Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2012, Qupperneq 12

Birger Olsson, Uppsala
The Reading of the New Testament 1962 -
2012: Interpretation and Faith
The text => the interpretation
When Kristján Búason and I walked on the narrow streets around the
Cathedral and the Department of Theology in Uppsala in the sixties and
discussed what had been said during the evening session of the Higher
Seminar of the New Testament, the interpretation process did not seem
very complicated to us. It included just two main elements: the text and
the interpretation. That is my first point. There was only one method for
exegesis of biblical texts, “die exegetische Methode”, elaborated especially by
German scholars over several decades. It was the mean by which one could
determine the original text and the original meaning of that text
We had learnt the text-critical rules from the time before the Second
World War, and we could discuss all variants of the apparatus in Nestle-
Aland’s text edition. In this way we could convince ourselves what was the
original text of the New Testament.
In order to catch the original meaning we used Literarkritik, Formkritik,
Gattungskritik, Traditionskritik and Redaktionskritik and could describe
the genesis of every text. These methodological instruments were made by
exegetes, especially for biblical texts. The diachronic aspect of a text was
important for determining the original meaning. At the end of the decade,
results from non-exegetical disciplines, such as linguistics and sociology,
began to invade biblical criticism.
The decades after the Second World War were the period of so called
“textutredningar” in Sweden, historical interpretations of the texts used in
the Christian service. They were, in some respect, the Swedish answer to
Bultmann’s theological program. They corresponded to the main theological
model at this time: first a determination of the historical meaning, and
then the theological use and application of this meaning in preaching and
teaching. Many sermons became exegetical lectures. The distance between
the academy and church was not very long and the exegetes had a very
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