Joachim Jeremias

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Joachim Jeremias (20 September 1900 6 September 1979) was a

German Lutheran theologian, scholar of Near Eastern Studies and university professor for New
Testamentstudies. He was abbot of Bursfelde, 19681971.
He was born in Dresden and spent his formative years in Jerusalem, where between 1910 and
1918 his father, Friedrich Jeremias (18681945), worked as Provost of theLutheran Church of
the Redeemer. He studied Lutheran theology and Oriental languages at the universities of
Tbingen and Leipzig. In Leipzig he obtained both a "Doctor philosophiae (Dr.phil.)" (1922) and
a "Doctor theologiae (Dr.theol.)" (1923) degree (PhD and ThD in English), followed by
his Habilitation (1925). His mentor was the renownedGustaf Dalman.
After other teaching assignments, Jeremias was appointed in 1935 to the chair of New
Testament studies at the Georg-August University of Gttingen, where he taught until his
retirement in 1968. In 1976, Jeremias moved from Gttingen to Tbingen, where he died in
1979.
Contents
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1Academic work
o

1.1Jeremias on the New Testament Apocrypha

1.2Jeremias on Jesus in the Talmud

2Publications in English

3References

Academic work[edit]
His research and publications covered a wide field, ranging from historical and archaeological
to literary and philosophical studies. They concentrate on the Hebrew Bible andRabbinic
texts relevant for a critical analysis of the New Testament in order to reconstruct the historical
environment of Jesus in all its complexity, to provide a deeper understanding of his life and
teachings.
His achievements found national and international acknowledgment, recognized by the
admission into the Gttingen Academy of Sciences in 1948 and the award of honorary
doctorates from the universities of Leipzig, St Andrews (Scotland), Uppsala (Sweden),
and Oxford (Britain). He was also made a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts
and Sciences since 1958[1] and the British Academy. Finally, in 1970 he was made an honorary
fellow of the Deutsche Verein zur Erforschung Palstinas (German association for research on
Palestine).

Jeremias on the New Testament Apocrypha[edit]

He worked with Wilhelm Schneemelcher in revisions of the Hennecke-Schneemelcher
collection of New Testament Apocrypha.

Jeremias on Jesus in the Talmud[edit]

Jeremias took a stand on the passages generally regarded as relating to Jesus in the
Talmud which supported medieval rabbinical defences that the Yeshu the deceiver mentioned
in the Talmud was a different Jesus from the Jesus of Christianity. Related to this he also
supported David Flusser's suggestion that the name Yeshu itself was in no way abusive, but
'almost certainly' a Galilean dialect form of Yeshua.[2] Jeremias himself recounted in 1966 that
he had discovered the only known confirmed inscription of the spelling Yeshu in Bethesda, but
that this inscription was now covered in