Journal: Masters Seminary Journal
Volume: TMSJ 08:2 (Fall 1997)
Article: Eta Linnemann Friend Or Foe Of Scholarship?
Author: Robert W. Yarbrough

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MSJ 8:2 (Fall 97) p. 163

Eta Linnemann
Friend Or Foe Of Scholarship?

Robert W. Yarbrough1

Eta Linnemann falls within the broad frame work of “conservative evangelicalism” according to a recent classification of scholarly students of Scripture. A brief biographical sketch reviews her preconversion scholarly achievements and then her postconversion literary achievements. German scholars have largely ignored her postconversion work on historical criticism, but in North America and Britain, reviews of it have been mixed in their evaluations of the volume. Some reviews of her work on the Synoptic Problem have been positive in North America and Britain, but some have been very negative. A weighing of the weaknesses and merits of Linnemann’s scholarship as reflected in those reviews yields the conclusion that she is a friend of scholarship in terms of her industry, tenacity, and intensity to shed light on a crucial area, in her zeal for the truth, in her creativity, originality, fearlessness, and sharpness in analysis; and in her willingness to change her mind after discovering her earlier weaknesses.

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Historical criticism in its classic Troeltschian formulation has come under increasing fire in recent decades. This is so much the case that Gerald Bray argues plausibly for recognizing a new hermeneutical paradigm as characteristic of current academic study of the Christian Scriptures. No longer should one speak of “critical” study, meaning academically rigorous and in some sense “scientific” research, as over against “uncritical” or “conservative” study, meaning academically flabby, methodologically outdated, and hermeneutically naive. Rather, in existence today are broadly speaking three approaches to formal, scholarly study of Scripture, each having its own distinct heritage, characteristics, legitimacy, and leading lights.

The first of these is what Bray calls “academic scholarship, which carries on the historical-critical tradition inherited from the last century, and seeks to

MSJ 8:2 (Fall 97) p. 164

integrate new approaches into its established norms.”2 From its own point of view, this approach often regards itself as the only game in town, but in point of fact it no longer possesses the monopoly status it once did, and a rival outlook has arisen. This rival, a second position, Bray characterizes by the rubric “social trends”; in this world of academic discourse, current social and political issues set the agenda. Here scholars typically accept fully the critical conclusions of the first group—but view them as irrelevant. Along the lines made famous by liberation th...

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