Although it is widely recognised that οἱ πιστεύοντες was a self-designation of the early Christ groups, this is not reflected in scholarship on Romans and Galatians, where the participle is usually taken as a generic substantive. Such a rendering obscures the force of Paul's rhetoric, which presupposes the status of οἱ πιστεύοντες as a shared self-designation and mobilises it in an effort to naturalise Paul's claims regarding the exclusive justificatory value of his addressees’ πίστις. Accordingly, in Rom 3.22 and Gal 3.22, where οἱ πιστεύοντες appears in close connection with πίστις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, it is unlikely that the latter phrase designates Christ's own faithfulness.

This article examines Paul's use of scriptural allusion in 1 Cor 11.7–12, highlighting underappreciated echoes of Zerubbabel's discourse in 1 Esdras 4.13–41. Paul puts Genesis 1, Genesis 2 and 1 Esdras 4 into conversation to support what may strike many today as a tension-fraught position. He assumes a patriarchal gender hierarchy (1 Cor 11.7–9) but also affirms woman's ‘authority’ over her head, albeit tendentiously (11.10). Rather than resolving the resulting tension, Paul uses additional, counterbalancing allusions to redirect attention away from the question of status, towards recognition of interdependence ‘in the Lord’ and shared origin in God (11.11–12).

Several recent studies have argued for the importance of democratic practices and ideology for a proper understanding of the issues and debates reflected in Paul's Corinthian correspondence. This new perspective stands in tension with older scholarship which emphasised the role of patronage in the structure and dynamics of the house churches that made up the ekklēsia of Christ-believers at Corinth. This essay draws upon new research into the political sociology of Greek cities in the early Empire, which highlights evidence of the continuing vitality of democratic assemblies (ekklēsiai) in the first and second centuries, despite the limitations imposed upon local autonomy by Roman rule. Special attention is devoted to the epigraphic evidence of first-century Corinth, whose political institutions and social relations were those of a Roman colony. The essay seeks to ascertain whether the politics of the Christ groups mimicked those of the city in which they were located or represented an alternative.

The debate over the translation of μαλακοί and ἀρσενοκοῖται in 1 Cor 6.9 can and should be settled by a non-polemical and complete survey of the material now that comprehensive databases of ancient texts are available. The translation of ἀρσενοκοῖται by Tertullian, several Vetus Latina MSS and the Vulgate has the best evidential foundation. To establish the meaning of this term one has to turn to etymology and usage, a semantic domain of terms for sexual intercourse, and patristic and classical texts. Once the semantics of ἀρσενοκοίτης is better grounded, the ancient Latin translation of μαλακοί becomes the most probable.

The view expressed in BDAG that Hebrais refers not to Hebrew but to ‘the Aramaic spoken at that time in Palestine’ derives from a century-old argument that because Hebrais could mean either Aramaic or Hebrew, and since the average person could not understand Hebrew, Hebrais must mean Aramaic. This article challenges the view that Hebrais(ti) could mean Aramaic (1) by using an exhaustive list of all instances to show that Aramaic was consistently distinguished from Hebrew, and (2) by explaining the evidence to the contrary: Aramaic-looking words in John, Josephus and Philo that are said to be Hebraisti.