Konstantinos Nikolakopoulos

Konstantinos Nikolakopoulos (born June 19, 1961 in Patras , Greece ) is an Orthodox theologian and professor at the University of Munich . The focus of his research is on the New Testament and church music .

Life

Nikolakopoulos attended the Greek elementary school in Patras (1967-1973) and then the "Protypon" high school (model school) in Patras (1973-1979), where he passed the Abitur . From 1976 to 1979 he studied Byzantine music at the Apollonion Odeum (branch: Patras). After he had passed the admission test for theology studies at the Athens University in 1979, he studied Orthodox theology from 1979 to 1983, which he completed with a diploma in theology and thereby acquired the right to serve in the church (ordination) and school ( religion teacher ) .

From 1979 to 1982 he also studied European and Byzantine music at the Apollonion Odeum in Athens . In the meantime he was church choirmaster in various parishes in Patras and Athens from 1977 to 1984. In 1982 he graduated as a church singer and obtained a diploma in Byzantine music.

From 1982 to 1984 he studied German at the University of Athens . He then continued his theological studies from 1984 to 1989, especially the New Testament and Ecumenical Theology , at the Universities of Regensburg and Munich.

Nikolakopoulos has been the main church singer and choirmaster of the Greek Orthodox St. Demetrios Congregation since 1985 , then in the All Saints Congregation and since 1999 in the Greek Orthodox Salvatorkirche in Munich .

After military service in Greece from 1990 to 1991 , he received his doctorate in theology from the University of Athens in 1991 . The subject of his dissertation was The rhetorical figures of thought in the historical books of the New Testament .

Nikolakopoulos is married to Maria Lianou and has two daughters named Nemi and Xenia.

Scientific career

From 1991 to 1998 Nikolakopoulos was a research assistant at the Institute for Orthodox Theology at the University of Munich .

Since 1991 he has been a member of the editorial board of the “Orthodox Forum” magazine.

From 1991 to 1993 he was a freelancer at the Munich Adult Education Center as a lecturer in Byzantine church music .

In 1998 Nikolakopoulos completed his habilitation at the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the University of Munich in the subject "New Testament (Orthodox Theology)" with Ferdinand Hahn with a habilitation thesis on the subject: "The 'unknown' hymns of the New Testament. The orthodox hermeneutics and the historical -critical method ".

From 1998 to 2003 he was also the representative of the Bavarian Ministry of Culture for the provision of Orthodox religious instruction to Orthodox students in German schools (grammar school level) and conducted colloquium examinations for the basic course "Orthodox religious teaching" in the collegiate level of German grammar schools.

In 1999 Nikolakopoulos obtained the license to teach the subject " New Testament ( Orthodox Theology )" and was appointed private lecturer at the University of Munich. From 1998 to 2000 he was a professor for biblical theology at the training facility for orthodox theology at the University of Munich .

Since 2003 he has also been chairman of the joint commission (departmental council) for orthodox theology at the University of Munich and thus head of the training facility for orthodox theology. There he held a professorship for Biblical Theology from 2005 to 2007 and was appointed Professor of Biblical Theology for life at this educational institution in 2007.

In 2006 he succeeded Professor Nikolaou as editor of the “Orthodox Forum” magazine.

Orthodox assessment of the New Testament introductory questions

His study book The New Testament in the Orthodox Church is the "first German-speaking Orthodox introduction to the New Testament ". In it Nikolakopoulos would like to present the orthodox assessment of the development of the New Testament writings and the collection as a whole. He prefers to cite specialist Greek literature and justifies this with the fact that in the 20th century almost only Greek theologians from the Orthodox regions of Europe were able to study in Western Europe because of the Iron Curtain ; as a result, scientific orthodox specialist literature was predominantly written in Greek.

In assessing historical questions in the creation of the New Testament writings, Nikolakopoulos takes the statements of the Church Fathers into account. He tends to answer questions about the author of the New Testament writings conservatively. Paul is considered to be the author of all 13 Pauline letters , but in the pastoral letters Nikolakopoulos falls back on a secretary hypothesis. However , he considers the 2nd letter of Peter to be a pseudonym. For the Gospels he gives the following estimates: Mk 64-70 AD, Lk around 70, Mt 70-80, John around 90.

Publications (selection)

• Orthodox hymnography. Lexicon of orthodox hymnological-musical terminology , Klimmeck 1999, Schliern, ISBN 3-906596-04-4
• The "unknown" hymns of the New Testament. Orthodox hermeneutics and the historical-critical method. Exegetical and theological interpretation of New Testament passages taking into account the orthodox cult , Aachen 2000, Shaker, ISBN 3-8265-7719-1
• Orthodox theology between East and West. Festschrift for Prof. Theodor Nikolaou , Frankfurt am Main 2002, Lembeck, ISBN 3-87476-401-X
• The New Testament in the Orthodox Church. Basic Questions for an Introduction to the New Testament. Berlin 2014, 2nd edition.

Web links

• Literature by and about Konstantinos Nikolakopoulos in the catalog of the German National Library
• Internet presence with biography and bibliography

Single receipts

1. ↑ Konstantinos Nikolakopoulos: The New Testament in the Orthodox Church. Basic Questions for an Introduction to the New Testament. Berlin 2014, 2nd edition, p. 16 ( foreword ).
2. ↑ So says Nikolakopoulos himself, in: Das Neue Testament ... , 2014, p. 13.
3. ↑ Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer refers to this in his review of this book, published in the Jahrbuch für Evangelical Theologie 30 (2016) pp. 240–242.
4. ↑ This is how Nikolakopoulos is reproduced in Graf-Stuhlhofer's review.
5. ↑ Nikolakopoulos: Das Neue Testament ... , 2014, p. 253. Summarized in the review by Graf-Stuhlhofer.
6. ↑ On the 2nd Letter of Peter see Nikolakopoulos: Das Neue Testament ... , 2014, pp. 276f; for the dating of the Gospels see the review by Graf-Stuhlhofer.