Other Trials to Come. Truth and the Law in New Testament Exegesis

What stands behind truth (alêtheia) in the New Testament? No particular ‘conception’ of truth, even not in Johannine texts, no extraordinary definition – simply truth, in its most ordinary meaning, as the adequation of thoughts to things. Biblical texts, however, give access to what stands behind this adequation: the law, as well as a complex and harsh criticism of the categories of the law – charges, testimony, tribunal. Starting from a reading of John 8 and 18, I discuss the consequences of almost one century of Bultmannian interpretation of the New Testament, as well as the strange ecclesiological turn that has taken place over the past twenty years in continental philosophy.