Michael Bachmann (theologian)

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Michael Bachmann (born January 26, 1946 in Minden ) is a German Protestant theologian and New Testament scholar and has been a professor at the University of Siegen since 1995 .

Life

Michael Bachmann studied mathematics and Protestant theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster after completing his Abitur and military service , worked as a research assistant at the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum from 1975 to 1977 and then completed his legal clerkship (mathematics; Protestant religious teaching) at a Münster high school . 1978 followed with the dissertation written by Karl Heinrich Rengstorf “Jerusalem and the Temple. The geographical-theological elements in the Lukan view of the Jewish cult center “his doctorate.

From 1980 and researched Bachmann taught at the University of Education Freiburg , even before he in 1990 at the University of Basel (with at Ekkehard W. Stegemann submitted work "sinner or transgressor. Studies on the argument in Gal 2,15ff.") Habilitation and venia legendi for the New Testament subject .

In 1995 he followed a call to the University of Siegen, where he took over a professorship for Protestant theology, in particular specialist didactics in Protestant theology (with a specialist focus on Biblical theology [New Testament]). In 2000, he turned down a call to the Chair of New Testament at Aarhus University . He retired in February 2011.

Bachmann has lived and worked in St. Märgen (Black Forest) and Freiburg for a long time . He was ordained in the Protestant regional church of Baden .

Scientific activity and focus

The exegesis of Paul forms a certain focus of Bachmann's more recent studies . Play u. a. Questions of Pauline argumentation ("logic") and the doctrine of justification play a role. Since his habilitation thesis, the letter to the Galatians has been given more attention, especially the syntagm "works of the law", which Bachmann used for the first time in this letter in the Greek-speaking area , which Bachmann already used in 1989 with the Hebrew term ma ‛ that appeared in the Qumran scroll 4QMMT (line C27) ase ha-torah ( מעשי התורה, translatable as “works of the Torah” or “commandments of the Torah”). Within the so-called “ New Paulus Perspective ”, Bachmann takes a quite independent position, also insofar as he seeks to prove that this fixed expression, to which Paul refers according to his hypothesis, primarily refers to certain halakhot (individual regulations) under religious law , according to Bachmann's Conviction very likely on ceremonial and cultic regulations (including circumcision regulations) and not on ethical or social laws. The question of the extent to which Paul rejected “the law” or invalidated it for Gentile Christians and whether contemporary Judaism ascribed it to be effective in salvation is discussed against this background.

Further focal points of Bachmann's work include: a. the interpretation of the Lukan double work (e.g. the role of Jerusalem, also of the temple there, also the function of the Stephen episode), the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse of John . Here, too, we encounter rather unconventional theses, for example on the positive evaluation of the first apocalyptic horseman (from Rev 6.1f.) And on the heavenly sanctuary (especially from Acts 7.55f .; Rev 11.1).

A number of dictionary articles are noteworthy (for example on the temple in the New Testament and on the words “do” and “work” in the Qumran writings). In connection with this, Bachmann's monographs Divine Omnipotence and Theological Caution. [...] and God, the “Almighty”: Calling the pantocrator of the Bible and the theodicy discussion, published in 2002 and 2019, respectively. There, in an exegetical passage u. a. the Old Testament, the Septuagint and the New Testament scriptures demonstrate that the common understanding of the term "omnipotence", namely God must be able to cause "everything" and "prevent everything" at all times in any case cannot be proven as biblically intended; such ideas only come up somewhat late (and then come across in Augustine , for example ). The biblical traditions, especially when using the word pantocrator, often imply a time factor that says that the person so marked will prove to be ruler in the future, at the “end of time” - possibly not beforehand or only occasionally. Bachmann puts these considerations in the context of the (occidental) preoccupation with the theodicy problem and also considers important religious-pedagogical consequences (with a view to dealing with the omnipotent issue in religious education).

Such reflections (which also come to mind after the Holocaust ) belong to Bachmann's attention to methodical questions (“priority of synchrony over diachrony”) and to hermeneutical aspects, which must be followed up, not least in view of anti-Judaistic thinking that may already have existed in the New Testament. For Jesus himself and the earliest Christianity, he believes that internal Jewish “family conflicts” will have played a role; But only after the far-reaching separation of the paths of Christianity and Judaism led to something like anti-Judaism . Bachmann's interest in the history of reception is also expressed in a whole series of studies on the history of interpretation. These include those of an art historical or iconographic type (including on the apocalyptic horsemen and the motif “Church and Synagogue”), in particular a monograph on depictions of Jews in and around the Freiburg Cathedral.

Fonts

Monographs
  • Jerusalem and the Temple. The geographical-theological elements in the Lukan view of the Jewish cult center (contributions to the science of the Old and New Testament 109). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1980 (reprint as a book to order , ISBN 978-3-17-022553-4 )
  • Sinner or transgressor. Studies on the argumentation in Gal 2.15ff. (Scientific research on the New Testament 59). Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 978-3-16-145796-8
  • Divine omnipotence and theological caution. On the reception, function and connotations of the early Christian biblical epithet pantocrator (Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 188). Catholic Biblical Works , Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 978-3-460-04881-2
  • The Freiburg Minster and its Jews: Historical, Iconographic and Hermeneutic Observations . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-7954-3262-1
  • God, the "Almighty": The Pantocrator of the Bible and the theodicy discussion . Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-451-38068-6
Essays

Essential parts of Bachmann's essay production of the last few years, which have been distributed over many individual publications, are summarized in two anthologies published in 1999 and 2011, whose tables of contents can be viewed online. The collection of essays published in 1999, which contains Bachmann's key contributions to Paul’s research, was also published in English in 2009.

  • Anti-Judaism in Galatians? Exegetical studies on a polemical writing and on the theology of the Apostle Paul. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 978-3-525-53940-8 ( content )
    • Engl .: Anti-Judaism in Galatians? Exegetical Studies on a Polemical Letter and on Paul's Theology. Translated by RL Brawley, Eerdmans, Cambridge 2009
  • From Paul to the Apocalypse - and beyond. Exegetical and historical reception studies on the New Testament. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-53398-7
    ( table of contents and reading sample: the essay "Synchronous and diachronic exegesis of the New Testament. On nonsense and meaning of biblical work.")
  • Lutheran or New Pauline Perspective? Oddities in the perception of the relevant exegetical discussions , in: Biblische Zeitschrift (Paderborn) Neue Episode 60, 2016, 73-101
  • The scene of the four apocalyptic riders (Apk 6,1-8): a series of visions with positive connotations , in: Theologische Zeitschrift (Basel), 74, 2018, 338–368
Lexicon entries
Editing

Among the editorships of Bachmann, the relevant German-language compilation on the New Paulus Perspective , edited with the collaboration of Johannes Woyke , stands out:

  • Lutheran and New Pauline Perspective. Contributions to a key problem in the current exegetical discussion (Scientific Studies on the New Testament 182). Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-16-148712-5

Further publications by Bachmann can be found in the literature list on his homepage at the University of Siegen.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brief CV on the University of Siegen's website (accessed on January 23, 2016).
  2. ↑ Bachmann's letter to the editor of June 7, 2014 in the Badische Zeitung (accessed on January 23, 2016).
  3. ^ Hanne von Weissenberg: 4QMMT: Reevaluating the Text, the Function and the Meaning of the Epilogue (Studies on the Text of the Desert of Judah 82). Brill, Leiden 2009, p. 2, note 3:
    “The Hebrew word מעשים of the title has been translated either 'precepts' or 'works'. "
personal data
SURNAME Bachmann, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Minden