Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.1998, Blaðsíða 172

Jón Ma. Ásgeirsson
believer.29 But does Jesus have a say in the writings of Paul? Can anyone write
about Jesus after Paul? Was anything said or written by or about Jesus before
Paul?
Apologia over Epitaph
Scholarship of the New Testament has during this century somewhat gravi-
tated towards explaining the literary components and, indeed, the entire liter-
ature of this collection as either a product totally harmonious with the
Graeco-Roman traditions of its cultural environment or, otherwise, as a cre-
ation sui generis based as it would seem on extra terrestrial revelation (and/
or an interpretation of Old Testament prophecies).30 The gruesome reference
to cannibalism in the account (institution) of the Eucharist, basically foreign
to the Graeco-Roman and Jewish culture, prompts Bowersock to acknowledge
this element of the account as its most innovative part. While reminiscences
of Hebrew epic (or Old Testament motifs) do serve as an inspirational back-
ground for the account of the Eucharist and other works in the New Testament,
Bowersock explains its transformation (novelty) in terms of creative fabri-
cation essential to any successful literary productivity—which, as must be
added, has to be assumed follows conventional Hellenistic methods of com-
position. Yet, Bowersock does not only acknowledge the creative element in
the composition of this particular account but the way it is presented marks,
in his opinion, a striking new literary convention, namely, to present fiction
in historical terms.31 This was to become a lasting impact upon the creative
29 Op. cit., 129.
30 This scenario is exemplified throughout the history of research of the New Testament, e.g.,
between the so-called history-of-religions schools (old and new) that look to the broader
religious environment of the New Testament and schools which argue for everything in
the New Testament to be of unique or “peculiar” origin in terms of history and theology,
vide e.g., Werner Georg Kiimmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation
of Its Problems, S. MacL. Gilmour and H. C. Kee, transls. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon,
1972), praesertim 206-404 [Das Neue Testament: Geschichte der Erforschung seiner
Probleme (Munich: Alber, 1970].
31 Says Bowersock, “The material in the Gospel narratives, as well as in the Acts of the
Apostles, constituted a kind of narrative fiction in the form of history (év eíSei LCTTOpías',
as Julian was to say [Epist., 89b, 301b (Bidez)] that was essentially new to the Graeco-
Roman world,” op. cit., 123. Bowersock accredits this understanding to the conclusions
of Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance, The Charles
Eliot Norton Lectures 1974-1975 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976) and
of Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative, The
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1977-1978 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1979).
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