James McConkey Robinson

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James McConkey Robinson (born June 30, 1924 in Gettysburg , Pennsylvania , † March 22, 2016 ) was an American theologian and university professor .

Life

Robinson gained in 1945 at Davidson College to BA and 1946 at Columbia Theological Seminary (where his father William Childs Robinson Professor of Church History was) the Bachelor of Divinity. Then he went to doctoral studies at the University of Basel , where he, under the guidance of Karl Barth a thesis on Wilhelm Herrmann wrote under which the 1952 Dr. theol. received his doctorate. In the same year he began as an assistant professor of Biblical Theology at Emory University . In 1955 he obtained a doctorate in theology from Princeton University with a dissertation supervised by Otto Alfred Piper (1891-1982) (published in 1957 as The Problem of History in Mark ). Since 1958 at the Claremont School of Theology , he became Arthur Letts, Jr., Professor of Religion at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont (California) in 1964 . There he was founding director of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in 1968 . He held these positions until his retirement in 1999. Stephen Lewis Emmel counts himself among his students.

Robinson was a member of the Jesus seminar and stood in the 1950s together with Ernst Käsemann , Ernst Fuchs and others for the reformulation of the question about the historical Jesus ( known as the New Quest after a phrase coined by Robinson ). This was followed by the New Hermeneutics . He later published significant contributions to the source of the Logia Q and the Nag Hammadi writings and was editor of most of the latter's writings. In particular, he laid the foundations for the work of John S. Kloppenborg on the compositionality of the source of logic Q by assigning it to the genre of the ancient collection of wisdom .

He received opposition from William Lane Craig regarding his views on Jesus' coming after the resurrection. Robinson believed that accounts of these actually come from the Gnostics of the second century AD. According to Craig, however, there is no reason to assume that these were consistently descriptions of luminous appearances or that these were interpreted as non-physical.

In 1971 Robinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Several universities, including Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the University of Geneva , have awarded him honorary doctorates .

Publications (selection)

  • The Problem of History in Mark . Studies in Biblical Theology. SCM, London 1957.
    • The understanding of history in the Gospel of Mark (= treatises on theology of the Old and New Testaments 30). Zwingli, Zurich 1956.
  • A New Quest of the Historical Jesus . Studies in Biblical Theology. SCM, London 1959.
    • Kerygma and historical Jesus. Zwingli, Zurich 1960; 2nd edition 1967.
  • with Helmut Koester : Trajectories Through Early Christianity . Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971. Reprinted, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006.
    • Lines of Development through the World of Early Christianity. Mohr (Siebeck), Tübingen 1971, ISBN 3-16-131511-1 .
  • with Stephen J. Patterson . The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age . Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1998.
  • The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News . Harper, San Francisco 2005.
    • Jesus and the search for the original gospel. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-57307-5 .
  • The Sayings Gospel Q: Collected Essays . Edited by Christoph Heil and Joseph Verheyden . Peeters, Leuven 2005. ISBN 90-5867-503-3
  • The Secrets of Judas: The Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and His Lost Gospel . Harper, New York 2006.
    • The Judas Secret. A look behind the scenes. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-54125-8 .
  • Language, Hermeneutic, and History: Theology after Barth and Bultmann . Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008.
  • The Story of the Bodmer Papyri: From the First Monastery's Library in Upper Egypt to Geneva and Dublin . Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010.
  • The Manichaean Codices of Medinet Madi . Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013.
  • The Nag Hammadi Story , Leiden, 2014.

Editorships

  • The Future of Our Religious Past: Essays in Honor of Rudolf Bultmann . New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
  • The Nag Hammadi Library in English . Leiden: Brill, 1977; 4th ed. 1996.
  • with Paul Hoffmann and John S. Kloppenborg : The Critical Edition of Q . Hermeneia Supplements. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000.
  • The Sayings Gospel Q in Greek and English . Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002.
  • The verdict source Q . Study edition - Greek and German. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft and Leuven (Belgium): Peeters Publishers, 2002, second edition 2007, third edition 2009, ISBN 978-3-534-26266-3

literature

  • James M. Robinson. Theological Autobiography. Pp. 117-150 in The Craft of Religious Studies , edited by Jon R. Stone. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
  • Jon Ma Asgeirsson, Kristin de Toyer, Marvin W. Meye: From Quest to Q: Festschrift James M. Robinson . 2000, ISBN 90-429-0771-1 .
  • Charles W. Hedrick: Liberator of the Nag Hammadi Codices. In: Biblical Archeology Review 2016 ( online edition ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Blog post on the Claremont Graduate University website
  2. ↑ Craig William Lane: From Easter to Valentinus and the Apostles' Creed Once More . In: Journal for the Study of the New Testament . tape 52 , 1993, pp. 19-39 .
  3. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter R. (PDF; 508 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Accessed July 11, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Google Book Page Preview
personal data
SURNAME Robinson, James McConkey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robinson, James M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theologian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Gettysburg , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 2016