Language:
German
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Walter Grundmann
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2007) 43-129
Keywords:
Jesus
;
Grundmann, Walter,
;
Christianity Historiography
;
Church history 20th century
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Galilee (Israel) Historiography
Abstract:
Seeks to explain the motivation of Grundmann (1906-1976), a professor of New Testament theology at the University of Jena and a leading member of the Institut zur Erforschung und Beseitigung des jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben, who expounded the theory that Jesus was not a Jew. Grundmann was both a convinced Nazi and a fervent Protestant Christian. Christianity, in his eyes, was not doctrine but the experience - the specifically German experience - of meeting with Jesus Christ. He was determined to save Christ from the neo-paganism propagated by Rosenberg and by the Deutsche Glaubensbewegung. In the 1930s he merely argued that since Christ was descended directly from God, his historical ethnicity was irrelevant; but as the position of the neo-pagans radicalized, so did his. He revived a tradition of Christian (as well as Jewish) historians of religion, dating back to the 19th century, who stressed the multiculturalism of the "Galilee of the Gentiles" in contrast to the dogmatic Pharisaism of Jerusalem and suggested that pureblooded Jews were rare in that region; thus, Jesus was a probably a Gentile, perhaps even an Aryan. Grundmann appears not to have realized, even after the war, that his theology contributed to the justification of Nazi genocide.
Note:
Offprint.
URL:
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