Willem Christiaan van Manen (8 August 1842 in Noordeloos – 12 July 1905 in

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wi ...

) was a Dutch theologian. He was professor in early Christian literature and New Testament

exegesis Exegesis ( ; from the Greek , from , "to lead out") is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The term is traditionally applied to the interpretation of Biblical works. In modern usage, exegesis can involve critical interpretation ...

at Leiden University (1885–1903) and belonged to the Dutch school of

Radical Criticism Radical criticism is a movement around the late 19th century that, typically, denied authentic authorship of the Pauline epistles. This went beyond the higher criticism of the Tübingen school which (with the exception of Bruno Bauer) held that ...

.Eduard Verhoef
Manen, Willem Christiaan van
in "Biografisch lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlands protestantisme" (1998)

Work

Van Manen's 1865 doctoral thesis in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

about the authenticity of

1 Thessalonians The First Epistle to the Thessalonians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle, and is addressed to the church in Thessalonica, in modern-day Greece. It is likely among th ...

concluded that this was a genuine letter by

Paul of Tarsus Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...

. But in 1889 he wrote a review where he agreed with a study by Rudolf Steck and with A. D. Loman, that all Pauline epistles were

pseudepigraph Pseudepigrapha (also anglicized as "pseudepigraph" or "pseudepigraphs") are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past.Bauckham, Richard; "Pseu ...

s. Van Manen's main work "''Paulus''" was published 1890–1896. The first volume treated

Acts The Acts of the Apostles ( grc-koi, Πράξεις Ἀποστόλων, ''Práxeis Apostólōn''; la, Actūs Apostolōrum) is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message ...

, and a theory of the development of Christianity in the 1st centuries. He argued that Acts was dependent on

Flavius Josephus Flavius Josephus (; grc-gre, Ἰώσηπος, ; 37 – 100) was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, best known for '' The Jewish War'', who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly ...

and other works, and assigned it to the second quarter of the 2nd century. The other two volumes were about

Romans Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

and about 1 Corinthians and

2 Corinthians The Second Epistle to the Corinthians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle and a co-author named Timothy, and is addressed to the church in Corinth and Christians in the ...

.Eduard Verhoef
Van Manen and the Dutch Radicals
(2000) Van Manen contributed several essays to ''

Encyclopaedia Biblica ''Encyclopaedia Biblica: A Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religion History, the Archeology, Geography and Natural History of the Bible'' (1899), edited by Thomas Kelly Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black, is a critical encyclopedi ...

'' (1899–1903): * Old-Christian literature, especially th
section "Epistles"
* Paul – Later criticism, a sequel to the treatment by E. Hatch * Paul's epistle to the Romans * Paul's and Polycarp's epistles to the Philippians * Paul's epistle to Philemon

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Manen, Willem Christiaan Van 1842 births 1905 deaths Dutch Christian theologians Leiden University faculty People from Giessenlanden Utrecht University alumni