Kerk en Theologie - Volume 74, Issue 4, 2023

This article analyses the role of the fortune-telling slave-girl in Acts 16:16-18 from a childist perspective, in order to examine whether the slave-girl could be seen as a child and how her identity and age influence her role in the story. A narrative analysis of Acts 16:16-18 shows that through her identities as a girl, a child, and as diviner, the παιδίσκη inhabits a liminal space that gives her surprising agency for a slave-child and allows her to make readers critical of Luke’s narrative and the consequences of Paul’s actions for her.

For a long time, the argument has been made that the quest for the historical Jesus is doomed to failure from the outset because the sources do not provide direct access, and the true course of events cannot be ascertained. Others have dismissed the attempt to investigate the historical Jesus as unnecessary because the four evangelists already proclaim the true Jesus, or they have deemed the entire endeavor pointless because faith is not about the historical Jesus but about the Christ of faith. And a few believe that seeking the words of Scripture to discover wie es eigentlich gewesen (ist) (Ranke) is an act of hybris or even blasphemy. Despite these skeptical voices, the question of the historical Jesus is once again brought to the forefront here (in two parts), building on recent research and with a particular focus on methodological questions. Is the historical Jesus making a comeback?