Abstract
In Celebration of Martin Hengel
This volume serves as a tribute to the late Prof. Martin Hengel, and is largely formed from papers offered by members of a study group of the Tyndale Fellowship. The published volume is arranged with an introduction written by the editors, followed by essays in five sections. The first section entitled ‘biography’ brings together two essays. The first by Jörg Frey, ‘Martin Hengel as Theological Teacher’ (pp. 15-32), captures the spirit and passion of Hengel the teacher. Frey recaptures the electric atmosphere of his first encounter with Hengel, as well as describing the sense of greater purpose that drove Hengel in his scholarly pursuits. Deines’ essay in this section is also replete with personal reminisces, but traces a major strand of Hengel’s scholarly research, his study of Christology (pp. 33-72).
That essay forms a bridge into section two ‘Christology’. It opens with a second essay by Roland Deines, ‘Christology between Pre-existence, Incarnation and Messianic Self-Understanding’ (pp. 75-116). This is followed by Seyoon Kim’s study ‘Jesus the Son of God as the Gospel (1 Thess 1:9-10 and Rom 1:3-4)’, (pp. 117-141). For Kim these Pauline passages reveal the Christological understanding of Jesus as Immanuel. This is because ‘Only in Christ Jesus the Son of God, in the loving immanence of the transcendent (almighty) God, do human beings and all creation have hope of overcoming their finitude and its consequence, death, and of obtaining life’ (p. 139). Section three, ‘Gospels’ contains four essays. These are Bauckham assessing Mark’s gospel in light of his theory about eyewitnesses (pp. 145-170), Riesner, looking at Hengel’s understanding of the synoptic problem in relation to the quest for Jesus (pp. 171-191), and two essays on the fourth gospel by Andreas Köstenberger, and Armin Baum. In this section Riesner’s essay contains some interesting reflections on Hengel’s theories, and maintains sufficient critical distance to level some substantial challenges to Hengel’s ideas. In particular, Riesner challenges both Hengel’s assumption of a significant chronological distance between Luke and Matthew, and his theory that Matthew was dependent on Luke. Section four contains six essays written by Jason Maston, Steve Walton, Michael Bird, Grant Macaskill, Donald Hagner, and Anne Maria Schwemer, under the heading ‘Judaism and Early Christianity’. The volume is then concluded with six translations of essays by Hengel that had been previously available only in German.
Overall the volume captures the major trajectories in Martin Hengel’s rich and multifaceted research portfolio. For those who did not have personal acquaintance with the man, the personal reflections capture far more than just his intellectual ideas. The essays also continue to trace the same rich veins of enquiry into Christian origins that were followed by Hengel himself.