The Anglophone Significance of the Work of Joachim Jeremias *

With a real sense of gratitude, family, friends, former colleagues and students gathered last October at the Theological Faculty of the Georg-August University of Göttingen to celebrate the life and work of Professor Joachim Jeremias on the occasion of the 40^th anniversary of his death in 1979.

Combining to a rare degree a scholar’s precision and a believer’s insight, there are many reasons why over the past century Jeremias continues to hold such a pivotal place in the memory of German Biblical Studies.

Born at the beginning of the century in Dresden into a renowned family of pastors and theological scholars, Jeremias studied at the University of Leipzig and at the early age of 29 was made Professor of New Testament at Greifswald (the city where his Grandson is now the Bishop) before going on six years later to begin his life’s work in Göttingen in the Chair of New Testament Studies where he remained until his retirement in 1968.

With a sharp focus on who Jesus of Nazareth was, Jeremias was renowned for his encyclopaedic knowledge of the world of the Bible, for his commitment to the faculty in Göttingen and the prodigious output of his work. During the time of the Third Reich he was courageous in his membership of the Confessing Church, tireless in his care for the students and unstinting in helping to rebuild the university and widen its influence and contacts in the years following the war. ¹

As a scholar not only with a national reputation but also of international significance, Jeremias’s classes in Göttingen in those dark days following the Second World War were recalled movingly by Jürgen Moltmann in his memoirs: ‘(he) impressed us with the picture of “the historical Jesus” which he painted for us in his lectures, with high spots when he let us hear “the very voice of Jesus himself”. He was a faithful church elder in St Albani and he took up the collection at the services there.’ ²

In a convivial atmosphere the contributions to the Symposium reflected the breadth of Jeremias’s scholarship and the gathering was enhanced by the presence of his former distinguished colleagues Professor Rudolf Smend, who like Jeremias had been a former Chairman of the Göttingen Academy of Science and Humanities Septuagint Project, and had spoken at Jeremias’s funeral, ³ and Professor Berndt Schaller, his erstwhile Assistant, who reminded those present of the long and seminal contribution of Jeremias to Biblical studies ⁴ .

In many ways this is very much a period piece. It is reminiscent of a time when German theologians greatly dominated the world of Biblical Studies: Old Testament scholars such as Noth, von Rad and Westermann, New Testament scholars such as Käsemann, Kümmel, and, of course, the ubiquitous Bultmann.

Likewise, one remembers the pantheon of British Biblical scholars of that by-gone age: the Congregationalist C. H. Dodd, the Presbyterians T. W. Manson and Matthew Black (like Jeremias, greatly influenced by Gustaf Dalman), the Methodists Vincent Taylor and C. K. Barrett, the Welsh Congregationalist W. D. Davies and the Anglicans Geoffrey Lampe and, for so many years the living heart of British New Testament scholarship, C. F. D. Moule.

The situation today is vastly different. In England, many university departments of Biblical Studies or Theology have now closed or are under threat or have a different emphasis, there is not the same focus on languages, many clergy now train on very part time courses rather than at full time theological colleges and we would be forgiven for thinking that Fortbildung in den ersten Amtsjahren is now Ausbildung in den ersten Amtsjahren.

All of the scholars I have just mentioned held a special place in the discipline of Biblical Studies, retaining positions of critical orthodoxy in the midst of a maelstrom of contradictory voices, combining scrupulous attention to detail with common sense.

One cannot underestimate Jeremias’s influence on English speaking Biblical scholarship and I have already mentioned some of the giants of his day. Brought up in Jerusalem where his father was the Probst, it was there that the seeds were sown of Jeremias’s unrivalled knowledge of first-century Palestine which was later to be demonstrated in his books and articles.

However, it is important to note that it was not only in the English-speaking world, where the weight of Jeremias’s learning was brought to bear. His work was translated into many languages from South Korea to South America and his work in shaping Biblical Studies also helped to mould its influence throughout the world and not least in the emergent liberation theology of El Salvador. ⁵

Being thoroughly at home in the semitic and classical languages and thought of those days, his meticulous detail is the golden thread running through all of his work. Whether we are talking about Charlie Moule and the Menschensohn debate, and him referring to Jeremias’s ‘careful survey of the linguistic facts’, ⁶ or T. W. Manson focusing on Jeremias’ intimate knowledge of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, ⁷ or Nicholas Lash quoting with approval and delight Jeremias’s words: ‘the parables are weapons of warfare. Every one of them calls for an immediate response’, ⁸ or Vincent Taylor in his 1959 essay Milestones in Books referring to The Eucharistic Words of Jesus as ‘formative in (its) influence’ ⁹ , each is appreciative of Jeremias’s scholarly precision.

For 130 years in the English speaking world the monthly journal the Expository Times has played a key role in linking the lecture room and the pulpit and making its readers aware of international scholarship. Jeremias has had several articles written about his work. In 1954 Charlie Moule (of whom Jeremias said, ‘In him could be seen no trace of original sin’) wrote an article in a section entitled Important and Influential Foreign Books: J. Jeremias’ ‘The Parables of Jesus’ and ‘The Eucharistic Words of Jesus’. ¹⁰ Like Jeremias and the Scottish Biblical scholar Matthew Black, who will be mentioned shortly, Professor Moule was at home in the world of the Bible and said his daily prayers with his Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament open. Remember we are talking about Jeremias’s then recently published work and an English edition of The Eucharistic Words of Jesus did not appear until 1955. Moule says of Jeremias: ‘This great scholar has rendered a signal service, whether or not we find ourselves able to accept all his conclusions.’ ¹¹

Likewise in The Expository Times of January 1963 Matthew Black in a series entitled Theologians of Our Time was able to say of Jeremias in praising his prodigious scholarly productivity: ‘one of our foremost living Neutestamentler, has become as well known in the world of English-speaking theology as he is on the continent of Europe’. ¹²

In 1964 Jeremias himself had published in The Expository Times a lecture he had delivered at the then Methodist Theological College at Handsworth entitled ‘The Key to Pauline Theology’ ¹³ exploring the Damascus Road event and a theology rooted in sudden conversion. ¹⁴ Of particular interest was what Jeremias had to say about the Body and his doctrine of the Church: ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?’ This had echoes of what Jeremias had to say about the Body in the Eucharistic Words of Jesus, something picked up by the radical churchman but conservative Biblical scholar, Bishop John Robinson of Honest to God fame. In his book The Body, Robinson had this to say about Jeremias on this topic: ‘Jesus is making over to His followers “till He come” His actual self, His life and personality. In so far then as the Christian community feeds on his body and blood, it becomes (Robinson’s italics) the very life and personality of the risen Christ’. ¹⁵

Of course, every scholar has his detractors and Jeremias was no exception. E. P. Sanders, once a student of this [Göttingen] University, launched a blistering attack on Jeremias’s work and integrity. This was roundly challenged and addressed and not least by Professor Berndt Schaller. A very sad case of green eyes in the academic community and decisively rebutted by Ben F. Meyer. ¹⁶

Becoming President of the Society of New Testament Studies in 1955, it was no wonder that Professor Jeremias was made a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1958, being awarded the Burkitt Medal, awarded annually by the British Academy, ‘in recognition of special services to Biblical Studies’. This Medal at various times was awarded to many German scholars but interestingly never to Rudolf Bultmann.

Jeremias was awarded Honorary Doctorates of Divinity by both the Universities of St Andrews and Oxford.

The oration from St Andrews is lost but it was reported in the local newspaper, the St Andrews Citizen, on Saturday 9^th July 1955. Writing of his books and quoting the orator it is said:

In all of these, critical acumen and wide scholarship vie with sympathetic insight and deep reverence; the ripe and gracious mind of the writer is strongly, but not stiffly, entrenched in conservative religion; he is evangelical, yet aware of the challenge to Christianity from the state as well as from the world[. . .]. His association with the Society of New Testament Studies is a tribute to his influence and high standing among Christian scholars. ¹⁷

Likewise at Oxford on the 2^nd May 1963 the Public Orator had this to say about Jeremias:

All the time however, he put before his own eyes the very Author of our faith. A blameless lover of peace in his country’s unjust era, he put himself forward as a strong bulwark of the church in opposition to the tyranny of impious leaders; when the storms were passed, adorned with a rare generosity and modesty, he ‘remembered their sins no more’. Therefore he, Joachim Jeremias, is presented to you as a master of divinity, godly, wise, learned, renowned not only in his own country, that he may be admitted to the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. ¹⁸

Perhaps Jeremias is best known for his ground-breaking study The Parables of Jesus. ¹⁹ Building on the work of Jülicher, and providing a valuable corrective to the work of C. H. Dodd, this work fast became the epicentre of the explosion and development of parable research in the twentieth century, chiefly associated with the Society of Biblical Literature Parables Seminar and names such as Amos Wilder, Robert W. Funk, Dan Otto Via and John Dominic Crossan.

Jeremias’s search for the ipsissima verba Christi and the focus on the Kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus soon had a host of international students beating a path towards the door of his study and this university. Special mention must be made of the Baptist scholar, Norman Perrin. A student of T. W. Manson in Manchester, Perrin, who died in November 1976, came to Göttingen where Jeremias was his Doktorvater, and his Doctoral thesis was published as The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus. ²⁰ Perrin was later to be the translator of The Eucharistic Words of Jesus. ²¹

Vernon Robbins, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Emory University at Atlanta, Georgia, tells the following story about Perrin:

When Norman Perrin was in his Master’s program with T. W. Manson at Manchester, he saw an announcement for a competition for the best essay on John Wesley for which the prize was funding for a year of graduate study at the Kirchliche Hochschule in Berlin. I think the deadline was two or three weeks away. According to his version of the story, he went to the library, checked out “every book he could find on the shelves about Wesley” (somewhere between 20 and 30 as I recall) and read through them quickly. He won the prize, and this gave him entré to German scholarly training. He said Ernst Fuchs was at the Kirchliche Hochschule during that year, and this helped him gain a fascination for Rudolf Bultmann and debates about the New Hermeneutic that was being developed by his students. From this year in Berlin he established a further foundation for winning an Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, which supported his study for a PhD at Göttingen with Professor Joachim Jeremias. ²²

The wide reach of Jeremias’s work and his growing reputation as a scholar and lodestone had some welcome and perhaps unintended consequences for the wider church.

It is important that Jeremias’s contribution, both direct and indirect, to the international ecumenical dialogue and achievement is properly acknowledged.

The twentieth century has been described as the century of ecumenism, beginning with the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910, an assembly which was to have such a dramatic effect on the subsequent ecumenical movement, not least the foundation of the World Council of Churches.

More than fifty years now since the calling of the Second Vatican Council, it’s hard to imagine the comment of one Roman Catholic layman of the time at a meeting with the local Anglican parishioners standing up and asking his Parish Priest the question: ‘Do you mean to say that we can now say the Lord’s Prayer together?’

Archbishop Robert Runcie in his usual judicious way described ecumenism as being not just about removing obstacles but also about sharing gifts. Ecumenism has nourished the scholarship and thus the spirituality of Anglicanism.

In particular, worldwide, the Anglican-Lutheran dialogue has been especially fruitful. The Anglican-Lutheran Joint Working Group of 1983, the so-called Cold Ash Report, was bold enough to say: ‘Since the Second World War, the translation of theological works, increased exchange, through visits and study in the other church context, together with growing contact between both leaders and church members, has broadened mutual knowledge and understanding.’ ²³ Jeremias played a key role in all of that.

Next year is the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Meissen Agreement between the Church of England and the EKD. Personal friendship oils the wheels of ecumenism. Both churches are, as in the title to the Agreement, or as it says on the tin, “Auf dem Weg zu sichtbarer Einheit.” ²⁴

Likewise, the heady days following the Second Vatican Council ushered in a time of great liturgical reform and Jeremias and his writing made a significant contribution, particularly in the understanding and shape of the Eucharist and not least with his work on the Last Supper being a Passover meal, the fourfold action of taking, blessing, breaking and giving, the careful exegesis of the use of the word ἀνάμνησις and the Eucharist being an anticipation of the messianic banquet prepared for all humankind. Interestingly, Jeremias’s contribution lay behind the thinking of the Canadian Dominican Jean-Roger Tillard ²⁵ and was especially acknowledged by the Roman Catholic scholar Louis Bouyer ²⁶ and the Protestant Max Thurian. ²⁷

It is noteworthy that, through Jean-Roger Tillard and Max Thurian, Jeremias indirectly influenced the most important ecumenical text of the ecumenical century, namely Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the so-called Lima Report. ²⁸ This is probably also true of the first Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission Report (ARCIC I) on the Eucharist. The new thinking around anamnesis, not least the play on representation and anticipation, was so important. ²⁹

However, it is not only as a Biblical scholar and contributor to the flourishing of ecumenism in the twentieth century that Jeremias has an international significance. It is also as a minister and a man of great Christian goodness. His scholarship has played a seminal role in the formation of clergy both in their learning and spiritual nourishment. His books and papers invite the reader to step into a rich world where every word counts and is vitally important. Generations of clergy throughout the world have been formed by his writings. In his foreword to The Parables of Jesus he writes: ‘Only the Son of Man and his word can invest our message with full authority’. Likewise, in his preface to The Eucharistic Words of Jesus he says: ‘May this study not only serve to promote further research, but also help those who carry on the ministry of the Word’. Whatever Jeremias did was at the service of the church, a church which he was part of that had known great suffering and not least in the days of the Confessing Church.

This care and profound discipleship and the sense of scholarship as a Christian vocation come out in all of his work but particularly in The Prayers of Jesus. At the end of the book, and reflecting on his theological leitmotif ‘sich realisierende Eschatologie’, he writes: ‘Where men dare to pray in the name of Jesus to their heavenly Father with childlike trust, that he might reveal his glory and that he might grant to them already today and in this place the bread of life and blotting out of sins, there in the midst of constant threat of failure and apostasy is realised, already now, the kingly rule of God over the life of his children.’ ³⁰

The Central Message of the New Testament concludes with a meditation on the prologue to St John’s Gospel. Jeremias writes: ‘God has spoken. Jesus of Nazareth is the (his italics) Word—he is the Word with which God has broken his silence.’ ³¹

Let Professor Moule have the last word as one who was so instrumental in fostering Professor Jeremias’s reputation in the English speaking world and recognising the breadth of his importance: ‘Words are feeble things, never adequate for the job; yet priceless things—seldom dispensable. They are dangerous things, for they are so fascinating that they tempt the user to linger with them and treat them as ends instead of means. But the Word became flesh; and a word that is not in some way implemented goes sour and becomes a liability instead of an asset.’ ³²