This reader of texts from the influential 19th-century theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) brings together a selection of texts in English translation from across Baur’s wide range of exegetical, historical, philosophical and theological expertise. In these excerpts, including many translated for the first time, readers gain a comprehensive overview of Baur’s output and his remarkable role in the shaping of modern scholarly discourse in his fields. Beginning with a full scholarly introduction, and extensively annotated texts, readers are introduced to Baur’s bold and controversial historical hypotheses and encounter the variety of intellectual and stylistic registers he used, from the purely scholarly to the sharply polemical. The editors also explore the ways in which Baur was instrumental in some of the most fundamental intellectual paradigm shifts of the 19th-century, including the radical historicization of Christian theology and its interaction with Schelling, Hegel, and the German Idealist tradition.

This reader of texts from the influential 19th-century theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) brings together a selection of texts in English translation from across Baur’s wide range of exegetical, historical, philosophical and theological expertise. In these excerpts, including many translated for the first time, readers gain a comprehensive overview of Baur’s output and his remarkable role in the shaping of modern scholarly discourse in his fields. Beginning with a full scholarly introduction, and extensively annotated texts, readers are introduced to Baur’s bold and controversial historical hypotheses and encounter the variety of intellectual and stylistic registers he used, from the purely scholarly to the sharply polemical. The editors also explore the ways in which Baur was instrumental in some of the most fundamental intellectual paradigm shifts of the 19th-century, including the radical historicization of Christian theology and its interaction with Schelling, Hegel, and the German Idealist tradition.

This study offers a fresh, thorough engagement with Paul's use of Deuteronomy, paying full attention to the concrete realities of Paul's exposure, in life and literature, to Torah. David Lincicum compares Paul's handling of Deuteronomy to the treatment of Deuteronomy in other contemporary Jewish sources. He shows how this key book of Jewish Scripture was influential in Jewish life and liturgy and how it bears on Paul's relationship to the Law.
Originally published by Mohr Siebeck in the Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament series, this work is now available as an affordable North American paperback.

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.