This volume gathers the perspectives of teachers in higher education from all over the world on the topic of New Testament scholarship. The goal is to understand and describe the contexts and conditions under which New Testament research is carried out throughout the world. This endeavor should serve as a catalyst for new initiatives and the development of questions that determine the future directions of New Testament scholarship. At the same time, it is intended to raise awareness of the global dimensions of New Testament scholarship, especially in relation to its impact on socio-political debates. The occasion for these reflections are not least the present questions that have been posed with the corona pandemic and have received a focus on the "system relevance" of churches, which is openly questioned by the media. The church and theology must face this challenge. Towards that end, it is important to gather impulses and suggestions for the discipline from a variety of contexts in which different dimensions of context-related New Testament research come to the fore.
Eve-Marie Becker is chair of New Testament studies at the University of Muenster in Germany. From 2006-18 she was professor of New Testament exegesis at Aarhus University in Denmark. From 2016-17 she was Distinguished Visiting Professor of New Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, and from 2017-18 Research Fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem.