Walter Bauer
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Walter Bauer (died 17 November, 1960) was a scholar of the development of the early Christian churches.
In his Rechtgläubigkeit und ketzerei im altesten Christentum (Tübingen 1934; translated as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity 1971), Bauer developed his thesis that in earliest Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy do not stand in relation to one another as primary to secondary, but in many regions heresy is the original manifestation of Christianity. Bauer reassessed as a historian the overwhelmingly dominant view that for the period of Christian origins, ecclesiastical doctrine already represented what is primary, while heresies, on the other hand somehow are a deviation from the genuine (Bauer, Introduction).
The cultural isolation of Nazi Germany precluded a wider dissemination of Bauer's ideas until after World War II; Rechtgläubigkeit und ketzerei was finally translated into English in 1970 and published in 1971. In the international field of biblical scholarship, Bauer continued to be known solely as the compiler of the monumental Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments (in its English translation A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature), which has become standard.
Reference
- Walter Bauer, 1971. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress)ISBN 0800613635. [Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity] (on-line text in English)
Further reading
- Daniel J. Harrington, "The Reception of Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earlist Christianity During the Last Decade," in Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 289-98.
- Daniel J. Harrington, "The Reception of Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earlist Christianity During the Last Decade," in Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980): 289-98.
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