The Specter of Marcion: Decanonizing the Old Testament in Twenty-First-Century Germany
Notger Slenczka's 2013 call to decanonize the Old Testament provoked a public outcry in Germany, one that extended far beyond the ivory tower but received little attention in the English-speaking world. This article explains the controversy, which included public accusations of antisemitism; an...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Published: |
University of Chicago Press
2023
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| In: |
The journal of religion
Year: 2023, Volume: 103, Issue: 4, Pages: 409-430 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Notger Slenczka's 2013 call to decanonize the Old Testament provoked a public outcry in Germany, one that extended far beyond the ivory tower but received little attention in the English-speaking world. This article explains the controversy, which included public accusations of antisemitism; analyzes the origins of Slenczka's view; and looks at potential Jewish responses to such a claim. The Old Testament, Slenczka argues, is a revelation to the Jews but not to Christians. In modern times, he believes, Christians can no longer claim that they are spoken to in the Old Testament, and the text should therefore be relegated to the status of apocrypha, enlightening but not part of the Protestant canon. Slenczka was seen as breaching decades-long attempts to develop Jewish-Christian dialogue in the aftermath of the Holocaust, which explains the harsh reactions to his work. I show how the controversy exposes deeper anxieties about the specter of Marcionism and a Christianity without the Old Testament. After explaining Slenczka's argument, I show its debt to Adolf von Harnack, the person more responsible than any other for interest in Marcion in the interwar period. The article then offers three possible Jewish replies to Slenczka's argument, relying, among others, on earlier Jewish responses to debates about Marcion: rejection, disengagement, and engagement. Although rejection is the most common, engagement is another possibility, which tentatively offers a new path for Jewish-Christian exchange in the twenty-first century. |
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| ISSN: | 1549-6538 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1086/726458 |