Karl Ludwig Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main 5 February 1891 –

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

, 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 public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest univ ...

. He taught that the accounts of the New Testament were to be regarded as fixed written versions of oral Gospel tradition. 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 Form criticism as a method of biblical criticism classifies units of scripture by literary pattern and then attempts to trace each type to its period of oral transmission."form criticism." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica ...

, 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 to 1925 in Giessen; 1925 to 1929 in Jena; from 1929 to 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 () was a clause in the statutes of an organisation, corporation, or real estate deed that reserved membership or right of residence solely for members of the "Aryan race" and excluded from such rights any non-Aryans, particula ...

. He was involved in church administration from 1933 to 1935 in Switzerland. From 1935 to 1953 he was a professor of New Testament in Basel. From 1922 to 1937 he was an editor of ''Theologische Blätter'' and from 1945 to 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 Reformed 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 Decl ...

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