Wayne Coppins and Jacob Cerone, eds. Accessible German New Testament Scholarship

Coppins, Wayne, and Jacob Cerone, eds. Accessible German New Testament Scholarship. 

Wayne Coppins and Jacob Cerone have launched a new open-source journal, Accessible German New Testament Scholarship. This is an excellent collection of translated German for New Testament Studies, and best of all, it is available for free.

Cerone is a tireless German translator and scholar. For example, he translated three volumes of Strack and Billerbeck, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud & Midrash (Lexham Press, reviewed here) and Adolf von Harnack, The Letter of the Roman Church to the Corinthian Church from the Era of Domitian: 1 Clement (Pickwick, 2021, reviewed here). Along with Matthew Fisher, he edited Daily Scriptures: 365 Readings in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (Eerdmans, 2021). Coppins has edited and translated many important New Testament studies, including Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Jesus and Judaism (Baylor, 2019), Christoph Markschies, Christian Theology and its Institutions in the Early Roman Empire (Baylor, 2015), and Jens Schröter, Jesus of Nazareth: Jew from Galilee, Savior of the World (Baylor, 2014). Check out all his translation work at his blog, German for Neutestamentler.

Accessible German New Testament Scholarship (AGNTS) is a curated collection of significant contributions to New Testament scholarship from the German-speaking world. I took theological German years ago, but, like most Americans, I did not continue reading German, so my skills have atrophied. I do not regularly use German commentaries or monographs, and I rarely read German articles in academic journals. This means I miss out on quality scholarship published in German journals.

AGNTS helps people like me in two ways. First, AGNTS translates articles and book sections that are unlikely to be translated and republished elsewhere. Although Christoph Heilig often publishes in English (see his The Apostle and the Empire: Paul’s Implicit and Explicit Criticism of Rome, Eerdmans, 2022, reviewed here), his Paulus als Erzähler? Eine narratologische Perspektive auf die Paulusbriefe (BZNW 237; de Gruyter, 2020) has never been published in English, and at 1000+ pages, this seems unlikely. The first volume of AGNTS includes the conclusion to the book (pages 991-1015), making this scholarship available to non-German readers.

Second, the journal is curated. As with English academic journals, hundreds of articles are published in German every year that are not accessible to non-German readers. But not all are equally worthy of translation. Coppins and Cerone selected journal articles and book sections due to their contributions to New Testament Studies. This includes two items of historic interest by William Wrede. The editors observe that these letters show how Wrede “subsequently reconsidered the influential viewpoint that he developed in The Messianic Secret with respect to the question of whether Jesus regarded himself as designated to be the Messiah.”

Now that the AGNTS exists, I want more. From a historical perspective, I would like to see excerpts from Adolf Jülicher’s often-cited but rarely read Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (Parables of Jesus). I would love to read some of Joachim Jeremias’s untranslated essays. As long as I am dreaming, someone should launch a similar project for Old Testament Scholarship or for French scholarship.

The final pages of the journal contain original publication information. I did not see any information on the AGNTS website indicating plans for the frequency of publication. Be sure to visit the AGNTS Website and subscribe to notifications of future volumes.

Here is the contents of AGNTS Volume 1:

• William Wrede, Self-Review of The Messianic Secret
• William Wrede, Letter to Adolf von Harnack on Jesus as Messiah and Paul as a New Beginning
• Matthias Kontradt, The Commandment of Love for Enemies in Matt 5.43-48 and Its Early Jewish Context
• Peter Stuhlmacher, The Tübingen Biblical Theology of the New Testament – A Retrospective
• Oda Wischmeyer, Canon and Hermeneutics in Times of Deconstruction. What New Testament Scholarship Can Achieve Hermeneutically in the Present
• Christoph Heilig, Paul as Storyteller? Conclusion
• Christine Jacobi, Perfect Life Through Special Nourishment: Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 5