to Community Letter by Means of Rhetorical Stylization	p. 78
The Sequence and Development of the Pauline Letters	p. 82
The Collection of Paul's Letters	p. 94
The Sequence of Paul's Letters	p. 94
Attestation of Paul's Letters	p. 95
The Place Where Paul's Letters Were Collected	p. 99
The Fictive Self-Interpretations of Paul and Jesus: The Pseudepigraphic Phase
Pseudepigraphy as a Literary-Historical Phase in Early Christianity	p. 105
Early Christian Pseudepigraphy between Jewish and Hellenistic Cultures	p. 109
Early Christian Pseudepigraphy between Oral and Literary Cultures	p. 110
Early Christian Pseudepigraphy between Educated Authors and Uneducated Addressees	p. 112
Open Pseudepigraphy in Early Christianity?	p. 113
Paul's Fictive Self-Interpretation in the Deutero-Pauline Writings	p. 116
The Eschatological Theology of 2 Thessalonians	p. 117
The Cosmic Wisdom Theology of Colossians and Ephesians	p. 118
The Theology of Office in the Pastorals	p. 121
Paul's Fictive Self-Correction in the Deutero-Pauline Letters	p. 123
Excursus: The Correction of Paul by the Catholic Epistles
Jesus' Fictive Self-Interpretation through the Redaction of the Jesus Traditions in the Synoptic Gospels	p. 130
The Gospel of Mark	p. 132
The Gospel of Matthew	p. 134
The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles	p. 143
Jesus' Fictive Self-Interpretation through the Transformation of the Jesus Traditions in the Gospels Associated with Gnosis	p. 155
The Gospel of John	p. 156
The Gospel of Thomas	p. 165
The Gospel of the Egyptians	p. 167
Jesus' Fictive Self-Interpretation through the Continuation of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition in the Jewish-Christian Gospels	p. 168
The Gospel of the Nazareans	p. 169
The Gospel of the Ebionites	p. 169
The Gospel of the Hebrews	p. 170
Jesus' Fictive Self-Interpretation through the Harmonizing of the Jesus Tradition in Other Apocryphal Gospels	p. 171
The Egerton Gospel	p. 171
The Gospel of Peter	p. 172
The Unknown Berlin Gospel	p. 173
The Authority of the Independent Forms: The Functional Phase
The Independent Differentiation of Partial Texts and Tendencies	p. 179
Preaching	p. 179
Congregational Order	p. 180
Collections of Sayings	p. 180
Secret Teachings of Jesus	p. 180
Historical Writing	p. 181
Apocalypses	p. 181
The Acts of the Apostles	p. 184
The Revelation to John	p. 189
The Letter to the Hebrews	p. 195
The New Testament on Its Way to Becoming a Religious World Literature: The Canonical Phase
Canon as a Means to Stability Based on Compromise and Demarcation	p. 205
The Four-Gospel Canon	p. 211
Canonical Collections of Letters	p. 216
Canonical Clusters of Gospels and Other Genres	p. 218
The Septuagint as Canonical Model	p. 220
A Canonical Edition of the New Testament in the Second Century?	p. 222
Establishment of a Canon as a Recognition of and Limitation on Plurality	p. 225
Extra-Canonical Literature Provides Flexibility	p. 237
New Creations by New Charismatic Authors	p. 238
New Creations in the Form of Additional Pseudepigraphic Writings	p. 241
New Creations through Multiplication of Functional Genres	p. 248
New Creations as Metacanonical Texts	p. 250
Concluding Observation	p. 253
Notes	p. 260
Bibliography	p. 291
Index	p. 302
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