Volume 1, Tome II: Kierkegaard and the Bible - The New Testament Kierkegaard and the Bible - The New Testament

Exploring Kierkegaard's complex use of the Bible, the essays in this volume use source-critical research and tools ranging from literary criticism to theology and biblical studies, to situate Kierkegaard's appropriation of the biblical material in his cultural and intellectual context. The contributors seek to identify the possible sources that may have influenced Kierkegaard's understanding and employment of Scripture, and to describe the debates about the Bible that may have shaped, perhaps indirectly, his attitudes toward Scripture. They also pay close attention to Kierkegaard's actual hermeneutic practice, analyzing the implicit interpretive moves that he makes as well as his more explicit statements about the significance of various biblical passages. This close reading of Kierkegaard's texts elucidates the unique and sometimes odd features of his frequent appeals to Scripture. This volume in the series devotes one tome to the Old Testament and a second tome to the New Testament. As with the Old Testament, Kierkegaard was aware of new developments in New Testament scholarship, and troubled by them. Because these scholarly projects generated alternative understandings of the significance of Jesus, they impinged directly on his own work. It was crucial for Kierkegaard that Jesus is presented as both the enactment of God's reconciliation with humanity and as the prototype for humanity to emulate. Consequently, Kierkegaard had to struggle with the proper way to explicate persuasively the significance of Jesus in a situation of decreasing academic consensus about Jesus. He also had to contend with contested interpretations of James and Paul, two biblical authors vital for his work. As a result, Kierkegaard ruminated about the proper way to appropriate the New Testament and used material from it carefully and deliberately. The authors in the present New Testament tome seek to clarify different dimensions of Kierkegaard's interpretive theory and practice as he sought to avoid the twin pitfalls of academic skepticism and passionless biblical traditionalism.

Contents: Part I Individual Texts and Figures: Simeon and Anna : exemplars of patience and expectancy, Lee C. Barrett; Jesus' miracles: Kierkegaard on the miracle of faith, Jolita Pons; Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Lee C. Barrett; The lily in the field and the bird in the air: an endless liturgy in Kierkegaard's authorship, Leo Stan; Peter: the 'pitiable prototype', Kyle A. Roberts; The Pharisee: Kierkegaard's polyphonic personification of a univocal idea, Paul Martens; The Tax Collector: model of inwardness, Timothy H. Polk; The Woman in Sin: Kierkegaard's late female prototype, Paul Martens; Lazarus : Kierkegaard's use of a destitute beggar and a resurrected friend, Kyle A. Roberts; The Crucifixion: Kierkegaard's use of the New Testament narratives, Lee C. Barrett; The Resurrection: Kierkegaard's use of the Resurrection as symbol and as reality, Lee C. Barrett; Paul: herald of grace and paradigm of Christian living, Lori Unger Brandt; James: putting faith to action, Kyle A. Roberts. Part II Overview Articles: Kierkegaard's Latin translations of the New Testament: a constant dialogue with the Vulgate, Niels W. Bruun and Finn Gredal Jensen; Kierkegaard's use of the New Testament: intratextuality, indirect communication, and appropriation, Timothy H. Polk; Kierkegaard's Biblical hermeneutics: imitation, imaginative freedom, and paradoxical fixation, Joel D.S. Rasmussen; Kierkegaard and 18th- and 19th-century Biblical scholarship: a case of incongruity, Mogens Müller; Indexes.

Professor Lee C. Barrett lectures at Lancaster Theological Seminary in the USA. Jon Stewart is an Associate Research Professor in the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.