Kittel and Co.

Bart Ehrman behrman at email.unc.edu
Sat Oct 24 17:18:15 EDT 1998


   In response to these issues, please note that there will be a session
devoted to the social history of German biblical scholarship at the SBL
(S21; Sat. 1:00-3:30), with Wayne Meeks reading a paper on Gerhard Kittel
and Susannah Heschel on NT Scholarship on the "Aryan Jesus" during the
Third Reich.  This is the subject of Heschel's current research, which
will result in a monograph on this institute of "German Christians" 
(forget their exact title), that was headed by W. Grundmann of TWNT fame,
an explicitly anti-semitic group of NT scholars whose archives she
discovered in East Berlin after the wall came down. 

-- Bart Ehrman
   University of North Carolina at CHapel Hill


On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:

> Edward Hobbs wrote:
> > 
> *Snip*
> > 
> > "Silva's criticism (and others, for that matter) of this type of study
> > is that there is more to a biblical concept that a single word.  For
> > example, "to sin" is a biblical concept that cannot be confined to a
> > single Greek word."
> 
> *snip*
> > But this is a gross misreading of the Kittel project.  It was planned as a
> > study of "Begriffe" in the NT. (Beware of an etymological translation of
> > "Woerterbuch"!)  Anyone who has used this remarkable tool in any depth is
> > thankfully aware of this fact.  
> >         It was begun 65 years ago, and the earlier volumes may be out of
> > date in places (disagreement about which places, of course).
> >         Some of its contributors before 1945 were Nazis or Nazi-
> > sympathizers.
> > 
> 
> Edward does us all a great favor by checking the unbridled criticism of a
> major reference work. Some of us (myself included) who have read James Barr
> years ago  have only a foggy memory of the real substance of Barr's
> criticisms. But like a pack of jackals we gang up on Kittel's, often failing
> to offer any new insight by repeating third hand clichés. I must admit I am a
> chief offender in this manner. Quick to find fault with works that have take
> untold millions of scholar-hours worth of labor to produce. 
> 
> Edward's comment,
> 
> >         Some of its contributors before 1945 were Nazis or Nazi-
> > sympathizers.
> 
> leads me to ask a new question. Has anyone ever seen a study done on NT
> Scholarship in Germany between 1930-45 which specifically deals with the
> ideological aspects of Nazism? This is not an idle question, one of my old
> friends is a historian who specializes in this era in German history.
> 
> This question is way off topic so please respond in private.
> 
> Thank you.  
> 
> -- 
> Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
> Three Tree Point
> P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
> 
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