James Barr directs most of his critical and rhetorical power at Kittel, but he’s got some criticisms of Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich too. Specifically, BAG “is too content to give semantic indications which presuppose, and are intelligible only in terms of, a more modern intellectual and cultural Weltanschauung than that of the NT” Technical theological terms in the NT are defined in terms of “a fairly traditional Christian theology.” Barr cites Bauer’s use of “supernatural” as an example; Bauer defines zoe as a) “life in a physical sense” and b) “the supernatural life belonging to God and Christ, which the believers will receive in the future, but which they also enjoy here and now.” Oddly, he cites 2 Corinthians 5:4, which describes the “indestructible life of those clothed in the heavenly body” under the first definition. And, of course, Bauer incorporates a traditional, but questionably Pauline, concept of “supernatural” into his definition.
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