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[German Version] (Oct 27, 1915, Tailfingen, Württemberg – June 20, 1989, Göttingen) was a Protestant scholar in New Testament studies and a disciple of R. Bultmann. He was appointed professor in Zürich (1954), then in Göttingen (1960), where he became a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences in 1966. In his publications on the Lucan corpus, Conzelmann introduced the redaction-critical perspective into Protestant research by plausibly demonstrating that Luke is to b…

[German Version] I. Ancient Near East – II. Greece – III. Rome – IV. The Bible – V. Christianity – VI. Judaism I. Ancient Near East Historiography in the classic sense, with a reflective account of historical linkages, developed rudimentarily at best in the cuneiform cultures of the ancient Near East in Hittite and Neo-Assyrian annals and the introductions to treaties; even these documents were usually written to justify the political actions. Around the middle of the 3rd millennium bce, however, there appeared an immense number of all sorts of texts containing more …

[German Version] I. Concept, Presuppositions – II. Development – III. Middle Eastern Church History and Historiography – IV. Religious Education I. Concept, Presuppositions 1. Concept The concept of church history has not yet been studied sufficiently, but it is already clear that since antiquity extraordinarily different conceptions of Christian historiography have been in simultaneous competition over the interpretation of past, present, and future. Often the different methodological option…

[German Version] ( Acts Paul). As with most apocryphal acts of the apostles, the text of the Acts Paul is also only preserved in fragments. Its content, Paul's missionary activity, depicted in the form of only a single journey from Damascus via numerous intermediate stations in Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece, etc. to Rome accompanied by equally numerous miracles, can be reconstructed primarily with the aid of two papyri, a Greek (PH) and a Coptic (PHeid), although significant lacunae remain ( NTApo II, 198–211). Only three texts (already indepen…

[German Version] ( Acts Pet.). Only a few fragments of Acts Pet., first attested (and rejected as non-canonical) with certainty by Eusebius of Caesarea ( Hist. eccl. III 3.2), are preserved. Among these, a Latin translation, the so-called Actus Vercellenses, which originated in the 3rd/4th century and adheres rather closely to the original Greek version of the Acts, represents the most important fragment offering about two-thirds of the original account of the Acts Pet. The Martyrdom of Peter ( Mart. Pet.) is chiefly transmitted in Greek. A text dealing with his daughter ( Papyrus …

[German Version] The Council of Nicea in 787 rejected the Acts ofJohn as heretical. Only fragments have survived, but the content of the book can be reconstructed in its essentials: structurally similar to the other early apocryphal acts of the apostles, it recounts John's journeys through the cities of Asia, clearly assigned to ¶ him as his mission field. As he travels, he performs numerous miraculous cures, raises the dead, and provides other demonstrations of God's power. The work ends with his nonviolent death. The author strings together indiv…

[German Version] ( Acts Phil.). The Acts of Philip, first mentioned in the Decretum Gelasianum, contains 15 almost completely preserved episodes. They are linked by their Encratite character and the central figure of Philip, who combines elements of both the apostle (Philip [the Disciple]) and the evangelist mentioned in Acts (Philip the Evangelist). They also preserve Gnostic material (Gnosis). In their present form, they were written (or compiled) around the mid-4th century in the bosom of an Encratite group in Asia Minor (Phrygia?) condemned in 342 at the Council of Gangra. Eckhard…