It is admitted that the celebrated Pericope de Adultera is a piece of authentic tradition going back to the beginnings of the church, though it is extracanonical and its text evidently suffered from its independent wanderings before it found its way into the canonical gospels. It was readily used to show that, as our Lord was supposed to have shown mercy, if not actually unasked forgiveness, to an adulteress, so the church ought to deal leniently with offenders. Other doubtful interpretations have been and are placed on the passage; and the story, as it lies baldly on the paper, might well give offence. Perhaps this helps to explain why it was not used by the compilers of our gospels. In any case it has its obscurities, and it is the purpose of this paper to attempt to clear them up. From the material submitted here it may be possible, by the use of strict reasoning, to recreate what actually took place.

Our Bibles have a margin of Synoptic cross-references beside the Epistles: what does it really mean? What literary relationships exist between the Epistles and the Synoptics? I here pass by three kinds of agreement.

In September 1945 members of the Museum of Jewish Antiquities of the Hebrew University excavated a burial chamber near the Talpioth suburb of Jerusalem. The tomb, which was cut in soft limestone, was furnished with five loculi (kokhim) or burial recesses together with a number of ossuaries, that is small stone boxes containing the bones of corpses which had first been laid within the loculi and then transferred to such a box once the flesh had decomposed. Early rumours concerning the nature of these ossuaries gave rise to sensational press-reports of ‘what is believed to be an eye-witness account of the death of Christ’ which ‘may give first hand testimony to the trial and death of Jesus’. But it was not until 1947 that a comprehensive account of the finds was published by Dr E. L. Sukenik, the director of the excavations and the greatest living authority on ossuaries.

(5) Wenn wir nach den grundsätzlichen Betrachtungen im vorigen Heft der N.T.S. (S. 303 ff.) jetzt zur Behandlung der neuen Papyri im einzelnen gelangen, empfiehlt es sich wohl, mit 66 zu beginnen. Sein erster Teil (Joh. i–xiv) war 1956 von V. Martin herausgegeben worden und ist dementsprechend im ersten Bericht behandelt worden (.N.T.S. III, 1957, 279 ff.), nachdem ich an anderer Stelle bereits eine Neukollation veröffentlicht hatte (Theologische Literaturzeitung, 87, 1957, 161–84). 1958 erschien, wieder von V. Martin herausgegeben, der Supplementband mit den Fragmenten zu Joh. xiv–xxi. Trotz einer ins einzelne gehenden Untersuchung — oder vielmehr gerade ihretwegen — hatte ich dazu geschwiegen. Nachdem 1962 dieser Supplementband in einer ‘Nouvelle edition augmentée et corrigée avec reproduction photographique complète du manuscrit’, herausgegeben von V. Martin und J. W. Barns, erschienen ist, ist es an der Zeit, das bisher Versäumte nachzuholen.