Request for comments …, my cover letter (continued 6)
The exegesis of the Gospel texts often follows unspokenly the so-called canonical exegesis,
which Ratzinger presents as exemplary, but which also largely determines the interpretation in theology: The individual text is shortened in the sense of the Gospel as a whole and beyond that of the New Testament canon.
In the spirit of Werner Kelber’s approach, however, the interpretation in historical research should be opened to a broad interpretation, to different ways of understanding, first to the question of what message has the individual pericopes, what image of Jesus conveyed them.