Gustav Adolf Deissmann (1866-1937) was a German Protestant theologian. He is best known for his work on the Greek language used in the New Testament, in a convincing demonstration that from a linguistic point of view it was to be identified with the koine or common tongue of the Hellenistic world.[1]
He was professor of theology at the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg to 1908, and then at the Frederick William University of Berlin.
In 1904 in Heidelberg he founded with Albrecht Dieterich the Eranos circle, with members including Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber.[2] Others involved were Eberhard Gothein, Georg Jellinek, Karl Rathgen, and Wilhelm Windelband.[3]
Deissmann sided with the Nazi opposition during the struggle of the churches. On 11 October 1934 the Confessing branch of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union established in Achenbachstraße #3, Berlin, its own office for the examination of pastors and other church employees, since the official church body discriminated against candidates of Nazi opposing opinion. Until 1945 3,300 theologists graduated at this office. Deissmann, and other professors, served as examinators. However, they refrained from examinating after their employer, the Nazi government, threatened to dismiss them in 1935.
In November 1935 Hanns Kerrl, Nazi minister of ecclesiastical affairs, decreed the parallel institutions of the Confessing Church to be dissolved. On December 19 Kerrl issued a decree which forbade all kinds of Confessing Church activities, namely appointments of pastors, education, examinations, ordinations, ecclesiastical visitations, announcements and declarations from the pulpit, separate financial structures and convening Synods of Confession; further the decree established provincial ecclesiastical committees to reconcile the opposing church parties.[4] Thus the brethren councils, the leading bodies of the Confessing Church, had to go into hiding.
As a gesture of reconciliation the old-Prussian state ecclesiastical committee legitimised all ordinations and examinations of the Confessing Church retroactively for the time from 1 January 1934 to 30 November 1935. Nevertheless the Confessing Church refused to accept the new examination office imposed by the state ecclesiastical committee. However, Deissmann, and a number of renowned professors of Berlin's Frederick William University, who had earlier worked for the Confessing Church, declared their readiness to collaborate with the state ecclesiastical committee.[5] Among the other collaborators were Prof. Alfred Bertholet, Hans Lietzmann (German), Wilhelm Lütgert (German), and Julius Richter as well as Pastor Walter Künneth of the Inner Mission. Thus Kerrl successfully wedged the Confessing Church.
Works
- Die neutestamentliche Formel "in Christo Jesu" (1892, N.G. Elwert Publishers)
- Bibelstudien (1895) as Bible Studies (English title) with the sequel
- Neue Bibelstudien (1897)
- Licht vom Osten. Das Neue Testament und die neuentdeckten texte der hellenistisch-römischen welt (1909) as Light from the Ancient East, from Records of the Graeco-Roman Period (English title)
- The Philology of the Greek Bible: Its Present and Future (1908) translator Lionel Richard Mortimer Strachan
- Religion of Jesus and the Faith of Paul (1923) Selly Oak Lectures, 1923, translated by W. E. Wilson
- The New Testament in the Light of Modern Research: The Haskell Lectures, 1929
- St. Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History
- Mysterium Christi
Notes
- ^ Geoffrey W. Bromiley, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: A-Z (1995), p. 571.
- ^ Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography (1988, translated by Harry Zohn), p. xxv.
- ^ Hans Gerhard Kippenberg, Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age (2002), p. 165.
- ^ Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933-1945", in: Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932-1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten, Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 149–171, here p. 161. ISBN 3-923095-61-9.
- ^ Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933-1945", in: Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932-1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten, Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 149–171, here p. 163. ISBN 3-923095-61-9.
External links
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