On the Definition of “Sitz im Leben”

It makes sense for one of my first posts to discuss the name of the blog. Though, I’m sure that most of my readers already know what Sitz im Leben means, I’ll still give a quick description for the uninitiated. [No, it's not "Zits in Leggings."] The rough translation of the German term Sitz im Leben means “life situation” or “setting in life.” It was coined by the great Hebrew Bible scholar, Hermann Gunkel, who originally used the term Sitz im Volksleben to refer to the circumstances of ancient literary types. Shortly after Gunkel, New Testament scholars such as Bultmann and Dibelius appropriated the Sitz im Leben terminology and applied it to the form criticism of the Gospels. Generally when we approach the teaching of Jesus we need to think of more than one Sitz im Leben: the situation of Jesus’s original teaching and the situation(s) of those passing down the tradition. The term is widely used throughout the discipline of biblical studies; not only is it employed in the context of form criticism, but redaction criticism, socio-scientific criticism, and rhetorical criticism among others.

Samuel Byrskog has written a helpful survey of how the term Sitz im Leben is used in gospel studies, but he also offers his own definition of the term in relation to the Jesus tradition:

Is there a future for the Sitz im Leben? Is it possible to maintain a feasible minimum definition of what it stands for and use it as a heuristic label for the study of tradition and the formation of early Christian groups and their identities? This is difficult to say. In conclusion, I propose we think of it as that recurrent type of mnemonic occasion within the life of early Christian communities when certain people cared about the Jesus tradition in a special way and performed and narrated it orally and in writing. This is, to be sure, a tentative definition in need of further reflection and testing. It seeks to synthesize the various tendencies of earlier research, while at the same time avoiding the impasses of its previous use. (20; italics original)

He unpacks the definition a little more in the last seven pages or so of his article, which I recommend to anyone interested in the term.

• Byrskog, Samuel. “A Century with the Sitz im Leben: From Form-Critical Setting to Gospel Community and Beyond.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 98.1 (2007): 1-27.