ABSTRACT
A typical introduction to New Testament studies might, like this book, introduce the various ‘criticisms’: source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, literary criticism, social-scientific criticism and so on. One that may well become a popular addition in years to come involves ‘reception’ (actually ‘reception history’ is a more common term) and this generally involves the ways in which biblical texts have been used through the ages, the ‘afterlives’ of the biblical texts. Noticeably, despite the centre of scholarly power moving to North America in the past few decades, scholars in the English-speaking world have not lost their love of using a related German term, in this instance, Wirkungsgeschichte, or literally ‘impact history’. Reception history is becoming the next big thing in New Testament studies
and perhaps not before time. The New Testament and the Bible have been used to support the Iraq war, oppose the Iraq war, endorse slavery, oppose slavery, legitimate imperialism, resist imperialism, promote gay rights, contest gay rights and so on, and not to mention the various positions in between. Reception history may also be the future of New Testament studies for the following simple reason: how much interpretation of the same small collection of texts can be done without coming close to exhausting the options or be doomed to repeating old arguments over and over, with only highly specialist analysis of the smallest detail being left? Dale Allison has chastised aspects of modern scholarship for acting as if there were no significant work on the historical Jesus between Albert Schweitzer at the beginning of the twentieth century and Ernst Käsemann in the middle of the twentieth century. Not only does Allison point out the range of historical Jesus scholarship in this period but he also adds that those who fail ‘to learn the exegetical past condemn themselves to repeating that past, to needlessly recapitulating older debates unknowingly’.1 Similarly Allison fires at the common view that post-1980 historical Jesus scholarship witnessed something new and distinctive, such as an interest in non-canonical sources, Jesus in relation to Judaism, and a reaction against apocalyptic eschatology, all of which, Allison points out, are prominent scholarly traits to be found in post-and pre-1980s scholarship. Perhaps the application of the latest approaches in the humanities to old questions
might be a way to produce something innovative, but even if Allison is largely right, then does it not follow that the historical study of Jesus (and by extension the rest of the New Testament) is running out of new things to say? Perhaps the idea of exhausting all the possibilities of reading the New
Testament in its original contexts is going too far (there is a lot of work still to be done on Aramaic reconstructions of gospel passages, for instance) but it is probably fair to suggest that it is increasingly difficult for people to say too many new things. The major advantage reception history has is that there are masses and masses of material waiting to be exploited, researched, analysed, collected, compared and so on. Christianity has spread across the globe and so the Bible is found and read in a wide array of different historical and cultural contexts. Given the use of the Bible as a foundational text in many cultures, its influence and language have not died out even if the overtly religious settings have. Use of the Bible can be found in poetry, music, film, philosophy, law, literature, popular culture … anything!
