Welche Rolle spielen Textkritik und Textgeschichte für das Verständnis des Neuen Testaments? Frühe Leserperspektiven

Abstract

Current methodological discussion within the field of New Testament studies focuses today on the influence of the work and its history, and is often motivated by newer findings in linguistics and literary criticism. Such inquiry is broadened through its correlation to reception theory, i.e. that inquiry that focuses on how readers understood the work during the course of its transmission or reception. By contrast to the above, textual criticism is that science that tries to discover the ‘original text’ as exactly as possible. Here I would like to ask, to what extent do the ‘witnesses’ (e.g. manuscripts, versions, quotations, etc.) of textual criticism also function as interpreters and ‘receivers’ of the text. In all three of the topics handled here we have been aware of an interaction between text and reader.