This article argues that when the fundamentally Jewish character of 1 Corinthians is recognized, a clear structure and argument emerges. The order of the material reflects Paul's own agenda seen in patterns elsewhere in his letters. While unity is clearly a significant issue, Paul's main concern is with the purity of the church and the glory of God. The Corinthian church is part of the fulfillment of the OT expectation of worldwide worship of the God of Israel, and as God's eschatological temple they must act in a manner appropriate to their holy status by shunning pagan vices and glorifying God under the lordship of Christ.

While allowing for polysemy, scholars seem mostly averse to ambiguity, as in the πίστις Χριστοῦ debate; but, it would seem, without engaging with ancient semantic theory. There the model of ‘naming’ and so of evoking an otherwise unspecified mental impression, predominates. Meaning is taken to lie in the mind, not in the word or words that are hoped to evoke it, as is also shown in ancient discussions of metaphor, allegory, and paraphrase. Connotations of individual words are rarely distinguished, rarely if ever purged. We are not justified in expecting verbal precision where our ancient authors will neither have attempted it nor will their hearers have expected it; nor, indeed, do modern psycholinguists appear to find space for it.

The route of Paul's first journey between Perga and Pisidian Antioch is still disputed. This article examines the three alternatives proposed by scholars. It explores the geographical and historical evidence for each route, looking especially at the extensive road system that existed in Pamphylia, Pisidia, and south Galatia in the first century. Bible atlases routinely depict one route and the reasons for this choice are discussed. Based on a review of the evidence, a fresh hypothesis for the route of the first journey is suggested.

There is a widespread assumption in Acts' scholarship that the Ethiopian eunuch is an elite official who reflects Luke's larger interest in high-status individuals. Such an assumption, however, overlooks the inextricable connection between status, gender and ethnicity in the Greco-Roman world, and how the eunuch's repeated designation as ‘the eunuch’ would have affected his status in particular. This article thus problematises the depiction of the eunuch as an elite convert by contextualising the eunuch's identification as both a ‘eunuch’ (εὐνοῦχος) and an ‘Ethiopian’ (Αἰθίοψ). Overall, the eunuch is an ambiguous figure who embodies the boundary-crossing nature of the gospel itself.

The story of Jesus and the Adulteress (John 7. 53–8. 11) is fraught with historical and literary problems, many of which have seemed insoluble. On only two points is there a scholarly consensus: the passage did not originally form part of the Fourth Gospel, and it bears a close resemblance to Synoptic, particularly Lukan, traditions about Jesus. The arguments for these judgments are overwhelming and do not need to be repeated here. In some respects these unanimous conclusions have themselves brought into sharp focus the thorny problems of the story's textual and pre-literary history: (1) Textual. Since the oldest and best textual witnesses of the Gospel of John do not contain the passage, how should the allusive references to it from the second and third centuries be evaluated? Did Papias know this story? If so, did he find it in the Gospel according to the Hebrews? Or was it Eusebius, who informs us of Papias's knowledge of this or a similar story, who found it there? What form of the story was known to the author of the Didascalia and his subsequent editor, the author of the Apostolic Constitutions? Did Origen know the story? If not, when was it first accepted into the Alexandrian canon? (2) Preliterary. How should this story be classified form-critically? And in what Sitz im Leben of the early church would it have thrived? Does the story preserve authentic tradition from the life of Jesus? Scholarship has reached an impasse on these questions because the early evidence is so sparse. Martin Dibelius's famous pronouncement from a different context applies here as well: ‘Enlightenment is to be expected not from new hypotheses but only from new discoveries.’

Philemon 10 gives a clear indication that the slave Onesimus and the apostle Paul came to be together in a place of imprisonment. How exactly this transpired is a matter of debate. Some have simply asserted that ‘Paul somehow got to meet Onesimus’, or that Onesimus ‘came into touch with Paul’. Others, however, have offered one or more of several hypotheses.

‘Qui se ressemble s'assemble’: le proverbe exprime bien les forces d'attirance et de convenance mutuelles qui agglomèrent peuples, sociétés et communautés. Ces forces sont bien connues des sociologues dont la science consiste précisément à analyser les lois de cohésion ou de répulsion qui régissent les groupes, à identifier intérêts, idéaux, totems ou principes qui aimantent les assemblages. Sur ce point la Novi Testamenti Societas n'échappe pas à la règle.

Writing about 177 AD Celsus claimed that Christians and Jews quarrel with one another very foolishly. ‘Their wrangle with one another about Christ is no different from that called in the proverb a fight about the shadow of an ass.’ Celsus continues: ‘There is nothing worthy of attention in the dispute of Jews and Christians with one another.’

In der Arbeit der Seminargruppe 8 soll nach ‘Paulus und Jesus’ unter dem besonderen Aspekt von ‘Grundproblemen der Beziehungen Pauli zur Jesus-tradition’ gefragt werden.1 Gibt es zu diesem so viel diskutierten Thema noch neue Aspekte, die eine erneute Diskussion lohnen? Vor allem: Was macht das Thema erneut so aktuell, daß sich eine Arbeitsgruppe unserer SNTS gerade ihm widmen will?

Hebrews is the most accomplished writing in the New Testament. The unknown author's command of the art of rhetoric is universally recognized. He was evidently well educated by the standards of Hellenistic education of the time. His use of Greek is more cultivated than that of Paul, and he makes greater use of rhetorical devices than Luke. Spicq gives an impressive list of the stylistic features and rhetorical devices that are to be found in Hebrews. But every reader can appreciate the fine style and persuasive power of the author's writing.

Since the author of Hebrews locates his readers in Israel's wilderness period in Heb 3.1–4.11 and 11.8–39, the discussion of παιδɛία in 12.5–13 should be interpreted in light of early Jewish conceptions of Israel's time in the wilderness. Confirmation that this is the correct context in which to understand 12.5–13 will be found in Deuteronomy, Wisdom, Philo, and Josephus, all of whom, like Hebrews, consider endurance of the disciplinary period of the wilderness necessary in order to inherit the promised rest. For this reason, Hebrews warns of Esau, the paradigmatic example of the undisciplined person who forfeits his inheritance.

The words ‘Jewish-Christian’ and ‘Jewish Christianity’ are used in several different senses within the field of New Testament research. Some scholars—no doubt oneself included on occasion—use them with varying significance in the same article or book, so that the reader is either led astray, or discovers that the words do not have the same meaning every time they occur. The aim of the following is to draw attention to this fact, of which perhaps not everyone is aware, and to attempt to reach a clearer usage of the term Jewish Christianity; and I shall therefore now try to formulate and answer certain questions that may throw light on the conditions described by the terms in question, and on the use of these terms.

Why does the tide ‘Son of David’ occur more frequently in Matthew than in the other Gospels? Do these more numerous references serve any real purpose in Matthew? It is not enough merely to say that they occur because the First Gospel was written by a Jewish Christian (or Christians), for the Fourth Gospel does not have the phrase at all. Other than the discussion of Christ's Davidic sonship which is to be found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt. xxii. 41–5; Mark xii. 35–37a; Luke xx. 41–4), Mark, followed by Luke-Acts, has the phrase ‘Son of David’ only in the twofold appeal to Jesus for healing by a single blind beggar (Mark x. 47, 48; Luke xviii. 37, 39). Matthew, on the other hand, calls Jesus the Son of David in his opening sentence (i. I), follows it up with a genealogy to prove it (i. 2–16), alludes to it at least twice more in the infancy narrative (i. 20 ii. 6), and records the title as related to Jesus during his ministry seven times in the mouths of others on five separate occasions (ix. 27; xii. 23; xv. 22; xx. 30, 31; xxi. 9, 15) where, as will be shown, it is used messianically.

Probably no detail of the account of Jesus' baptism has evoked so diverse a range of suggestions as has the dove. That the critics did not invent the problem is shown by the ancient texts themselves. (a) Mark's report is ambiguous: (Jesus) είδεν…τό πνε⋯μα ώσ περιστεράν καταβαῖνον ε;ἰσ αὐτόν, for ‘as a dove’ could modify either the noun that precedes it or the participle that follows. (b) Matthew has not completely removed the ambiguity: ειδεν πνε⋯μα Φεο⋯ καταβαῑνον ὡσε⋯ περισερ⋯ν έρχòμενον έπʾ αὐτν (c) But Luke is more explicit: καταβ⋯ναι τò πνε⋯μα τò ἃγιον σωματικῷ εἲδει ὡσ περιστερ⋯ν ⋯π’ αὐτòν. ((d) According to the Fourth Gospel, the Baptist reports that he saw the Spirit καταβαῑνον ὡσ περιστερ⋯ν ⋯ξ οὐρανο⋯ κα⋯ ἔμεινεν ⋯π’ αὐτν and that previously he had been alerted to expect such a phenomenon (though the dove is not mentioned in the report of what God had previously said). (e) The Ebionite Gospel says Jesus saw τò πνε⋯μα τò ἂγιον ⋯ν εἴδι περιδτρ⋯σ κατελθοὑσησ κασ εἰσ αὐτòν, thereby answering the question of what happened to it. (f) However, the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Nazarene Gospel) has no dove at all but instead speaks of ‘the whole fount of the Holy Spirit’: descendit fons omnis Spiritus Sancti et requievit super eum, etc. These ancient variations, and the diverse textual readings, reveal that there is no single tradition of the dove, and that its meaning was problematic from the start. Nor has modern scholarship, equipped with tools and collected data, been persuasive in its understandings. Nevertheless, the history of interpretation can close doors to unfruitful hypotheses and move the discussion of Jesus' baptism forward.

In this article I shall discuss a subject which, to my knowledge, has never been considered before – namely, whether Jude 5–7 presents Jesus as the Angel of the Lord. A final solution to the vexed problem of the varia lectio (or variae lectiones) in v. 5 is not of paramount importance in the following pages, for even if it could be agreed that (ò) κύρως was the original reading, it would have to be explained why a copyist could feel able to substitute ΊησοṺς for ‘Kyrios’. Some see ‘Jesus’ as the result of a mere ‘transcriptional oversight (―KC being taken for ―IC)’, but text-critical conjectures are to be dismissed if a reading can be given a reasonable meaning, and the same principle would have to apply to an assumed substitution.

Since the publication of Paul Schubert's article, ‘The Structure and Significance of Luke 24’, considerable attention has been paid to what Schubert called Luke's ‘proof-from-prophecy theology’ and what others have identified as the pattern of prophecy/promise and fulfilment. Whatever term is used, it is generally agreed that Luke–Acts presents Jesus' life and the beginning of the church as the fulfilment of God's design for salvation as announced through his prophets. Yet most discussions of this aspect of Luke's theology have focused on Luke's interest in showing that Jesus and the earliest Christians fulfilled OT prophecy, while less attention has been paid to the predictions made in the narrative itself.Even less attention has been paid to the relationship between the fulfilment of OT prophecy and the fulfilment of these narrative predictions. This study will show how the narrative predictions in Luke–Acts contribute to Luke's theology of fulfilment and discuss the ways in which these predictions interface with Luke's emphasis on the fulfilment of OT prophecy.

The three Pastoral letters present themselves as Paul's personal correspondence, but their contents would fit better the genre of a community letter. The pseudonymous author has forged them as personal letters from ‘Paul’, because he had to reckon with his readers' critique concerning their authenticity, above all with critical scrutiny directed at possible contradictions in their circumstances of origin. Through the genre of a private letter he has attempted to concoct previously unknown letter-situations, and to make understandable the late discovery of the letters. At the same time, through the construction of three letters he has made a claim for general validity in respect of geography and time, so as to spread the ‘right meaning’ of the statements in the Corpus Paulinum.

This paper explores the boundaries between fact and fiction in ancient literature. The historians effectively created the concept of ‘fiction’ in Greek literature by defining what could be incontrovertibly established as ‘fact’ by accepted rationalistic criteria. Anything beyond these limits (tales involving distant places, or the distant past, or divine intervention) was widely perceived as belonging to the realm of ‘fiction’. To readers from this background, Acts would fall uncomfortably on the boundary: much of the narrative would sound like fiction, but there is a disturbing undercurrent which suggests that it might after all be intended as fact.