Among the several scholars of the ancient Church who occupied themselves with the textual criticism of the Bible, one of the most influential was Lucian of Antioch. Though not as learned or as productive in a literary way as either Origen or Jerome, Lucian's work on the text of the Greek Bible proved to be of significance both in his own day and, to an even greater extent, during the centuries following. In fact, his recension of the text of the New Testament, with only minor modifications, continued to be used widely down to the nineteenth century, and still lives on in the so-called Ecclesiastical text of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Das urchristliche Kerygma verkündigt das Kreuz Jesu als Heilsereignis. Es tut dies, indem es Jesus Christus als den verkündigt, der stellvertretend oder als Sühnopfer für die Sünden der Menschen gestorben ist. — Wir fragen nun, ob diese Verkündigung mit theologischem Recht geschieht; d. h. wir fragen nach der Legitimität dieses Kerygmas.

The object of this paper is to examine the tenability of the generally accepted view that the term ‘kingdom of God’ or ‘kingdom of heaven’ ought properly to be rendered as ‘Reign, or Rule of God’. This view assumes that the basic idea of the expression βασιλεία Τοũ θεοũ implies that God is, or becomes, king, that he sets up his kingly rule, or asserts his divine sovereignty over or in the world.

These are perhaps the most important verses in the Synoptic Gospels. Discussing them in 1927, the late Claude Montefiore2 candidly confessed that, as a Jew, he would like to prove them spurious because, if it could be shown that Jesus had really uttered them, orthodox Christianity would have received notable encouragement. This however, he judged very unlikely, and he went on to predict that, as the years went by, the voices raised in defence of their authenticity would grow feebler and fewer.