NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion - Volume 61, Issue 3, 2007

This article deals with the new meanings contributed to Jesus in new contexts. It questions how Jesus can be brought ‘at home’ in an African or Asian context. In particular, the methodological aspects of this question are objects of research. First, following a description of the complex relationship between culture and religion and importance of the southern hemisphere as the center of world Christianity, the inculturation process in the New Testament times is analyzed. Second, the notion of the ‘remembered Jesus’ is applied to the inculturation process in the New Testament and to the constitutive period of the early church.Third, a threefold criterion to assess contextual Jesus-interpretations is articulated and related to the idea of double transformation as main characteristic of an adequate inculturation process. Fourth, the question is asked whether we can speak of an ‘unknown, hidden Jesus’ in Asia and Africa.

The German theologian Alfred Dedo Müller (1890–1972) has become known for his crucial contribution to the establishment of practical theology as an independent discipline. He is also known for his commitment to religious socialism and for his involvement in new liturgical movements. However, none of the historical accounts about this important theologian has paid attention to his Ethik, published in 1937. In that study Müller explicitly expresses sympathies for Nazi-conceptions about Volkstum, the Jews, the Führer-state, the need for racial hygiene, and the Nurnberg laws. Although he advocates the killing of innocent humans in no way, he may be criticised for failing to identify the dangers of Nazism, for not speaking up more loudly, and for de facto providing the Nazis with theological justification of their politics. After World War II, Müller expresses regret about the deceptions and the crimes of Nazism. However, he neither makes any reference to his own role nor does he see reasons to alter his theological method of ‘radical realism’.

The public role of contemporary religion is undeniably a topic of much strive and debate. Two recent Dutch volumes make an important contribution to this discussion by analyzing and evaluating issues that arise with the ‘re-emergence of religion in the public domain’. Especially the volume that was issued by the (Dutch) Scientific Council for Government Policy shows the transformations in the Dutch religious landscape and how important non-religious attitudes and orientations presently are in the Netherlands. Notwithstanding critical voices the authors of both books show an appreciative and non-judgemental approach to the phenomena they research. This essay addresses some of the key issues in the often confusing and confused debates concerning the role that religion plays in modern society.

Many ancient Jewish Pseudepigrapha have been preserved in their integrality only through secondary versions and Christian late antique and medieval manuscript traditions. James R. Davila’s new monograph on The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? provides us with a useful survey not only of Christian ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha That Appear to Be Jewish’ but also of ‘Pseudepigrapha of Debatable Origin’ that were previously deemed to be Jewish but that probably are of Christian origins. Following the same line of thought, I will discuss the case of a Jewish Pseudepigraphon copied and translated by Christian scribes (the so-called Coptic Jeremiah Apocryphon) and the subsequent Christian rewriting of it (the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah).