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Ausgabe: | 1986 |
Spalte: | 893-895 |
Kategorie: | Neues Testament |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Verner, David C. |
Titel/Untertitel: | The household of God 1986 |
Rezensent: | Holmberg, Bengt |
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893
Theologische Literaturzeitung 1 1 I.Jahrgang 1986 Nr. 12
894
belastende „Stück Zeitgeschichte dennoch nicht zu einem einzigartigen
, alle andere Geschichte transzendierenden Stück" (158). Sch.
hat aber auch darin Recht, daß Rom 9-11 in der Diskussion über das
Verhältnis von Juden und Christen mehr in den Blick genommen
werden müsse.
Ich darf vielleicht noch folgendes hinzufügen: Sch.s Buch erschien
nahezu gleichzeitig mit meiner Monographie über Rom 9-1 I (Gottes
Ich und Israel, FRLANT 136). Ich bedauere sehr, daß ich es deshalb
nicht mehr berücksichtigen konnte. Ich freue mich aber, daß ich
gerade in der Beurteilung von Rom 9-1 1 und auch in den Konsequenzen
dieser Beurteilung hinsichtlich wichtiger Fragen mit Sch. übereinstimme
. Wo wir in der Beurteilung dieser Kapitel über das hier Gesagte
hinaus auseinandergehen, mögen die Leser in synoptischer Lektüre
beider Bücher feststellen und so zu ihrem eigenen Urteil
kommen.
Insgesamt liegt also ein recht ordentliches und weiterführendes
Buch vor, das angesichts mancher emotional aufgeheizten Diskussion
über die theologische Israelfrage den einen oder anderen Leser zur
Sachfrage zurücklenken könnte. Mit Recht hat Sch. kritische Fragen
an Günter Klein gestellt; es fehlt aber gerade hier die letzte erforderliche
Tiefe in der hermeneutischen Diskussion; es bleibt leider
zuweilen bei hermeneutisch-philosophischen Pauschalurtcilen. Doch
trotz aller kritischen Bemerkungen: Wer an P. interessiert ist, kann
sich von der Lektüre dieses Buches nicht dispensieren.
Eine Bemerkung sei zum Schluß erlaubt: Ist es wirklich nötig, daß
in einem exegetischen Werk die griechischen Worte mit der Hand geschrieben
sind? Wenn schon der deutsche Text ein kopiertes Schreibmaschinenmanuskript
ist. dann könnten doch leicht mit einem griechischen
Kugelkopf die griechischen Worte eingefügt werden. Oder ist
der Rez. zu antiquiert, daß er hier immer noch mit ästhetischen Kategorien
urteilt?
Göttingen Hans Hühner
1 Rainer Schmitt, Abschied von der Heilsgeschichte?.-Untersuchungcn zum
Verständnis von Geschichte im Alten Testament (EHS. T 2.3. Bd. 195), Frankfurt
1982.
1 Hans Hübner. Das Gesetz bei Paulus, Ein Beitrag zum Werden der pauli-
nischen Theologie (FRLANT 119), 'Göttingen 1982. 37ff. Schmitt geht auf
diese Argumente nicht ein. obwohl er sich sonst mehrfach kritisch oder zustimmend
auf meine Monographie bezieht.
Verner. David C: The Household of God. The Social World of the
Pastoral Epistles. Chico, CA: Scholars Press 1983. IX, 207 S. 81 =
SBL. Dissertation Series, 71. Kart $ 13.50.
This book (originally a Ph. D. dissertation from Emory University
1981) is one of a growing number of exegetical works that attempt to
understand the New Testament better through a closer Iook at the
social world behind its writings. The Pastoral letters, aecording to D.
Verner (= V.). are not simply a collection of church traditions without
any governing coneept. Rather they address paraenetically a specific
social Situation in the church(cs) they were sent to. and this paraenesis
is governed by the coneept of the church as the household [uikus) of
God.
In the "Introduction" (pp. 1-26) V. presents previous research
concerning social Status, social strueture and social tensions in early
Christianity. He sides with the growing consensus of recent years
(Judge. Theissen, Malherbe), that early Christianity was not located
only in the lower classes; especially its leaders came from "the upper
strata of urban provincial society" (p. 5). As Theissen he finds the
household important in the life of early Christian congregations and
he finds Theissen's conflict-theoretical approach to the question of
social tensions within the church a useful one.
V. proeeeds in his second chapter (pp. 27-81) to investigate the
household as a part of the social strueture of urban society in the Early
Roman Empire, especially in the Greek cities of Asia Minor. This is
carefully done, with a notable knowledge of ancient literature, and the
resulting picture of ancient household strueture and values is gener-
ally convincing. Among other interesting information one notes that
only the upper 20-25 % of the population could afford to have even
one slave. This V. rightly understands as throwing some light on the
social standing of Christian slaveowners (I Tim 6:2). The author's
estimate of the size of average urban households as consisting of "hus-
. band, wife arrd a child or two" (p. 61; if they could afford a slave "four
or five members", p. 81) sounds surprisingly modern and too low, and
V. gives no support for these figures.
In chapter three (pp. 83 - 125) V. discusses the Haustafel traditio!)
in the Pastorais. With David Balch (1974) and orthers - he states that
the background to the New Testament Haustafeln is not Stoic duty
lists (Dibelius, Weidinger), but rather the ancient topos "concerning
household management" (peri tes oikonomias). This traditional
philosophical teaching on positions and authority relations within the
oikos was developed by New Testament authors into a Haustafel
schema: address to a specific group in the household, imperative,
amplilication, justifying clause. This Schema has been varied and
developed aecording to the differing needs of the reeipients and also
aecording to the writers' perspectives on these matters. V. gives a
dctailcd analysis of how this has been done by the author of the Pastoral
letters.
In his final chapter (pp. 127 -186) the author turns to a description
of the social realitics in the households of the church of the Pastorais
and then to the "household of God". the church itself. He finds. that
the ideal of domestic life that permeats these letters is a direct reflec-
tion of the dominant (patriarchal and conservative) social values of the
contemporary Iarger society. The household should be governed by
the householder, exercising authority over his wife, children and
slaves. All these should recognize their social position and take care
not to overstep its boundaries of Subordination. Women ought to
marry and avoid free, celibate widowhood, and slaves should not
make too much of the fact that they are the "brothers" of their owners,
as this would damage the church's public image. Differing from other
NT authors the writer of the Pastorais sees the slaves totally from a
slaveowner perspective (pp. I40Ü).
The leaders of the church, themselves assumed to bc good managers
of their own households, should govern the church asa household and
guard its cohesion, especially by defending the teaching of the church.
V. finds it probable that the church of the Pastorais had four separate
Offices: bishop, eider, deacon, and widow, and that officeholders are
assumed by the author of the letters to have a "relatively high social
standing" (p. 152). The support for this latter Statement is a rather
strained interpretation of 1 Tim 3:12 (on p. 133), where V. sees a refer-
ence to slaves included in "their households".
"Widows" are of two kinds: "real widows" (ITim 5:3-8,16) are
poor widows, in need of material support from their church because
they have no relatives to help them. The "enrolled widows" (ITim
5:9-15) on the other hand, are officeholders in the church (whose
funetion we do not know). In the opinion of the letter's author both
kinds should be kept to a minimum.
The most important social tension in this church concerns the role
of emaneipated women. ITim 2:8-15 shows that women really had
been teaching in one or more of the house churches of the congrega-
tion, a custom which the author of the Pastorais strongly opposes and
forbids as breaking the proper order of authority in the family and the
church. Probably these women were adherents of the false teachers
(2Tim 3:60, who wanted to prohibit marriage (ITim 4:3) - an
ascetical (encratitic) tendency we also find in the apocryphal acts. A
well-known examplc is the Acts of Paul, where we find "Paul"
preaching against marriage, Thecla refusing to marry, then running off
to aecompany the apostle and being commissioned by him to be a
teacherofthe word. Both the false teachers and the teaching women in
the Pastorais were probably adherents of an ascetic/gnostic brand of