Karl Ludwig Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main 5 February 1891 –

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (B ...

, 10 January 1956) was a German Protestant theologian and professor of New Testament studies at the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universiti ...

. He taught that the accounts of the New Testament were to be regarded as fixed written versions of

oral Gospel tradition Oral gospel traditions is the hypothetical first stage in the formation of the written gospels as information was passed by word of mouth. These oral traditions included different types of stories about Jesus. For example, people told anecdotes ab ...

. In 1919, his book ''Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu'' ("The Framework of the Story of Jesus") showed that Mark's chronology is the invention of the evangelist. Using form criticism, Schmidt showed that an editor had assembled the narrative out of individual scenes that did not originally have a chronological order. This finding challenged historians' ability to discern a historical Jesus and helped bring about a decades-long collapse in interest in the topic. He was professor of New Testament Studies from 1921-1925 in Giessen; 1925-1929 in Jena; from 1929-1933 in Bonn. He was dismissed from his position as a professor at Bonn in September 1933 by the Nazi regime due to his resistance to the

Aryan paragraph An Aryan paragraph (german: Arierparagraph) was a clause in the statutes of an organization, corporation, or real estate deed that reserved membership and/or right of residence solely for members of the "Aryan race" and excluded from such rights a ...

. He was involved in church administration from 1933-1935 in Switzerland. From 1935-1953 he was a professor of New Testament in Basel. From 1922-1937 he was an editor of ''Theologische Blätter'' and from 1945-1953 he was an editor of ''Theologische Zeitschrift''. He wrote the article on the meaning of the Greek word ''ekklesia'' (church) for the ''Theological Dictionary of the New Testament''. In 1959,

Karl Barth Karl Barth (; ; – ) was a Swiss Calvinist theologian. Barth is best known for his commentary '' The Epistle to the Romans'', his involvement in the Confessing Church, including his authorship (except for a single phrase) of the Barmen Declar ...

wrote this about him after his death: "K. L. Schmidt, far superior to me in both learning and pugnacity, but always so stimulating." Karl Barth, ''Church Dogmatics'', 4 vols. in 13 parts vols. (Edinburgh, New York: T. & T Clark, 1956-1969, 1975, 2009), IV/3.1, Preface. German version: "Weiter mein mir an Gelehrsamkeit wie an Streitbarkeit weit überlegener, aber immer anregender Bonner und Basler Kollege K. L. Schmidt." Karl Barth, ''Die Kirchliche Dogmatik'', 4 vols. in 13 parts vols. (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1932, 1936-1968, 1970, 1980), IV/3.1, Vorwort.

Published works

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt, Karl Ludwig 1891 births 1956 deaths Writers from Frankfurt German biblical scholars