Det Gamle Testamentes kanoniske status: Omkring Notger Slenczka, Vom Alten Testament und vom Neuen. Beiträge zur Neuvermessung ihres Verhältnisses

Taking departure in the invitation in Slenczkas new book todiscuss the role of the Jewish Holy Scriptures in a Christian canon, thisarticle starts with contesting the validity of the arguments for introducingOld Testament readings in the service of the Danish Church.Reading the Old Testament in the light of Christian faith as if it in realityis about Christ was no longer possible after Enlightenment. With ahistorical and critical study, it became clear, that the Old Testament wasJewish and not Christian Scripture. In continuation of some deliberationsin Luther, and especially the thoughts of F. Schleiermacher, A. vonHarnack and R. Bultmann, Slenczka argues, that we today need to drawthe consequence of this view. It was only in the reception of the Churchthat the Old Testament became a Christian text, and this cannot beascribed a retroactive effect, a Jewish understanding and reception beingmuch more appropriate. Its meaning in a Christian Bible, therefore,can only be to witness about man’s place towards God without Christ.From this follows that in a Christian Bible the Old Testament cannotfigure with the same degree of canonicity as the New, instead it shouldbe reckoned at the same level as the Old Testament Apocrypha

Justin som bibelteolog

Justin Martyr (dead ca. 165) is the earliest known Christian author to develop a Biblical theology. At the same time, he is the last one to acknowledge the Old Testament as Scripture. Especially in his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho, but already in the two Apologies Justin quotes Jewish Holy Scripture extensively. He is the first Christian author to refer to the Septuagint legend about the translation of the Pentateuch, which he extends also to include the translation of the other parts of the Old Testament. Justin is not only convinced about the infallibility of Scripture: he also maintains that the Christians are alone competent to know its real meaning because only they possess the Holy Spirit. The article looks upon Justin as a Bible theologian, focusing on what the Old Greek translation, the Septuagint, contributed to the development of his theology. The rendering ‘virgin’ in Isaiah 7,14 became a point of departure for his distinguishing in a series of Old Testament stories between the eternal, invisible God and another god, an ἕτερος θεός, who acted in a figure visible to humans and who was the pre-existent Christ. In his selection of Old Testament texts, Justin seems to have aimed at giving content to the saying in Luke 24,44. Thus, he delivers proof from Scripture for the belief that the promised Messiah must be identified with Jesus. As to the question of how Justin became acquainted with Old Testament Scripture, the article defends the view that it was mainly through independent reading. Thus, he did not use any already existing collections of testimonia. Rather, he created one. To the old question of how Justin could quote the same text in different versions, the preferred answer in this article is that the Dialogue mainly consists of older manuscripts, which Justin had, in an old age, mechanically worked together, not so much in order to convince Jews as to offer a manual for Christians who might be tempted by a Jewish understanding of Scripture