The account of Vespasian's use of spittle to heal a blind man at Alexandria has long been noted as a parallel to the use of spittle in Mark's healing of the Blind Man of Bethsaida, but little has been made of the temporal proximity of these two stories. Vespasian's healings formed part of the wider Flavian propaganda campaign to legitimate the new claimant to the imperial throne; to many Jewish ears this propaganda would have sounded like a usurpation of traditional messianic hopes. This article argues that Mark introduced spittle into his story of the Blind Man of Bethsaida to create an allusion to the Vespasian story as part of a wider concern to contrast the messiahship of Jesus with such Roman imperial ‘messianism’.

The study examines bioi by two Greco-Roman authors (Plutarch and Philostratus), two Jewish authors (Philo and Josephus), and finally, the Third Gospel, in the light of the progymnastic topic lists, arguing that all the bioi employ topic lists as a compositional template, guiding the narrative in its overall structure and content. The study shows, moreover, that the Third Evangelist employs the lists with rhetorical skill comparable to the most educated of the biographers surveyed, Plutarch and Philo.

L'attention de la majorité des commentateurs qui se sont penchés sur l'étude de Jn 3.29 a été focalisée par le contenu de l'expression ο ϕιλος του νυμϕιου, expression souvent rapprochée du “garçon d’honneur” de la tradition juive, et la signification théologique profonde du verset s’en est souvent trouvée occultée. Le présent article se propose de montrer – notamment à travers un examen des prédéterminations et du schéma eschatologiques de ce verset – que la joie accomplie du Baptiste apparaît ici comme étant le résultat du salut effectif, opéré par la révélation plénière et définitive apportée par Jésus. En ce sens, il constitue l'une des expressions de l'eschatologie inaugurée du quatrième Évangile.

Interpreters of Paul's Letter to the Romans frequently identify preparations for the Spanish mission—mentioned within only two verses at the end of the letter—as the primary reason for writing. Paul's extensive use of Isaiah suggests to some that he viewed Spain as the fulfillment of the reference to ‘Tarshish’ in Isa 66.19. The Hebrew Bible, however, does not provide any evidence that Tarshish is in Spain rather than in Cilicia. Evidence is lacking in the Hellenistic and Roman eras for a Spanish Tartessos–Tarshish connection. The Spanish mission thesis also overemphasizes the importance of Rom 15.24, 28.

There are striking thematic and verbal parallels between Isaiah 24–27 and Rom 8.18–30 that suggest that Isaiah 24–27 provides the primary source for Paul's description of the ruin and groaning of creation in Rom 8.19–22, a possibility that is strengthened by the fact that Paul elsewhere explicitly cites Isa 25.8. If Paul has used Isaiah 24–27 in this way, it helps to explain the emergence in Romans 8 of a cosmic theme in the context of resurrection hope; it also implies that a historic ‘fall of nature’ in the traditional sense is not strictly in view, but that Paul rather considers creation to be enslaved to the effects of ongoing human sin and divine judgment. This slavery itself can be considered the result of God's decision to link the fate of the natural world and humankind through what Isa 24.5 calls an ‘eternal covenant’.

Heuristic use of classical rhetorical theorists' discussion of appeals to the emotions allows the interpreter to discern the strategic arousal of three principal pairs of emotions in the seven oracles of Revelation: fear and confidence, friendship and enmity, and shame and emulation. While some of these emotional responses are evoked in multiple oracles, certain ones tend to be more fully nurtured in particular oracles, being more strategic to achieving the speaker's specific goals for the audiences in those settings. John gives attention to the multiple dimensions of appeals to emotion as discussed by Aristotle (nurturing the frame of mind that is disposed to that particular emotion, identifying particular ‘others’ in regard to whom that emotion is rightly directed, and inscribing situations that naturally give rise to that emotion).

Friedrich Nietzsches Philosophie kann mit Paul Ricoeur unter dem Aspekt der ‘Hermeneutik des Verdachts’ gesehen werden. Er ist mit Nachdruck hermeneuti_scher Philosoph. Im ‘Nachlaß’ (Ende 1886 bis Frühjahr 1887) spricht er seine hermeneutische Grundüberzeugung aus: Es gibt nur Interpretationen, aber keine Tatsachen. Diese Aussage richtet sich entschieden gegen allen Positivismus. Wenn er etwa erklärt, er sei ‘gegen das Atom’, so antizipiert er in gewisser Weise moderne physikalische Überzeugungen, nach denen das Atom nicht als Vorstellung gedacht werden kann, sondern nur in mathematischer Interpretation. Die Schwierigkeit bei Nietzsche ist, daß er aufgrund seiner Inspiration von Sils-Maria 1881 seine Überzeugung von der ‘Ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen’ dogmatisch vertritt und sie nicht als bloße Interpretation versteht. Die Frage bleibt offen und bedarf der weiteren Klärung in der Nietzsche-Forschung.

This article focuses on novel computer-based techniques for style characterization which have been tested on NT texts. The techniques are derived from the fields of information theory, communications engineering, and bioinformatics, and treat text as linearly sequenced information. They employ computer algorithms capable of detecting patterns in character strings, thereby permitting characterization of a given text or comparison of various texts. The application of the techniques to NT books has so far yielded results generally concordant with other methods, and suggest that the new techniques, if further refined, could complement other approaches to Biblical-textual questions.