Projects
Prof. Dr. Hermut Löhr
New Testament and Ancient Judaism
Hermut Löhr's Projects
The series “Ökumenischer Taschenbuchkommtentar zum Neuen Testament (ÖTK)” is edited by Gerd Häfner (Munich) and Hermut Löhr (Bonn) and published by the Penguin/Random House publishing group. Since the publication of the first volumes, the aim of the series has been to provide an ecumenically sensitive exegetical and theological perspective on the New Testament Scriptures at a high scholarly level, while at the same time being affordable and easily accessible.
The Letter to the Philippians is annotated by Hermut Löhr for the first time for this series. From a historical and genre-critical perspective, the commentary takes seriously that the letter is a letter from prison. From a theological point of view, it becomes clear that in Philippians we can grasp an independent new draft of Pauline theology (including the theology of justification), which is clearly distinguished from Galatians and Romans.
This international project conducted by an international group of editors under the overall direction of Daniel Falk (Penn State University) and Rodney Werline (Barton College) brings together for the first time introductory essays, translations, and commentaries on the major prayer traditions and texts of the ancient world (Mediterranean, Near East). Hermut Löhr is area editor for the area of emerging Christianity (1st/2nd century AD).
The volumes discusses important aspects of the Shepherd of Hermas, a long early Christian writing possibly from the first half of the 2nd. century C.E. The book focuses on questions of the literary making and moral philosophy.
The project seeks to register and to analyse in detail all extant Judaica of the old collections of Bonn University Library.
In this project, experts from the Protestant Theological Faculty, the Philosophical Faculty, the Bonn University Library, and the Bonn University Archive cooperate in order to prepare for the celebration of 200th anniversary of Jacob Bernays (1824–1881) , classicist and director of the Bonn University Library.
Hermut Löhr is a member of the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies.
Details can be found here1.
Prof. Dr. Günter Röhser
You can find out about the projects of Günter Röhser, professor for New Testament since 2003, on his website.
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jan Rüggemeier
(New Testament and) Graeco-Roman World
Jan Rüggemeier's Projects
(together with Prof. Dr. Benjamin Schliesser/Bern)
How did the early Christian movement manage to survive Later Antiquity? What set it apart? What made it attractive to a range of different persons from (almost) all social strata? How was it embedded in the cultural, religious, and social life of the metropolises of the Roman Empire?
The project ECCLESIAE (Early Christian Centers: Local Expressions, Social Identity, Actor Engagement) pursues answers to these timeless and fascinating questions using new methods and aims to develop a vivid image of the first Christian groups present in the leading centers of early Christianity: Antioch, Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, and Rome.
Learn more about the project here.
(together with Prof. Dr. Benjamin Schliesser/Bern)
The digital video project “UR:BAN – Urban Religion: Bridging Ancient & New” illustrates the dynamics of religious practices, experiences, and communities in ancient and contemporary cities. Greco-Roman cities of the first century CE and a Western cities of the 21st century are both characterized by a volatility, fluidity, and visibility of religion in the public sphere, notwithstanding their fundamental differences.
The aim of the project is twofold: (1) It alerts a modern audience to the remarkable yet widely unknown variety of religious expressions and groups in four of the most significant urban centers of the ancient Mediterranean: Ephesus, Rome, Philippi, and Corinth. (2) It brings together cutting-edge historical insight and critical engagement with religious phenomena and challenges of the present, focusing on the formative phase of Early Christianity and Christianity’s role in today’s urban society.
(editor)
The planned series "Early Christian Centers" (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck) investigates the emergence and institutionalization of early Christianity from its beginnings on into the 4th cent. CE in Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Ephesus, Jerusalem, Corinth, Philippi, Rome, and Thessalonica. Through a consistently applied local-historical approach, a team of international experts will inquire into the ways in which early Christian groups were embedded in their urban cultural-religious milieu and how they developed into an influential and dominant entity.
(together with Elizabeth Shively/St Andrews)
‘Diegesis in Mind’ (D/M) aims to encourage and support the use of cognitive (‘mind’) science to study ancient narrative (‘diegesis’) by creating, launching, and maintaining a cross-disciplinary blog. Cognitive science has opened new vistas for exploring how ancient writers and readers used and understood their texts; but a venue is needed for cross-disciplinary engagement to strengthen the insights of interdisciplinary research.
D/M aspires to fill this gap through a blog that acts as an intellectual hub for ongoing scholarly discussion concerning methods, standards, prospects, and limitations of using cognitive disciplines to study ancient narrative texts.
(game design)
ONE of 5004 is a story-driven adventure game, in which the New Testament stories surrounding the life of Jesus of Nazareth can be relived. Jan Rüggemeier is involved in the development of the game as a consultant, contributing his expertise in the field of New Testament social history and narratology to the design of the game characters and avatars.
The trailer for the project is available on YouTube.
Qualification Projects
Get to know the dissertation and Habilitation projects currently being written in the field of New Testament Studies at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Bonn. In the following overview you will also find recently completed projects.
Qualification Projects
Paul Becker's project.
Dr. Phillip Andrew Davis, Jr.'s postdoctoral project.
Ratheesh Appuchamy's project.
Cornelius Brühn's project.
Tobias Mölleken's project.
Lara Mührenberg's project, supervised by Doktormutter Prof. Dr. Ute Verstegen, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Carla Weitensteiner's project.
The Gospel of John and Ancient Greek Philosophy
DFG project led by apl. Prof. Dr. Athanasios Despotis.
This project refers to the current discussion on the relationship between the John's Gospel and ancient Greek philosophy and intends to develop a new model for the interpretation of John's Gospel. So far, a variety of comparative methods have been used that separate the Fourth Gospel from its Hellenistic background and fail to properly consider its author's constructive interaction with Hellenistic philosophy. However, the new project integrates voices of ancient Christian philosophers, who have cultural-historical proximity to the context of John and can help the modern exegete to better interpret the interdependence between Hellenistic religion and philosophy. Therefore, this project reinterprets the long speeches of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel as reflections of cultural hybridity. Thus, this study challenges the opinion that Hellenistic Jewish and Christian authors use elements of Hellenistic philosophy to convey religious propaganda.
The presentation of the project at a conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association can be found here.
Synoptic Hub
The Synoptic Hub is a project integrating the Digital Humanities into the study of the synoptic problem. It proceeds from the simple observation that the amount of data necessary for developing and evaluating synoptic theories is too vast for one researcher to always keep in mind. As a first step toward addressing this problem, the project makes data informing individual synoptic research projects openly accessible in digital format to researchers and the interested public. The digital format opens up the capability of making research data sets interactive. The abilities to digitally interact with and reformat data will support the development of new questions and new ways of looking at the redactional features of the synoptic gospels.
The long-term goal of the project is to develop an online synopsis tool that enables a more malleable comparison of the synoptic gospels than printed editions and Bible software tools currently offer. The raw data previously collected would then be incorporated into the online synopsis, much like the lexical data available at the hover of a cursor in current Bible software programs.
The project is led by Phillip A. Davis, Jr. and administered by Johannes Fröh.
BEL
The Bonn Exegetical Lexicon (BEL) is intended to be a reference work that summarises and explains exegetical terms.
The online catalogue in development can be found here.
