KITTEL, GERHARD. – Protestant biblical theologian, born in Breslau on 23 September 1888, died in Tübingen on 11 July 1948. He studied theology and Oriental languages in Berlin, Tübingen, and Halle; in 1913 he obtained his habilitation at Kiel. He resumed it in 1917 at Leipzig, where on 24 March 1921 he was appointed außerordentlicher professor of New Testament and late Judaism; but as early as 5 August 1921 he was elected ordentlicher professor of the same subject at Greifswald, from where on 1 October 1926 he moved to Tübingen as professor of New Testament theology. From 1939 to 1943 he lectured in Vienna. He was arrested on 3 May 1945 and transported to the Balingen camp, and later, by concession, transferred to the abbey of Beuron.
Originator and director of the Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (5 vols.: A–O, Stuttgart 1932–51; continued under the direction of G. Friedrich); he also directed the journal Deutsche Theologie (1934 ff.), and, succeeding his father, its founder, the Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament. His works on the origins of Christianity are extremely useful for the study of Jewish and Hellenistic matters, in which K. asserts the originality of primitive Christianity (cf.: G. Messina, in Biblica, 15 [1934], p. 113 ff.).
Devoting himself to the study of rabbinical texts, he prepared, with his teacher Israel I. Kahan, an edition and translation of the midhrās Sifrē; he began the collection Rabbinische Texte (1933 ff.), recently resumed. But as a decidedly Lutheran theologian, he conceived the opposition between Judaism and Christianity in an excessively irreducible manner; after emancipation, he proposed reducing the Jews then dispersed among the nations to a kind of gērîm: citizens deprived of general rights, but “esteemed in their own”. He even considered it appropriate to invite believing Jews to submit themselves as to an activity of God. Yet not even the works compiled under this influence are devoid of scholarly value; for example, the Forschungen zur Judenfrage (1937 ff.) and the article in Theol. Lit. Zeitung, 69 (1944), cols. 10–20, contain useful collections of ancient Jewish inscriptions and studies concerning them.
K. cannot be accused of having promoted vulgar Nazi antisemitism (that is, racism). K. was not a member of A. Rosenberg’s Institute for Research into the Jewish Question. His ecclesiastical orientation was not connected with the “Deutsche Christen”, but rather with the “Confessing Church”, faithful to its persecuted “bishop”. He joined the Hitler party, but did not make himself a slave to the party. His manner of considering the Jewish question was quite different from that of official policy. His premature death, brought about by the sufferings, especially psychological, caused by his arrest, was a grave loss for international biblical scholarship.
Other works by K. on primitive Christianity: Oden Salomos (1914); Jesus und die Rabbinen (1914); Jesus als Seelsorger (1917); Rabbinica: Paulus im Talmud. Die « Macht » auf dem Haupte, Runde Zahlen (1920); Sifrē zu Deut., fasc. 1 (1922), illustrates the milieu of nascent Christianity; Urchristentum-Spätj (1926); Jesus und die Juden (1926); Die Probleme des palästinensischen Spätjudentums und das Urchristentum (1926); Die Lebenskräfte der ersten christlichen Gemeinden (1926); Die Religionsgeschichte und das Urchristentum (1932); Die Genealogiai der Pastoralbriefe, in Zeitschrift f. d. neutest. Wissenschaft, 20 (1921), pp. 49–69; Die Stellung des Jakobus zu Judentum und Heidenchristentum, ibid., 30 (1931), pp. 145–57; Christus und Imperator. Das Urteil der ersten Christenheit über den Staat (1939); Der geschichtliche Ort des Jakobusbriefes, in Zeitschrift f. d. neutest.*
Wissenschaft, 41 (1942), pp. 71–105. On the Jewish question: Die Judenfrage. Mit 2 Beilagen: Antwort an M. Buber. Kirche und Judenchristentum (2nd ed. 1933); Ein theologischer Briefwechsel (1934), with K. Barth.