One Scripture or Many? proposes a novel understanding of canon that reaches beyond the text to the reality of tradition. This new approach to biblical theology takes up major questions concerning the unity of the canon. Its thesis is bold: canon is both text and tradition. As text, the canon is the product of a history of formation; its unity is ascribed by subsequent generations interpreting the text. As tradition, its fundamental openness to diverse interpretations is the function of a subject behind the text that holds together the tradition's unity. Yet open-endedness does not mean an absence of determinacy. Hermeneutical, theological, and philosophical parameters are given in order to maintain a unity at one level that does not exist between ideas conflicting on another level. These parameters are constituted through the relationship between text, reality, and experience. On the one hand, these parameters are embedded in the text. On the other hand, they are inextricably linked to reality because they themselves reflect experiences of that reality. The interdisciplinary approach in this book draws on scholarship in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, philosophy, and theology. Both Jewish and Christian scholars conclude that the search for the canon is an open-ended process of interpretation. Questions of the canon's unity find their niche in a new concept of biblical theology that presupposes the theological and philosophical relevance of biblical texts. As conceived in religious categories, experience and reality are themes already available in scripture. Whether one or many, scripture addresses these questions for our time.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) has been described as "the greatest and at the same time the most controversial theologian in German Protestant theology since Schleiermacher." The controversy was epitomized by a nineteenth-century British critic who wrote that his theory "makes of Christianity a thing of purely natural origin, calls in question the authenticity of all but a few of the New Testament books, and makes the whole collection contain not a harmonious system of divine truth, but a confused mass of merely human and contradictory opinions as to the nature of the Christian religion." The contributors to this volume, however, regard Baur as an epoch-making New Testament scholar whose methods and conclusions, though superseded, have been mostly affirmed during the century and a half since his death. This collection focuses on the history of early Christianity, although as a historian of the church and theology Baur covered the entire field up to own time. He combined the most exacting historical research with a theological interpretation of history influenced by Kant, Schelling, and Hegel. The first three chapters discuss Baur's relation to Strauss, Moehler, and Hegel. Then a central core of chapters considers his historical and exegetical perspectives (Judaism and Hellenism, Gnosticism, New Testament introduction and theology, the Pauline epistles, the Synoptic Gospels, John, the critique of miracle, and the combination of absoluteness and relativity). The final chapters view his influence by analyzing the reception of Baur in Britain, Baur and Harnack, and Baur and practical theology. This work offers a multi-faceted picture of his thinking, which will stimulate contemporary discussion.

Die Mehrzahl der Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes geht auf Vorträge und Diskussionen des General Meeting der Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas/Society for New Testament Studies 2019 in Marburg zurück, die für die Publikation weiter ausgearbeitet wurden. Sie wurden durch Beiträge namhafter internationaler Neutestamentlerinnen und Neutestamentler ergänzt. Im ersten Teil werden die Geschichte und die gegenwärtige Bedeutung der Entmythologisierung und der existentialen Interpretation neu beleuchtet. Im zweiten Teil werden die exegetischen Beiträge Bultmanns zu den synoptischen Evangelien, Paulus und Johannes rekonstruiert und auf ihre gegenwärtige Bedeutung befragt. Im Ergebnis wird deutlich, dass der Ausgangspunkt und das Ziel der theologischen Exegese Bultmanns bis heute eine Herausforderung und wesentliche Anregung für die Exegese der Gegenwart darstellen.