David Trobisch | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | German / American [1] |
Occupation | Biblical scholar |
Children | 1 son |
Academic background | |
Education | Doctor of Theology [1] |
Alma mater | Heidelberg University [1] |
Doctoral advisor | Gerd Thiessen [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 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 in 1976 (Matura BEA Saalfelden),he moved to Germany and studied Koine Greek at the Augustana Divinity School. Trobisch also studied in Tubingen,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,Tobisch holds his Habilitation with the thesis Die Endredaktion des Neuen Testaments:eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung der christlichen Bibel from Heidelberg University,Germany.
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 the Museum of the Bible. Since February 2014 to January 2015,he was Director of the Green Collection in Oklahoma City,Oklahoma,and from February 2015 to March 2018 he served as Director of Collections. [5] [6]
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. [7] [8] 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." [9] : 162
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 ). [10] 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. [9] : 161–162
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. [9] : 162
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. [11] 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). [11]
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. [12] Trobisch holds the view,shared by scholars such as John Knox [13] and Joseph Tyson, [14] that the gospel used by Marcion is earlier than the canonical Luke-Acts, [15] 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. [11] : 32
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events relating to first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as Sacred Scripture by Christians.
The Vulgate, sometimes referred to as the Latin Vulgate, is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.
The Codex Vaticanus, designated by siglum B or 03, δ 1, is a Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament and the majority of the Greek New Testament. It is one of the four great uncial codices. Along with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Sinaiticus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 4th century.
Marcion of Sinope was a theologian in early Christianity. Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ, who was distinct from the "vengeful" God (Demiurge) who had created the world. He considered himself a follower of Paul the Apostle, whom he believed to have been the only true apostle of Jesus Christ; his doctrine is called Marcionism. Marcion published the earliest record of a canon of New Testament books.
Textus Receptus refers to the succession of printed editions of the Greek New Testament from Erasmus's Novum Instrumentum omne (1516) to the 1633 Elzevir edition.
Marcionism was an early Christian dualistic belief system that originated with the teachings of Marcion of Sinope in Rome around 144 AD. Marcion was an early Christian theologian, evangelist, and an important figure in early Christianity. He was the son of a bishop of Sinope in Pontus. About the middle of the 2nd century (140–155) he traveled to Rome, where he joined the Syrian Gnostic Cerdo.
The Pauline epistles, also known as Epistles of Paul or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen books of the New Testament attributed to Paul the Apostle, although the authorship of some is in dispute. Among these epistles are some of the earliest extant Christian documents. They provide an insight into the beliefs and controversies of early Christianity. As part of the canon of the New Testament, they are foundational texts for both Christian theology and ethics.
The New Testament apocrypha are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cited as scripture by early Christians, but since the fifth century a widespread consensus has emerged limiting the New Testament to the 27 books of the modern canon. Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches generally do not view the New Testament apocrypha as part of the Bible.
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 Pauline epistles are the thirteen books in the New Testament traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle.
The Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus designated by the siglum C or 04, δ 3, is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, written on parchment. It contains most of the New Testament and some Old Testament books, with sizeable portions missing. It is one of the four great uncials. The manuscript is not intact: its current condition contains material from every New Testament book except 2 Thessalonians and 2 John; however, only six books of the Greek Old Testament are represented. It is not known whether 2 Thessalonians and 2 John were excluded on purpose, or whether no fragment of either epistle happened to survive.
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, 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.
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures to huge polyglot codices containing both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the New Testament, as well as extracanonical works.
The Editio Critica Maior is a critical edition of the Greek New Testament being produced by the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung — which is famous, for example, for the Novum Testamentum Graece critical editions of the Greek New Testament — in collaboration with other international institutes.
Codex Basilensis A. N. IV. 2, known as Minuscule 1, δ 254, and formerly designated by 1eap to distinguish it from minuscule 1rK is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the entire New Testament, apart from the Book of Revelation. Using the study of comparative writings styles (palaeography), it is usually dated to the 12th century CE.
Vindobonensis Suppl. Gr. 52, also known as Minuscule 3, or δ 253, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, written on vellum. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 12th century. It was one of the manuscripts used by biblical scholar Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus in his edition of the Greek text of the New Testament.
The canon of the New Testament is the set of books many modern Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For most churches, the canon is an agreed-upon list of 27 books that includes the canonical Gospels, Acts, letters attributed to various apostles, and Revelation.
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.
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.