Recherche – Detailansicht
Ausgabe: | Juli/August/2023 |
Spalte: | 712-714 |
Kategorie: | Neues Testament |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Vinzent, Markus |
Titel/Untertitel: | Christi Thora. Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments im 2. Jahrhundert. |
Verlag: | Freiburg i. Br. u. a.: Verlag Herder 2022. 400 S. Geb. EUR 38,00. ISBN 9783451395772. |
Rezensent: | William Horbury |
This is a fascinating and many-sided attempt to embed the making of the New Testament within second-century history and thought. A notable feature of Markus Vinzent’s approach is that not only the formation of the New Testament canon, but also the production of the four gospels, is attributed to the period from Marcion to Irenaeus. The four gospels, he argues, appeared in reaction to Marcion’s gospel in the years 135–144, between Marcion’s arrival in Rome and the issue of his Antitheses, and the canon was shaped in opposition to Marcion’s canon down to about the year 177. The New Testament literature should be read primarily against the background of events from the Bar Kokhba war to martyrdoms and pestilence in the time of M. Aurelius. V. relates this view to the abundant recent discussion of Marcion’s importance for the growth of the New Testament. Overall, he urges rediscovery of the sometimes neglected continuity between New Testament and patristic study.
V. has been advancing his proposals for some years, as in the books Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity, and the Making of the New Testament (London 2011), and Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (Leuven 2014). His New Testament suggestions are part of a broader view of Christian origins. The Bar Kokhba war and Marcion effectively begin, he urges, the history of »Christianity« as a separate way of life and thought. The book under review thus complements V.’s recent Offener Anfang. Die Entstehung des Christentums im 2. Jahrhundert (Freiburg i. Br. 2019).
For Marcion’s gospel-text V. here mainly follows M. Klinghardt’s reconstruction. On the growth of a canon, he notes theories of »organic« development influenced by liturgical use, but stresses, rather, the direction exercised by ecclesiastical teachers and their networks. Irenaeus, the first known defender of the group of precisely four gospels and the first to bring the Four together with the Pauline epistles (76), would have been the successful propagator of a canon meant to replace that formed by Marcion’s association of a gospel with a Pauline collection.
A first chapter, »Das Neue Testament als Sammlung«, sets out the development towards a collection in the light of external evidence down to Irenaeus. A long second chapter (over 200 pages) treats the emergence of four Teilsammlungen evident within New Testament textual tradition: the four gospels, here viewed together with Marcion’s gospel, and then the Praxapostolos (Acts and the Catholic Epistles), the Pauline corpus, and the Apocalypse (a »col-lection« insofar as it gathers the letters to the Seven Churches).
V. holds that Marcion wrote down his gospel, while he was still in Pontus, on the basis of oral tradition. This gospel represents Marcion’s own outlook, but includes some incongruous matter, in deference to tradition. V. suggests that, although some written reports concerning Jesus and his teaching would have circulated since the time of Paul, Marcion’s gospel was the first written account which brought together sayings and deeds in a connected narrative. Marcion took it with him to Rome after the Bar Kokhba war. It was used by other teachers, plagiarized, altered, and linked with Jewish scripture. It thereby lost its original character of a new law, Christi Thora, replacing the old. The altered gospels which stood closest to Marcion’s original text were those later known as the Four. One should envisage a group of five gospels, as Irenaeus did when countering Marcion (Adv. Haer. iv 6, 1). Thus Marcion’s gospel presents John the Baptist as a boundary-mark between Judaism and Christianity, and perhaps also as a negatively-viewed Zealot, with an implied warning against revolt; but the Four respond by making him, in various ways, a bridge between Judaism and Christianity (272).
Irenaeus would have been the governing spirit in the making of a »New Testament« canon to displace that created by Marcion, as might be suggested by the vindication of the Four in Adversus Haereses against heretical gospels, and also in the setting of options for one harmonized gospel-book. When Irenaeus attacks Marcion and his followers for mutilating the scriptures (Adv. Haer. iii 12, 12), he reveals his own method with Marcion’s writings and book-collection (281–282). Reshaping brought additional books, such as the Catholic Epistles and the Pastorals, and textual harmonization and cross-reference in the gospels and the Pauline corpus. Thus in Luke and Acts the »western« text would be earlier, the Textus receptus would represent revision during formation of the collection.
The four gospels, and the whole book-collection, are apologetic in character. They form an Antwortliteratur, answering questions which arose after the Bar Kokhba war (352), in troubled times and during the formation of a separate Christian identity in loyalty to Rome. This can be sensed, V. urges, in Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. iii 1, 1, on the announcement of heavenly peace by the apostles who had the gospel of God (evangelium Dei) – no cliché, but a much-needed affirmation.
Chapter 3, »Das neue Gesetz Christi«, expounds themes of the »new law« of Marcion’s gospel: the »good« God in contrast with the »righteous« God of reward and punishment, and the abandonment of riches and property with a view to generosity rather than asceticism. Marcion and his gospel appear, in a way which recalls Harnack, as giving the new entity, »Christianity«, an ideal from which it fell away. Yet this ideal is also an expression of second-century inner-Jewish conflict over attitudes to Roman rule and to inherited tradition (316–317); thus in this setting the injunction »Judge not« would have been vital.
This summary expresses only a little of the author’s verve, and the range, detail and nuance of his arguments. To comment briefly, it is rewarding to have the making of the New Testament collection presented in the setting of Roman and Jewish history as well as that of inner-Christian debate. Yet the weight to be given to external and internal influences, respectively, can still be discussed. Did the Bar Kokhba war, and related desire to identify with the Roman order, effectively initiate an independent »Christianity«, or simply help, in certain circumstances, to deepen existing separation? The need to show loyalty to Caesar, just one possible influence, will already have been pressing in the sixties and after 70, and again after the Jewish risings in 115–117.
Likewise, division and poverty at the time of the Bar Kokhba war might have favoured composition of a written gospel, as V. urges, but comparable conditions had been present at least since the sixties. A catechetical and, as stressed by V., apologetic need to impart views of the life and teaching of Jesus, and defend them against criticism, has often been envisaged in this earlier period. Then, Irenaeus wants to present the Four as one body of texts representing apostolic tradition; but he differentiates them, he maintains the attribution of Mark and Luke to writers who were not themselves apostles, and he sets all four gospels relatively late. Does V. do justice to the surprisingly moderate nature of Irenaeus’s claim? Yet, in any case, a reading of this book should not be dominated by the question of the origin of the Four.
It is salutary to think just why one might differ from V. He offers a remarkable reconstruction of the whole growth of the New Testament literature, set in historical and theological context. Much benefit can be derived from consideration of his lively and substantial work.