From: Edgar Krentz (ekrentz@lstc.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 26 1998 - 05:42:18 EST
Edward, this is a marvellous posting. What I say below in no way
contradicts what you say here.
I think that a couple of additions might be helpful to some. (1) Th,e model
for some of what Gerhard Kittel planned eto do in tehe TDNT came from Adolf
Schlatter's study DER GLAUBE IM NEEUEN TESTAMENT.
Cremer is easily put down today as out of date [not by Edward!]. But the
fact remains that what he did in his German work [I only have it in German]
demonstrated the value of a different approach than the usual lexical
approach. In that sense it is an anticipation of the TDNT.
Finally, as Edward suggests, the TDNT articles vary in valuie. Edduard
Schweizer on SWMA [CRISTOU] is excellent; Otto Michel on ANAMNHSIS,
ANAMIMNHSKW is not. Fionally, vol. 10,2 (not translated into English) is a
massive bibliographic supplement to the 9 volumes of the articles.
>The Kittel project was planned as a
>study of "Begriffe" in the NT. (Beware of an etymological translation of
>"Woerterbuch"!) Anyone who has used this remarkable tool in any depth is
>thankfully aware of this fact. A couple of examples at random:
>
>Delling's 28 pages (BIG pages of fine print) on the Begriff
> PLHRHS, PLHROW, PLHRWMA, ANAPLHROW, ANTANAPLHROW, EKPLHROW,
> EKPLHRWSIS, SUMPLHROW, PLHROFOREW, PLHROFORIA
>This is scarcely "a single Greek word."
>
>Another example, Bultmann's 30 pages on
> GINWSKW, GNWSIS, EPIGINWSKW, EPIGNWSIS, KATAGINWSKW,
> AKATAGNWSTOS, PROGINWSKW, PROGNWSIS, SUGGNWMH,
> GNWMH, GNWRIZW, GNWSTOS
>Again, is this article on "a single Greek word"?
>
>Criticisms of TWNT are easy:
> It is ten giant volumes, written by hundreds of scholars.
>Is it possible to produce ANY work on that scale without
>including a great deal of mediocre, even mistaken, scholarship?
> It tends to organize Begriffe by linguistic "roots". Whereas
>today, this is criticized as inadequate, since what we SHOULD use is
>(here, fill in several different competing theories).
> We can keep quoting James Barr, both repeating his errors and
>misunderstanding his real criticism.
> It was begun 65 years ago, and the earlier volumes may be out of
>date in places (disagreement about which places, of course).
> Some of its contributors before 1945 were Nazis or Nazi-
>sympathizers.
Gerhard Kittel was a NAZI sympathizer. He wrote an article, which I have
somewhere in mny files, arguing that Jewish CChristians, i.e. German Jews
who had become Christian, should be in a separate church from pure Aryan
Christians. Werner Georg Kuemmel told me that if he had been living in
Germany, not Switzerland, he might have been in trouble, since his mother
was such a Christian woman of Jewish ethnicity. It is not accident that
Gerhard Kittel's grave in the old Stadtfriedhkof in Tuebingen is in the
furthest corner possible. That cemeteryk contains the graves of many of
the Tuebingen theological greats of the XVIII, XIX, and XX centuries
(Richard Rothe, Adolf Schlatter,, etc.). Kittel did not get a Persilschein
after the war.
Hope these supplementary notes have some value.
>
> We might keep in mind that even a "semantic domain" approach, which
>gave us Louw & Nida's lexicon, does not mean that it replaces the older
>approach of Bauer; they simply do different things.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Edgar Krentz
Acting Dean, Fall Quarter 1998
Professor of New Testament Emeritus
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
1100 E. 55th Street
Chicago, IL 60615 USA
773-256-0752
e-mail: ekrentz@lstc.edu (Office)
emkrentz@mcs.net (Home)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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