s the NIV
really a Nazi Inspired Version?
So what is the Nazi connection with the NIV (New International Version
of the Bible)?
If you look in the introduction and preface of the NIV so called Bible, you
will see a reference to Kittel's Theological dictionary.
Kittel's Theological Greek dictionary is a standard of the modernist liberal
Bible cemeteries, oops seminaries!
Kittel was a Nazi under Hitler. Kittel was a friend of Hitler and a member of
the Nazi party!
To Join the Nazi party you had to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. (I prefer
Jesus thank you)
Kittel was an early member of the Nazi party and was jailed for war crimes at
the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal after WWII.
Your NIV Pastor uses this Nazi for his Theological dictionary to tell him what
Greek words mean in the new testament...
Do you trust
this
devil?
Do you trust a fiend,
oops friend of Hitler to define the words of the Bible...?
This is serious!
Look in the intro and preface to your Nazi Inspired Version and see Kittel's
name as a source.
Book Review and
Documentation
Theologians Under Hitler:
Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emmanuel Hirsch
By Robert P. Ericksen
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985. 245 pp. .00.
ASIN: 0300029268
(This book is endorsed by the ADL) --this is too well documented to be false!
Ericksen here presents his interpretation of the work and thought of three of
Germany's great Protestant theological thinkers who supported Adolf Hitler. It
is a most revealing study. He attempts throughout the work to understand how
these three could have lent support to Hitler. He reviews the social setting
of the Weimar Republic, deals with what he calls the crisis of modernity, and
offers an interpretation of Protestant theological developments prior to and
during Hitler's rise. Then he proceeds to study the three in turn.
Ericksen is concerned to show that there is, in a certain sense, intellectual
integrity in the positions held by the three scholars, a point that for him
seems to raise fundamental questions about Christian theology as such.
How can a persons theology be sound and still enable one to support the
monstrous thought of Adolf Hitler?
The answer to this question is not too satisfactory. There appears to this
reviewer to be some lack of clarity in the very statement of the thesis. How
can one separate theological thought entirely from the political, social, and
cultural setting and consequences of the thought?
Christianity is claimed by Ericksen to contain strains at once anti-Jewish and
anti-modern. But some of the German theologians with whom he deals (Barth,
Tillich, even Bultmann in most respects) have theological constructions
neither anti-Jewish nor anti-modern.
Still, this work is immensely important and instructive. We have lengthy
chapters, richly documented, dealing with the three theologians. Ericksen is
not himself a trained theologian, I believe, but he has reviewed theological
developments prior to and during the lifetime of these three theologians and
has offered his own assessment of strengths and limitations in these
developments. It is most interesting to hear and ponder his evaluations, for
they are sensitive and discerning over and again.
Gerhard Kittel, perhaps the best known of the three because of his editorship
of the massive
(Theological Dictionary of the New Testament)
Hardcover: 1392 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 2.64 x 9.84 x 7.14
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; Abridged edition (October 1986)
ISBN: 0802824048
Theologisches word buch zum Neuen Testament, now available in English
translation, knew ancient Judaism very well and spent much of his life
polemicizing against Jewish thought.
Theologians Under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emmanuel Hirsch
in support of a Christianity freed of Jewish elements. He always claimed not
to be anti-Semitic, but simply to be doing scholarly work that revealed the
sharp contrasts between Judaism and Christianity. Many scholars in Germany
have also drawn the contrast too sharply, but Kittel cannot be freed of the
charge of having found support in his scholarship for his Nazi position with
regard to the Jews.
Emmanuel Hirsch, immensely learned in Protestant theology and a thoroughgoing
apologist for Nazism, accomplished feats of scholarly work, especially in the
history of Protestant thought. It is easy enough to spot the points where his
Nazi views appear, but much of his work continues to be of great value.
Paul Althaus is perhaps the most tragic of the three figures. Long associated
with the Erlangen approach to theology and a great interpreter of Martin
Luther, his constructive theological work aimed at showing how important the
community was for an understanding of Christianity, and how central this
notion of peoplehood had been for ancient Israel and was for the early
Christian community-points well recognized and underscored today. But he was
able to wring from this understanding a contemporary viewpoint in support of
Hitler's call for peoplehood, racial purity, and land. A fine and discerning
theological emphasis was perverted into a position that accommodated the
Hitler movement. After the late 1930s, it appears, Althaus wrote nothing
further that could easily be used for political-propagandistic purposes by the
Nazis.
One reads such a study with a sense of deep sadness as well as with frequent
outbursts of anger. One need not share the view of the author that any one of
the three theologians under review actually made Nazism intellectually
respectable. One can hardly escape the author's conclusion, however: we all
have much to learn from a careful review of the life and work of the three,
for such aberrations, alongside Nazism's unspeakable accompanying deeds, could
occur again.
Reviewed by:
Walter Harrelson,
Vanderbilt Divinity School
Nashville, Tennessee
