Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T02:59:59.617Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Translating, Summarising and Hidden Attribution: R. H. Lightfoot's Problematic Use of German Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2020

Brandon Massey Open the ORCID record for Brandon Massey [Opens in a new window]
Brandon Massey*
Affiliation:
St Mary's University, Twickenham, Waldegrave Rd, TwickenhamTW1 4SX, UK. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The form-critical method found an English-speaking champion in R. H. Lightfoot of Oxford University. Through multiple publications he promoted the ideas of Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Dibelius and Ernst Lohmeyer. However, a close comparison of their texts reveals that Lightfoot sometimes simply translated the words of Dibelius and Lohmeyer, at times without appropriate attribution, and presented their ideas as his own. Recently discovered letters in the Lightfoot archive at Oxford University provide a more complete picture of Lightfoot's travels and interaction with German NT scholars. These discoveries call for a reassessment of Lightfoot's place in the history of NT scholarship.

Keywords

LightfootRobert Henry (1883–1953)LohmeyerErnst (1890–1946)DibeliusMartin (1883–1947)BultmannRudolf (1884–1976)JeremiasJoachim (1900–79)
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 601 - 629
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Holland, H. S., ‘Nature and Miracle’, Creeds and Critics: Being Occasional Papers on the Theology of the Christian Creed (ed. C. Cheshire; London: A. R. Mowbray, 1918) 127–46Google Scholar, at 129. Holland's chapter was in response to Sanday, W., Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism: A Reply to the Bishop of Oxford's Open Letter on the Basis of Anglican Fellowship (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1914)Google Scholar. Cf. Prestige, G. L., Life of Charles Gore: A Great Englishman (London: Heinemann, 1935) 346–50Google Scholar.

2 Morgan, R., ‘Non Angli sed Angeli: Some Anglican Reactions to German Gospel Criticism’, New Studies in Theology, vol. i (ed. S. W. Sykes and D. Holmes; London: Duckworth, 1980) 1–30Google Scholar; idem, ‘Historical Criticism and Christology: England and Germany’, England and Germany: Studies in Theological Diplomacy (ed. S. W. Sykes; Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity/Studien zur Interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1982) 80–112.

3 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, M. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, undated.

4 I am grateful to Julia Otto and Stefan Rettner for permission to publish the letters of Ernst and Melie Lohmyer, to Jörg Jeremias for permission to publish the letters of Joachim Jeremias, and to Konrad Hamann for permission to publish the letters of Rudolf Bultmann.

5 Sanday, W., ed., Studies in the Synoptic Problem: By Members of the University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911)Google Scholar.

6 The signatures to ‘An Appeal to Scholars’, Manchester Guardian (1 and 3 August 1914), included prominent NT scholars F. C Burkitt, F. J. Foakes-Jackson, S. Peake and K. Lake. A later article, ‘German Theologians and the War’, The Guardian (1 October 1914), was signed by H. B. Swete, Holland, Sanday, Burkitt, Peake and J. H. Moulton. Cf. Bailey, C. E., ‘The British Protestant Theologians in the First World War: Germanophobia Unleashed’, HTR 77 (1984) 195–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chapman, M. D., ‘Anglo-German Theological Relations during the First World War’, JHMth/ZNThG 7 (2000) 109–26Google Scholar; idem, ‘Missionaries, Modernism, and German Theology: Anglican Reactions to the Outbreak of War in 1914’, JHMth/ZNThG 22 (2015) 151–67. During World War II, the sentiment was reciprocated: Dibelius, M., Britisches Chrustentun und britische Weltmacht (Das Britische Reich in der Weltpolitik 21; Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1940)Google Scholar. Cf. Bormann, L., ‘“Sie sagen Christus und meinen Weltherrschaft”: Stereotypen im Englandbild des deutschen Protestantismus am Biespiel der Englandschriften von Martin Dibelius und Gerhard Kittel’, Angermion 6 (2013) 85–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 V. Taylor, Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: Macmillan, 19602) 14.

8 Taylor, Formation, 15.

9 Taylor, Formation, 15.

10 V. Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indexes (London: Macmillan, 19662) 19. Taylor also uses the phrase ‘Barthian sympathies’ as an ad hominem against Bultmann (Formation, 15). Cf. Taylor, V., ‘The Barthian School iv: Rudolf Bultmann’, ExpT 43 (1932) 485–90Google Scholar, at 486: ‘In a school where paradox runs riot, one more need not surprise us, but even the most detached mind cannot fail to raise the question whether Bultmann's “Barthianism” has any real connexion with his criticism, or whether it is but a kind of glow which vainly attempts to conceal the ravages of “scepticism”.’

11 Taylor, Formation, vi. Additionally, Taylor attempted to use form criticism to not only confirm the historical reliability of the Gospels, but also the inspiration and preservation of the tradition: ‘We see Jesus better, for we behold Him, not only in the final form which the tradition assumes in the Gospels, but also in the lives, thoughts, and desires of men throughout the formative period. We are also enabled to appreciate the Gospels better, for we see earlier forms and stages out of which they emerged, and are enabled to mark the influences which shaped their growth. How great are these works with such a history behind them! Far from losing the idea of Inspiration, we are led to see that the Spirit of God must have been at work upon a grander scale, not coercing men or using them as blind instruments, but elevating their minds to perceive, to transmit, and to interpret the best elements in the tradition. Literature has no books which can justly be compared with the Gospels, which indeed come to us from men, but in the last analysis are the gifts of God, seals of His grace and sacraments of His love’ (Formation, 189). Cf. Taylor, V., The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1920) iiiGoogle Scholar.

12 Court, J. M., A Generation of New Testament Scholarship: British Scholars of the 1920s and 1930s (History of Biblical Interpretation Series 3; Blanford Forum: Deo, 2012) 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Court, Generation, 54.

14 Lightfoot, R. H., History and Interpretation in the Gospels (London: Harper and Brothers, 1934)Google Scholar.

15 Lightfoot, R. H., The Gospel Message of St Mark (London: Clarendon, 1950) 102–3Google Scholar.

16 Nineham, D., ‘R. H. Lightfoot and the Significance of Biblical Criticism’, Theology 88 (1985) 97–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 97; Court, Generation, 49.

17 Lightfoot, R. H., ‘What Do We Know about Jesus?’, The Modern Churchman 11 (1921) 223–8Google Scholar; Court, Generation, 50; Nineham, ‘Lightfoot’, 99.

18 Weaver, W., The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century, 1900–1950 (Harrisburg: Trinity International, 1999) 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Robinson, J. M., The Problem of History in Mark (SBT 21; London: SCM, 1957) 11Google Scholar.

20 Powley, B. G., ‘The Place of R. H. Lightfoot in British New Testament Scholarship’, ExpT 93 (1991) 72–5Google Scholar, at 73 (emphasis original). It should be noted that Powley's comment is patently false. The English Deists held that the Gospels were not primarily historical documents before Reimarus.

21 Easton, B. S., review of R. H. Lightfoot, History and Interpretation in the Gospels, AThR 18 (1936) 29Google Scholar. Cf. Casey, R. P., review of History and Interpretation in the Gospels, JBL 56 (1937) 61–3Google Scholar.

22 Lohmeyer, E., Galiläa und Jerusalem (FRLANT 52; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1936)Google Scholar; Lightfoot, R. H., Locality and Doctrine in the Gospels (London: Harper and Brothers, 1938)Google Scholar.

23 Perrin, N., What Is Redaction Criticism? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 22Google Scholar.

24 Powley, ‘The Place of R. H. Lightfoot’, 72.

25 Nineham, D. E., Saint Mark (PNTC; New York: Penguin Books, 1963)Google Scholar.

26 Powley, ‘The Place of R. H. Lightfoot’, 72. Powley provided two examples on the messianic secret.

27 Lightfoot, History and Interpretation, 43–4 n. 1.

28 Dibelius, M., Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1933 2) 54Google Scholar.

29 M. Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel (trans. B. Woolf; New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, n. d.) 56 (emphasis original).

30 Lightfoot, History and Interpretation, 46.

31 Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte, 46.

32 Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, 48 (emphasis original).

33 Lightfoot, History and Interpretation, 46.

34 Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte, 42

35 Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, 44–5 (emphasis original).

36 Lightfoot, History and Interpretation, 47–8.

37 Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte, 46–7.

38 Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, 49.

39 Lightfoot, History and Interpretation, 48.

40 Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte, 46.

41 Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, 48.

42 Lightfoot, History and Interpretation, 48.

43 Powley, ‘The Place of R. H. Lightfoot’, 72.

44 The only attestation is from Nineham, ‘R. H. Lightfoot’, 99. Court, Generation, 47 described Lohmeyer as one of ‘the German scholars with whom [Lightfoot] worked’, but simply stated that Lightfoot met with ‘Bultmann and Dibelius among others’ when in Germany. Riches, J., ‘Lightfoot, R. H.’, Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters (ed. D. McKim; Downers Grove: IVP, 2007) 665–8Google Scholar, at 666, simply listed Bultmann and Dibelius.

45 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14 E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 19 April 1938; E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 29 September 1938; E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 7 November 1938; E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 1 December 1938; M. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, undated; Universitätbibliothek Tübingen Nachlaß Rudolf Bultmann, MS 2-1294, R. H. Lightfoot to R. Bultmann, 1 December 1938. I am grateful to Lukas Bormann for sharing his knowledge of the Lightfoot letters in the Bultmann archive at Tübingen.

46 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot Papers, MS 16109/14 E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 19 April 1938; Lightfoot, Locality and Doctrine, ix.

47 Personal correspondence with J. R. Edwards, 18 June 2019.

48 Lightfoot, Locality and Doctrine, ix.

49 Lane, W. L., ‘From Historian to Theologian: Milestones in Markan Scholarship’, RevExp 75 (1978) 608Google Scholar. Lane was careful to clarify that Lohmeyer was the originator of this thesis, but also that ‘the two men develop the thesis in parallel fashion’. The following discussion will demonstrate that this assessment of the development of the thesis is incorrect. Lightfoot introduced Lohmeyer's thesis into English.

50 Court, Generation, 54–5; Neill, S. and Wright, T., The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 2) 270Google Scholar; Riches, ‘Lightfoot’, 667; Powley, ‘The Place of R. H. Lightfoot’, 75.

51 M. Helm, review of Lightfoot, R. H., Locality and Doctrine in the Gospels, JBR 6 (1938) 210–11Google Scholar.

52 Lightfoot, Locality and Doctrine, 1–48.

53 Lightfoot, Locality and Doctrine, ix–x.

54 Lohmeyer, Galiläa und Jerusalem, 10–14.

55 Lohmeyer, Galiläa und Jerusalem, 80–6; idem, Das Evangelium des Markus (KEK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 19371) 355–60.

56 Lightfoot, Locality and Doctrine, 45–48; Lohmeyer, Markus, 359–60.

57 Lohmeyer, E., ‘Die Reinigung des Tempels’, ThB 20 (1941) 257–64Google Scholar.

58 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, R. H. Lightfoot to J. Jeremias, 6 November 1949.

59 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 12 November 1949.

60 AKöhn, ., Der Neutestamentler Ernst Lohmeyer: Studien zu Biographie und Theologie (WUNT ii.180; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004) 140Google Scholar; Edwards, J. R., Between the Swastika and Sickle: The Life, Disappearance, and Execution of Ernst Lohmeyer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019) 230–43Google Scholar. In a letter, Jeremias passes the rumour that Lohmeyer remained imprisoned in Poland to Lightfoot: Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 21 March 1951.

61 Lightfoot, Gospel Message, ix.

62 Lohmeyer, ‘Die Reinigung des Tempels’, 259.

63 Lightfoot, Gospel Message, 62.

64 Lohmeyer, ‘Die Reinigung des Tempels’, 257.

65 Lightfoot, Gospel Message, 60.

66 Lohmeyer, ‘Die Reinigung des Tempels’, 260.

67 Lightfoot, Gospel Message, 63.

68 Lane, W. L., The Gospel of Mark (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974) 408Google Scholar.

69 Lightfoot, Gospel Message, 61.

70 Lightfoot, Gospel Message, 48–60.

71 Pesch, R., Das Markusevangelium (HThKNT ii.1/2 and 2/2; Freiburg: Herder, 1976) 2.1–21Google Scholar.

72 Lightfoot even contributed a chapter to the Lohmeyer Festschrift: Lightfoot, R. H., ‘A Consideration of Three Passages in St. Mark's Gospel’, In Memoriam Ernst Lohmeyer (ed. W. Schmauch; Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1951) 110–15Google Scholar.

73 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 19 April 1938.

74 Here, Lohmeyer refers to Burkitt, F. C., The Earliest Sources for the Life of Jesus (Modern Religious Problems; London: Constable, 1910) 47Google Scholar: ‘The Gospel according to Matthew is a fresh edition of Mark, revised, rearranged, and enriched with new material.’

75 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 29 September 1938.

76 Hartmann, G., Der Aufbau des Markusevangeliums mit einem Anhang: Untersuchungen zur Echtheit des Markusschlusses (ed. M. Meinertz; NTAbh 17.2–3; Münster: Verlag der Aschendorffschen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1936)Google Scholar.

77 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 7 November 1938.

78 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, E. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, 1 December 1938.

79 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, M. Lohmeyer to R. H. Lightfoot, undated. The original letter from Melie Lohmeyer is lost. The text is from Lightfoot's undated, hand-written copy. Lightfoot visited the Lohmeyers in December 1938 and the references to the New Year and Lightfoot's previous visit date the letter early 1939. The letter from Ernst Lohmeyer that Melie Lohmeyer refers to at the end of this letter is not contained in the Oxford archive.

80 Anton Friedrichsen (1888–1953) was professor of exegesis at Uppsala University and a close confidant of Ernst Lohmeyer.

81 Lohmeyer's Matthew commentary was left incomplete at the time of his death. The manuscript was edited and prepared for publication by Werner Schmauch. Lohmeyer, E., Das Evangelium Matthäus (ed. W. Schmauch; KEK Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956)Google Scholar.

82 Here, Lightfoot has a note indicating he could not decipher Melie Lohmeyer's handwriting. Similarly, there are marginal notes for ‘Zerstreuung’ as he attempted to make out the word. The phrasing of this sentence is uncertain.

83 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, R. Bultmann to R. H. Lightfoot, 5 January 1939.

84 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, R. Bultmann to R. H. Lightfoot, 5 January 1939.

85 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 3 January 1949.

86 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 19 January 1949.

87 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 1 July 1949.

88 Heawood, P. J., ‘The Last Passover in the Gospels’, ExpT 53 (1942) 295–7Google Scholar.

89 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 8 August 1949.

90 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 15 October 1949.

91 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 12 November 1949.

92 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 21 March 1951.

93 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 2 September 1952.

94 Bodleian Library, Oxford, R. H. Lightfoot papers, MS 16109/14, J. Jeremias to R. H. Lightfoot, 11 September 1952.