Focusing on Paul, Homer and Jesus: Professor Karl Olav Sandnes as a New Testament Scholar

Abstract

In connection with the 65th birthday of Karl Olav Sandnes – one of the most eminent professors at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society – the New Testament department has decided to arrange a seminar where colleagues from home and abroad speak about issues related to his research interests.1 In his self-presentation on MF’s website, Sandnes writes as follows: “My research is on the New Testament with focus on Paul and Jesus. The reception of early Christian texts and the Christian preaching within an ancient setting is a major interest of my research.” For that reason, we have put “The Gospel in the Graeco-Roman World” as the headline for the seminar. I have been given the task providing a presentation of Karl Olav Sandnes – primarily as a New Testament scholar. This I do with great pleasure. I have known Karl Olav since we were students in theology here at MF, and he has been my close friend and colleague for most of my working years at the same institution. Karl Olav is an extraordinarily friendly and gentle person, a person who makes me think of the title of a screenplay by Bertolt Brecht, The Good Person of Szechwan (German: Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, 1941). There are few similarities between the main character of Brecht’s drama and Karl Olav, though there is an interesting link to China – something to which I will soon return. Karl Olav grew up as a son of a medical missionary in Cameroon. It has left important traces, not least because it gave him an international horizon even as a child. It is, therefore, no surprise that he – in addition to having been a teacher at MF and at the School of Mission and Theology in Stavanger2 – has served as a theological teacher overseas, namely in China – or to be more precise, at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong. He was a visiting professor there for two years in 1992–1993. Besides that, he was also visiting professor at Nanjing Union Theological Seminary for one year in 2013. This can be seen as an indication that Karl Olav Sandnes has not only been interested in the communication of the gospel in