David Trobisch | |
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Born | |
Nationality | German / American [1] |
Occupation | Biblical scholar |
Academic background | |
Education | Doctor of Theology [1] |
Alma mater | Heidelberg University [1] |
Doctoral advisor | Prof. Gerd Theißen [1] |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Heidelberg University Yale Divinity School Bangor Theological Seminary |
Main interests | Theology,Bible |
Notable works | The First Edition of the New Testament |
Website | http://trobisch.com/david/wb/ |
David Johannes Trobisch (born on August 18,1958 [2] ) is a German scholar whose work has focused on formation of the Christian Bible,ancient New Testament manuscripts and the epistles of Paul.
Trobisch grew up in Cameroon where his parents served as Lutheran missionaries, [3] and David Trobisch grew up in West Africa.
Trobisch divides his time between Germany,where his wife,son and two grandchildren live,and a home in Springfield,Missouri. When in the U.S.,he considers himself part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. [3]
Trobisch went to school in Austria and after passing the Abitur,(University entrance exam) in 1976 (Matura BEA Saalfelden),he moved to Germany and studied Koine Greek at Augustana Divinity School (Neuendettelsau). Trobisch also studied in Tübingen,and in 1977 he studied biblical Hebrew at the Heidelberg University.
In 1982 Trobisch earned his Master of Theology from Heidelberg University. From 1988 he holds his Doctor of Theology also from the Heidelberg University,under his advisor:Prof. Gerd Theissen with his thesis:Die Entstehung der Paulusbriefsammlung :Studien zu den Anfängen christlicher Publizistik. [4] From 1995,Trobisch holds his Habilitation with the thesis Die Endredaktion des Neuen Testaments:eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung der christlichen Bibel also from Heidelberg University. [5]
Trobisch has taught at Heidelberg University,Missouri State University,and Yale Divinity School.
From September 1996 to July 2008,he worked at Bangor Theological Seminary,where he became Throckmorton-Hayes Professor of New Testament Language and Literature (2000-2009).
Trobisch served as the founding Director of Museum of the Bible. Since February 2014 to January 2015,he was Director of the Green Collection,Oklahoma City,Oklahoma,and from February 2015 to March 2018 he served as Director of Collections. [6] [7]
David Trobisch is also recognized for his work on the Letters of Paul,the Formation of the Christian Bible,Performance Theory in Antiquity,and Bible Manuscripts. He is on the editorial board of the Novum Testamentum Graece .
Since the publication of his book The First Edition of the New Testament in 2000,Trobisch has argued against the commonly held notion that the New Testament canon developed gradually over centuries. [8] [9] Instead,Trobisch argues that a collection of Christian scriptures closely approximating the modern New Testament canon "was edited and published by specific people at a very specific time and at a very specific place." [10]
His argument centers around the striking uniformity found in ancient manuscripts of New Testament documents. According to Trobisch,almost all extant manuscripts document a closed collection of 27 books,listed in the same order and grouped in the same four volumes,bearing the same titles with very few variants,and all using the same unique system to mark sacred terms ( nomina sacra ). [11] He also points out that nearly all manuscripts were published in the form of a codex,rather than the scroll format which was overwhelmingly dominant in non-Christian literature at the time. From these facts,Trobisch concludes that almost all our extant manuscripts of New Testament documents must be copies of a single,very influential published collection. [12]
Trobisch argues that this "first edition of the New Testament" was published some time in the mid- to late second century. Because late second century and early third century Christian authors such as Irenaeus,Clement of Alexandria,and Tertullian seem to have used a canon of scripture very similar to the modern one,Trobisch holds that the New Testament must have been published before 180 CE. [10]
In a 2007 article titled Who Published the New Testament?,Trobisch postulated that the publisher of the first edition of the New Testament may well have been Polycarp,an early bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor. [13] Trobisch based this conclusion on a variety of factors. Firstly,Polycarp was a well-known person in the mid-second century,who held authority among proto-Catholic Christians in both Rome and Asia Minor. Secondly,Polycarp was reputed to be a disciple of John the Apostle,so his authority would have been able to add credibility to the Gospel of John and the Johannine epistles of the New Testament,which are widely believed by modern scholars not to be authentic works of John the Apostle. Thirdly,Polycarp was known to be a vocal opponent of Marcionite Christianity,which Trobisch and many other scholars take to be a major impetus for the development of the New Testament canon. Finally,Polycarp is believed to have had experience in publishing,because he distributed the first collection of the epistles of Ignatius (see Pol. Phil. 13). [13]
Some time in the second century,the heretical Christian thinker Marcion of Sinope published his own Christian canon which contained a shorter version of the Gospel of Luke (the Gospel of Marcion) and ten Pauline epistles. [14] Trobisch holds the view,shared by scholars such as John Knox [15] and Joseph Tyson, [16] that the gospel used by Marcion is earlier than the canonical Luke-Acts, [17] and that Luke-Acts was in fact published as a response to Marcion's canon,contemporaneously with the publishing of the first edition of the New Testament as a whole. [18]
Lobegott Friedrich Constantin (von) Tischendorf was a German biblical scholar. In 1844, he discovered the world's oldest and most complete Bible dated to around the mid-4th century and called Codex Sinaiticus after Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai.
Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette was a German theologian and biblical scholar.
The pastoral epistles are a group of three books of the canonical New Testament: the First Epistle to Timothy, the Second Epistle to Timothy, and the Epistle to Titus. They are presented as letters from Paul the Apostle to Timothy and to Titus. However, many scholars believe they were written after Paul's death. They are generally discussed as a group and are given the title pastoral because they are addressed to individuals with pastoral oversight of churches and discuss issues of Christian living, doctrine and leadership. The term "pastorals" was popularized in 1703 by D. N. Berdot and in 1726 by Paul Anton. Alternate nomenclature for the cluster of three letters has been proposed: "Corpus Pastorale," meant to highlight the intentional forgery of the letters as a three-part corpus, and "Letters to Timothy and Titus," meant to emphasize the individuality of the letters.
The Gospel of Marcion, called by its adherents the Gospel of the Lord, or more commonly the Gospel, was a text used by the mid-2nd-century Christian teacher Marcion of Sinope to the exclusion of the other gospels. The majority of scholars agree that this gospel was a later revised version of the Gospel of Luke, though several involved arguments for Marcion priority have been put forward in recent years.
Novum Testamentum Graece is a critical edition of the New Testament in its original Koine Greek published by Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, forming the basis of most modern Bible translations and biblical criticism. It is also known as the Nestle–Aland edition after its most influential editors, Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland. The text, edited by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, is currently in its 28th edition, abbreviated NA28.
Roland Guérin de Vaux was a French Dominican priest who led the Catholic team that initially worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was the director of the École Biblique, a French Catholic Theological School in East Jerusalem, and he was charged with overseeing research on the scrolls. His team excavated the ancient site of Khirbet Qumran (1951–1956) as well as several caves near Qumran northwest of the Dead Sea. The excavations were led by Ibrahim El-Assouli, caretaker of the Palestine Archaeological Museum, or what came to be known as the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
Kurt Aland was a German theologian and biblical scholar who specialized in New Testament textual criticism. He founded the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster and served as its first director from 1959 to 1983. He was one of the principal editors of Nestle–Aland – Novum Testamentum Graece for the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft and The Greek New Testament for the United Bible Societies.
Benedict Thomas Viviano a New Testament scholar and author, was a member of the Chicago Province of the Dominican Order of the Roman Catholic Church. He was on the faculty of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, as a full professor of New Testament, teaching in the French language. Before teaching in Fribourg, he taught for 11 years at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, and 12 years at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. He was vice president of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute for Theological Studies in Jerusalem.
Rolf Rendtorff (1925–2014) was Professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg from 1963 to 1990. He was one of the more significant German Old Testament scholars from the latter half of the twentieth-century and published extensively on various topics related to the Hebrew Bible. Rendtorff was especially notable for his contributions to the question of the origins of the Pentateuch, his adoption of a "canonical approach" to Old Testament theology, and his concerns over the relationship between Jews and Christians.
Minuscule 42, α107, known as Codex Maedicaeus is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament on parchment. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 11th century. It has marginalia.
Peter Lampe is a German Protestant theologian and chaired Senior Professor of New Testament Studies/History of Early Christianity at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
Johann Martin Augustin Scholz was a German Roman Catholic orientalist, biblical scholar and academic theologian. He was a professor at the University of Bonn and travelled extensively throughout Europe and the Near East in order to locate manuscripts of the New Testament.
Barbara Aland was a German theologian and professor of New Testament Research and Church History at the University of Münster until 2002. She was internationally recognized for her work on the Novum Testamentum Graece and the Greek New Testament, which she undertook with her husband, Kurt Aland.
Markus Vinzent is a historian of religion. He was a professor in the Department of Theology & Religious Studies at King's College London, and fellow of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Social and Cultural Studies, Erfurt, Germany.
Hermann Spieckermann is a German biblical scholar, historian of ancient Near Eastern religion, and Protestant theologian. He currently holds a chair for Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Göttingen, in Germany. Through extensive authorial, editorial, and organizational undertakings, Spieckermann has exerted considerable influence on Hebrew Bible research.
Karl Gottfried Wilhelm Theile was a German theologian.
Walter Klaiber is a theologian, bishop of the Evangelical Methodist Church in Germany and was until the beginning of March 2007 Chairman of the Working Group of Christian Churches in Germany.
Some scholars believe the hypothesis of the chronological priority of the Gospel of Marcion is a possible solution to the synoptic problem. This hypothesis claims that the first produced or compiled gospel was that of Marcion and that this gospel of Marcion was used as inspiration for some, or all, of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Matthias Klinghardt is a German Protestant theologian and university professor. His theological specialty is the New Testament. He is a proponent of the Marcion hypothesis for the synoptic problem and the gospel of John.
Heidrun E. Mader is a German Protestant theologian and historian of early Christianity and its literature, and a professor at the University of Cologne, Germany, holding a chair of Biblical Literature and its Reception History.