Produktive Rezeptionen der Bergpredigt bei Tholuck und Baur

What role did the Sermon on the Mount play in 19th-century academic discourse? How did it come to occupy its position? And what does its productive reception entail? Joel Klenk and Jan Reitzner address these questions through Tholuck and Baur as key figures of the theology of their time.

Joel Klenk and Jan Reitzner examine the interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) by Ferdinand Christian Baur and August Gottreu Tholuck and analyze them as exemplary contributions to the productive reception history of a prominent New Testament text in the 19th‑century German-speaking academic world. The study begins with the thesis that fundamental transformations of theological scholarship during this decisive period can be observed in the ways the Sermon on the Mount was appropriated and reinterpreted. Methodologically, the study combines approaches from reception history, impact history, and exegetical history to develop an understanding of exegesis as a form of productive reception in which the text and the interpreter are engaged in a dynamic interplay. Commentary literature is thus understood as a metatext that realizes the semantic potential of a biblical text in ever new historical contexts. The analysis shows that Tholuck interprets the Sermon on the Mount christologically and soteriologically, combining philological precision with the piety of the revival movement; his extensive engagement with Jewish, Islamic, and international scholarship is particularly noteworthy. Baur, by contrast, integrates the Sermon on the Mount into a comprehensive historical‑critical reconstruction of the emergence of early Christianity and understands it as an expression of Jesus’ original moral‑ethical religiosity, which he situates within a broader historical framework in relation to the Christian consciousness of his own time. The study demonstrates that, despite their differences, both authors are united by significant commonalities, including their engagement with the Sermon on the Mount and their shared claim to practice scholarly theology.

1. Einleitung: Warum Auslegungsgeschichte? - Warum Tholuck und Baur?
2. Warum die Bergpredigt? Stationen einer Auslegungsgeschichte.
3. Tholuck: Die verheißungsvolle Predigt des göttlichen Erlösers
3.1. Philologisch-theologische Auslegung
3.2. Historische Einordnung und theologische Erträge
4. Baur: Jesu Lehre der reinen Sittlichkeit als erster Ursprung des Christentums
4.1. Bergpredigt und Lehre Jesu. Der vorpaulinische Ursprung
4.2. Historische Einordnung und theologische Erträge.
5. Eine produktive Rezeption der Bergpredigt im 19. Jahrhundert
5.1. Das 19. Jahrhundert? Oder: Tholuck und Baur
5.2. Produktive Rezeption? Oder: Wahrheit und Unabgeschlossenheit
5.3. Die Bergpredigt? Oder: Exegetische Erträge
6. English summary

• By (author) Joel Klenk
• By (author) Jan Reitzner