Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or Ideology? Reflections of a Bultmannian Turned Evangelical

Written by Eta Linnemann Reviewed By Craig Blomberg

Every evangelical theological student studying in a university or otherwise pluralistic context should read this remarkable book. Linnemann, well known in the 1960s for her work on Jesus’ parables, was a disciple of Ernst Fuchs and the new hermeneutic. Finding the German academic scene increasingly ideologically bankrupt, she first became an alcoholic but later had a charismatic conversion experience. She has now repudiated all her former writings and even encourages people who own her books to burn them! ‘On fire for the Lord’, instead, she teaches in her retirement at an Indonesian Bible institute.

The book reads like a typical tirade of someone so burned by her background that she can no longer affirm anything good in it. As Bob Yarborough, translator and editor, explains in his introduction, her work must be read against her experiences with some of the most extreme forms of German scepticism and academic prejudice. But simply because it is so atypical for such a conversion-plus-tirade to emanate from radical continental scholarship, her story becomes that much more fascinating and heartening. Significant parallels do exist, even if with lesser degrees of severity, in liberal academic circles throughout the world. If most evangelicals will not choose to follow Linnemann in ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’, they will nevertheless recognize here important pitfalls in the critical study of Scripture which they neglect to their peril.


Craig Blomberg

Craig Blomberg
Denver Seminary
Denver, Colorado, USA