How to Approach a Strange Manuscript

here are many obstacles standing in the way of an objective read ing of individual New Testament (NT) documents.I will mention just two.First, analyzing a document that is part of a larger collection can be like trying to appreciate the distinctive sound of a lone so prano singing in a mass choir-naturally that single voice blends in with the others.Students of the NT experience something like this the moment they attempt to "specialize"; to focus on a specific text on its own apart from its canonical roommates (and this would also be true for other religious traditions whose sacred writings incorpo rate a wide variety of documents by different authors, e.g., Tanakh).And while attempts have been made to approach the history of early Christianity without attention to this "arbitrary limitation" on the evidence (cf.Raisanen 1990, 100-3), it remains that modem histori ans have inherited a canon, and to divorce one work from this larger group is not so easily done.A second obstacle stems from the fact that scholars are part of a tradition of interpretation.There are many opinions about the NT writings and these invariably influence stu dents in their research.Not surprisingly, labels are often attached to texts on the basis of critical judgements, and so we here terms like deutero-Pauline, pseudepigraphal, early catholic, and so on.Whether or not such categories do justice to the writings assigned to them is not at issue here.The point is simply that there is a unique challenge facing the NT scholar who wants to objectively analyze a NT writing on its own merit

Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Computer Science · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity

• Historical Method and the Johannine Community

  Open Access•Frederik Wisse•Arc The Journal of the School of…•1992

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