The use of the Old Testament by the New Testament – including its christological use – has engaged students of the Bible at least since the time of Jerome.1 In view of the immense erudition expended on it, by some of the best minds in their time, it seems remotely unlikely that anything new remains to be said. A fresh impetus has, however, been given to the subject – which has always been a highly specialized one – by the Dead Sea Scrolls, through the discovery of messianic Testimonies in the Cave 4 material and, more importantly, by the recognition that, hermeneutically, the New Testament belongs to the same tradition.

Die Anfänge der christlichen Mission standen nach dem Standardwerk Harnacks jahrzehntelang nicht mehr im Mittelpunkt der Forschung. Erst in jüngster Zeit ist ein Umschwung zu bemerken. Seit der Arbeit von Ferdinand Hahn, 1963, folgte jedes Jahr eine neue Monographie. Dieser neuerwachte Eifer deutet zugleich auf ein wachsendes Interesse gegenüber der Geschichte des Urchristentums überhaupt hin. Die unaufhaltsame Ausbreitung des christlichen Glaubens im Mittelmeerraum während der ersten 120 Jahre ist der rote Faden für jede Geschichte des Urchristentums. Wenn heute immer Wieder danach gefragt wird, worin die ‘Kontinuität’ der Botschaft des NT bestehe, so könnte man antworten, daß sich deren ‘faktische Kontinuität’ —ganz gleich, wie sie dargestellt wird—auf jeden Fall in dem für die Antike einzigartigen Erfolg der urchristlichen Mission erweist.

The central section of the Gospel according to St Luke (ix. 51—xix. 28) contains some of the most precious portions of Jesus' teaching. But it also occasions a perplexing problem, which may be briefly stated as follows. From its opening words the reader gathers that in what is to follow Luke purposes to give a chronologically ordered running account of Jesus' last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. But on examination what follows does not appear to be an account of that kind. In ch. x Jesus is in the home of Martha and Mary and therefore, it is to be assumed, has reached Bethany on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but in ch. xvii he is no further south than the border line between Galilee and Samaria. Again in ch. xiii there are words of Jesus which, according to a possibly correct interpretation of them, indicate that he has not yet set out on his journey.

The Hebrew text printed below is published for the first time. It is an extract from the Samaritan chronicle no. II, sometimes know erroneously as Sepher ha-ramim ( = chronicle). The basic text is printed unaltered here and it is from the John Rylands Library MS 1142 in the Moses Gaster Collection. The extract is unrelated in terms of content to the preceding and succeeding material, so that nothing is lost by publishing this extract.