I was trying to trace an essay for work I've been doing on Jesus' teaching on neighbour love, the nature of Christian love as a test of a life devoted to Jesus in which we see others as God-loved, and therefore those whom we are called to love in Christ's name. The essay was written by Rudolf Bultmann, and called "To Love Your Neighbour."
Bultmann's article was referenced in two books but the reference made no sense. It said 'Scot Per, 1, 47'. I spent a while checking various libraries and Journal indices and resources. No joy. Further chasing gave me the full title 'Scottish Periodical, 1. 47.' But no trace anywhere of a journal called Scottish Periodical – and anyway, why would Rudolf Bultmann, the leading German New Testament scholar, have a technical essay published in the first issue of an obscure Scottish publication which now no one seems to have heard of?
I checked, just to rule out an editorial oversight, thinking it might be the first issue of the Scottish Journal of Theology – no joy there either, its first issue was in 1948 – but I checked the 8 issues for 1948 and 1949 just to be sure. I then asked a couple of librarian and archivist friends who 'ken stuff' about chasing obscure items, but neither could find any footprint or even a blurred fingerprint of such a journal's existence!
Then I did what I have sometimes done before. I emailed one of the currently leading scholars on Bultmann, explained the current impasse, and asked if he could offer any light. Here's part of the reply:
"Dear Jim, This is one of the most obscure of all of Bultmann’s writings, at least in English. It took the help of the research librarians at Princeton Seminary to track this one down, but I have a copy of it that I have attached here. The periodical is correctly named, but it seems extremely obscure."
That made me feel so much better about my own failed efforts! And what generosity to reply within hours and send a copy of the article – which I've since read, and very glad to have done so. The article is Bultmann in full philosophical mode, analysing the nature of love as a graced capacity of the new life in Christ, concluding with the Johannine text,
"We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also." (1 Jn 4.19-21)
I mention all this because in a world where so much of academic and educational resources is hidden behind paywalls, or otherwise jealously guarded, old fashioned knowledge-sharing and mutual support in learning is still not only a thing, but a living thing.
My thanks to someone who had never heard of me, and whose email had arrived in an inbox over in Kansas that is already busy enough, for taking time and trouble to nudge me another step forward in my own learning and thinking. There is such a thing as the communion of learning as a sub-set of the communion of saints
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