Nur wenig Licht aus Ost-Berlin

The New Testament scholar Adolf Deißmann was the author of an important book: »Licht vom Osten«, published by J.C.B.Mohr (Paul Siebeck) in 1908. An English translation appeared two years later: »Light from the Ancient East. The New Testament Illustrated by recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World«. In April 2013 the Theological Faculty of Humboldt University (Berlin) and the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin hosted a conference on, as the publisher promises in his advertising, »all aspects of the work of Adolf Deissmann«. The review essay of the papers presented at the Berlin conference shows that this is not the case. Central aspects of Deißmann's work have been neglected. One has to state, unfortunately, that the ways in which many New Testament scholars deal with the past of their own discipline underperform theme thodological standards established by history of science experts in otherfields and disciplines. How can this backwardness in historicizing New Testament scholarship be explained?