Toward the History of Serbian New Testament Scholarship: The Cuddesdon Episode (1917–1919)

Abstract

The proposed study investigates the contribution to Serbian New Testament scholarship from the time of attendance of Serbian pupils at Oxford and Cuddesdon during the First World War (1917–1919). It is limited to a textbook in the field of introduction to the New Testament, authored by one of the Serbian Cuddesdon teachers, Fr Vojislav Janić (1890–1943). After this textbook is analyzed in the context of Serbian New Testament isagogics and the circumstances that led to its creation, its structure and content are placed comparatively with regard to possible models and reception. In addition to the obvious and presupposed scholarly basis, a significant factor in the reconstruction of Janić’s motives for the production of the analyzed textbook is found in the profile of the author’s personality, which was obtained by recent historical research. Finally, on the here selected example, the study shows the internal and external challenges of Serbian New Testament scholarship, the prospect of which is not possible without an adequate understanding of the past. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.