Hans Dieter Betz

Hans Dieter Betz (born May 21, 1931) is an American scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Chicago. He has made influential contributions to research on Paul's Letter to the Galatians, the Sermon on the Mount and the Greco-Roman context of Early Christianity.

Biography Hans Dieter Betz was born and raised in Germany. He received his theological education at Bethel and Mainz in Germany, and at Cambridge in England. Having studied with Herbert Braun, he graduated as Doctor of Theology and "Habilitation" at Mainz (1957, 1966); Dr. h.c. Erlangen. His list of scholarly publications includes New Testament literature, esp. on Paul's letters, as well as on Hellenistic history of religions, writing in English and German. He served also as editor of the lexica "Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart" (4th ed. 1998-2005) and "Religion Past and Present" (2007-2014). He was a Reformed Tradition pastor until he went to the United States in 1963. From 1963 to 1978, he taught at the School of Theology (now Claremont School of Theology) and the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) in California. From 1978 on he taught as the Shailer Mathews Professor of New Testament at the University of Chicago Divinity School and in the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Humanities Division. He is an ordained member of the Presbytery of Chicago, United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Betz is also a past president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research (1983-1984), the Society of Biblical Literature (1997), and the international Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (1999).

The Sermon on the Mount In his essay "The Sermon on the Mount: Its Literary Genre and Function," Betz discusses the problem of scholars in attempting to determine where the Sermon on the Mount fits in terms of its literary classification. He believes that there are clues within the content of the SM which could point the seeker in the right direction of making this determination and these clues lead him to conclude that the SM falls in the category of an epitome. He explains that "the epitome is a composition carefully designed out of sayings of Jesus which are grouped according to thematic points of doctrine considered of primary importance." any discussion about the SM invariably requires some mention of the Sermon on the Plain and Q. In fact, Betz credits centuries of discussion of the relationship between the SM and SP for the postulation by scholars of the existence of a Q document.

The first problem that scholars attempted to solve was to determine whether the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain were the result of two speeches given by Jesus or two versions of the same speech. Origen believed that the SM and SP were two versions of the same speech given by Jesus, whereas Augustine believed that they were two speeches; with the SM having been delivered to the disciples and the SP given to the general public. Betz is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Selected works Books

Works edited

- in total 13 volumes.