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David Johannes Trobisch (born on August 18, 1958) is a German scholar whose work has focused on formation of the Christian Bible, ancient New Testament manuscripts and the Pauline epistles.
Trobisch divides his time between Germany, where his wife, son and two grandchildren live, and a home in Springfield, Missouri. When in the U.S., he considers himself part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
In 1982 Trobisch earned his Master of Theology from Heidelberg University. From 1988 he holds his Doctor of Theology also from the Heidelberg University, under his advisor: Prof. Gerd Theissen with his thesis: Die Entstehung der Paulusbriefsammlung : Studien zu den Anfängen christlicher Publizistik. From 1995, Trobisch holds his Habilitation with the thesis Die Endredaktion des Neuen Testaments: eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung der christlichen Bibel also from Heidelberg University.
From September 1996 to July 2008, he worked at Bangor Theological Seminary, where he became Throckmorton-Hayes Professor of New Testament Language and Literature (2000-2009).
David Trobisch is also recognized for his work on the Letters of Paul, the Formation of the Christian Bible, Performance Theory in Antiquity, and Bible Manuscripts. He is on the editorial board of the Novum Testamentum Graece.
His argument centers around the striking uniformity found in ancient manuscripts of New Testament documents. According to Trobisch, almost all extant manuscripts document a closed collection of 27 books, listed in the same order and grouped in the same four volumes, bearing the same titles with very few variants, and all using the same unique system to mark sacred terms ( nomina sacra). He also points out that nearly all manuscripts were published in the form of a codex, rather than the scroll format which was overwhelmingly dominant in non-Christian literature at the time. From these facts, Trobisch concludes that almost all our extant manuscripts of New Testament documents must be copies of a single, very influential published collection.
Trobisch argues that this "first edition of the New Testament" was published some time in the mid- to late second century. Because late second century and early third century Christian authors such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian seem to have used a canon of scripture very similar to the modern one, Trobisch holds that the New Testament must have been published before 180 CE.
In a 2007 article titled Who Published the New Testament?, Trobisch postulated that the publisher of the first edition of the New Testament may well have been Polycarp, an early bishop of Smyrna in Anatolia. Trobisch based this conclusion on a variety of factors. Firstly, Polycarp was a well-known person in the mid-second century, who held authority among proto-Catholic Christians in both Rome and Asia Minor. Secondly, Polycarp was reputed to be a disciple of John the Apostle, so his authority would have been able to add credibility to the Gospel of John and the Johannine epistles of the New Testament, which are widely believed by modern scholars not to be authentic works of John the Apostle. Thirdly, Polycarp was known to be a vocal opponent of Marcionism Christianity, which Trobisch and many other scholars take to be a major impetus for the development of the New Testament canon. Finally, Polycarp is believed to have had experience in publishing, because he distributed the first collection of the epistles of Ignatius (see Pol. Phil. 13).
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