Dr. Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer

Zum Buch „Der Gebrauch der Bibel“

Dieses Buch wurde von John Barton, Professor für Bibel-Interpretation an der Universität Oxford, in seinem Buch "The Spirit and the Letter. Studies in the Biblical Canon" (London 1997) intensiv ausgewertet (die identische amerikanische Ausgabe heißt "Holy writings, sacred text. The canon in early christianity", 1997) und erläutert, so dass der Zugang zu meinen Ergebnissen auch in englischer Sprache vorliegt. Barton schreibt etwa:
"Stuhlhofer’s book, brief as it is, seems to me to have advanced the study of the canon considerably. His statistical tables open the way for much further work. His recognition that there have in practice been three classes of book for Christianity from the earliest time for which we have records, irrespective of the theoretical positions writers have adopted or the terminology they have used, seems to me fundamentally important for any fresh theory about ‘canonization’ that might be developed in the future." (S.21).
Barton hebt die in meinen Untersuchungen ersichtliche Konstanz bezüglich des Bibelgebrauchsmusters hervor:
"Everyone used much the same Scriptures as the essential core, and controversies, such as there were, concentrated on the edges of what would later be the canon: on questions such as whether particular books were to be rejected altogether or allowed a subordinate place" (S.20); "the fact that very few books actually moved from one category to another is one of the very important factual discoveries of Stuhlhofer’s work." (S.22).
Hier zeigt sich, inwiefern frühere Kanonsforscher - trotz ihrer erheblichen Meinungsverschiedenheiten - übereinstimmend recht hatten:
"That is why in a sense 'conservatives' like Leiman and 'radicals' like Sundberg are both correct." (S.23). "Thus we may say that an authoritative corpus already existed even earlier than Zahn thought, but that it was still not firmly defined even as late as Sundberg claims. ... makes one suspect that the idea of 'development' may be something of an illusion anyway." (S.21).
Bartons Urteil: "All this is illustrated with a wealth of statistical information which it is hard for the non-specialist to evaluate, but which seems to me to move discussion of ’the canon’ on to a new level of precision." (S.17).