Introduction to German Student Loses All Respect For Ernest Käsemann

Spokane WA. Steven Davis, a Master of Arts in Religion Studies student at Gonzaga University, has recently lost all of his respect for Ernest Käsemann. While attending an Introduction to German course in the hopes of bolstering the strength of his doctoral program applications, Davis, 24, inadvertently discovered the English translation of Käsemann. “There I was, studying the kitchen and cooking vocabulary lessons in chapter two of the workbook when I discovered that Käse means cheese.” According to his own report, Davis had recently been reading Käsemann’s 1953 groundbreaking lecture “The Problem of the Historical Jesus,” the night before his discovery; “I had been thinking about Käsemann and the coherence of the pre-Easter and post-Easter accounts of Jesus during my flashcard making session and put two and two together: ‘Käsemann’ means ‘Cheeseman!’ It was all downhill from there.” When asked about the scholar’s continuing significance for study of the NT Davis quipped, “Yeah, I know he brought back the whole Jesus quest thing, started the discussion of Jewish apocalypticism in New Testament Studies, and made up that whole double criteria thing, but still, Cheesman? C’mon!”

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