The Greek word έξήγησις means ‘explanation’ or ‘interpretation’. When applied to the Bible, it would appear to mean ‘explication de texte’. However, Biblical exegetes are often in the habit of contrasting what they do with ‘eisegesis’, i.e. the imposition of ‘subjective’ meanings onto the text. This contrast suggests that the meaning derived by exegesis is gotten ‘out of’ the text, where it is thought to reside, by means of the ‘correct’ exegetical methods, of which the exegete is the master. Like Philip the Evangelist, the exegete responds to the plea for help implied in the reader's befuddled question, ‘How can I [understand], unless someone guides me?’ (Acts 8.31).

In recent research, the claim has been made that Paul's statements about the law in Galatians are often misread from the perspective of the post-reformation law/gospel debate. The thesis of this article is that Galatians has also suffered from a different kind of misreading, that is a reading from a specific perspective of the Corinthian correspondence and which mistakenly assumes that the main issue in Galatians is a defense of Paul's apostolic authority. It will be argued that the main focus is on the nature of Paul's gospel and, therefore, on the theological basis on which it rests. For this purpose, a number of arguments will be presented relating to the function of Gal 1. 10–11 and 2. 20, both critical transitions in the structure of the letter. These arguments are based on a pragmatic analysis of the letter as a whole, which cannot be discussed here in any detail. It should be stressed, however, that for the determining of the rhetorical function of any subsection of the letter, an analysis of the entire text as a communicative unity is essential. Therefore it is necessary to explain certain methodological implications of the approach which will be followed here.

That blindness should be a theme in the Johannine literature need cause no surprise; with the dualism of light and darkness and with the emphasis on what has been seen, witnessed and believed, the surprise is rather that the theme is not more prevalent. Only at two places in the Gospel and one in the Epistles is the language of blindness explicitly used, in John 9, John 12. 40 and 1 John 2. 11. However, since each of these can be seen as a focal point or interpretative key to the Johannine tradition the theme could be held to present in microcosm the history of the Johannine community. Chapter 9, the healing of the blind man, has played a central role in recent reconstructions of that history, while the reflection on the effects of Jesus's public ministry in 12. 37–50, before he turns away to address ‘his own’, invites similar treatment. Finally, the redirection towards internal opposition of language originally aimed outwards has long been seen as a mark of 1 John and as central to its interpretation. The exploration of the theme may serve in the same way to test in microcosm the presuppositions and results of such reconstruction. It also does more than this, for the imagery of blindness is by no means unique to John and raises clearly the question of the origins as well as of the context of Johannine thought.

Zwei Gedenkjahre fallen zusammen, der 250. Geburtstag der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen – um dieses Jubiläums willen hat ja die George-August-Universität unseren Kongreß nach Göttingen eingeladen – und der 100. Geburtstag des Göttinger Systematischen Theologen Friedrich Gogarten (+ 1967), der zusammen mit Karl Barth und Rudolf Bultmann zu den Initiatoren der Dialektischen Theologie gehört. Grund genug, Ihnen heute einige Gedanken von und über Gogarten vorzutragen. Ich gestehe Ihnen aber auch offen, daß mich noch ein weiterer Grund bewogen hat, heute vor Ihnen das Thema Gogarten auszubreiten. Ich meine nämlich, daß unsere Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas noch etwas gutzumachen hat. Auf ihrer Jahrestagung 1984 in Basel wurde nämlich nicht des 100. Geburtstags Rudolf Bultmanns, ihres ehemaligen Präsidenten, der auch einer der größten, wenn nicht sogar der größte deutsche Neutestamentler unseres Jahrhunderts war, in einem eigenen Vortrag gedacht. So möchte ich heute insofern ein wenig Wiedergutmachung leisten, als ich über einen Mann rede, der zusammen mit Bultmann zu den ersten Männern der Dialektischen Theologie gehörte. Mit seinem Aufsatz ‘Zwischen den Zeiten’ von 1920 und seinem im selben Jahr auf der Wartburg gehaltenen Vortrag ‘Die Krisis unserer Kultur’ hatte Gogarten maßgeblich Anteil an den ersten programmatischen Formulierungen ihrer theologischen Intention. Nach dem Zerfall der ‘Arbeits- und Kampfgemeinschaft der dialektischen Theologie’ stand Gogarten mit Bultmann in der Front gegen Karl Barth. Die theologische Potenz Gogartens kann kaum überschätzt

Gehenna, we all know, is a Hebrew word which means hell. It appears often in Jewish texts of the Hellenistic and Roman periods as well as in the New Testament. In this paper we hope to show that the use of this word in Matthew and Luke, when analyzed in the context of Jewish notions of retribution, offers us an important key to understanding Matthew's and Luke's beliefs concerning eschatology, retribution, and their interrelationship.

The ‘enigmatic ending’ of Acts continues to baffle the exegetes. Not the least of its difficulties is the status of ‘the Jews’ after Paul's peculiarly solemn pronouncement of Isa 6. 9–10 against a ‘closed’ and ‘hardened’ people (Acts 28. 26–27). Coming as it does as a climax to the equally ponderous pronouncements of judgment in Acts 13. 46 and 18. 6, for many scholars the cumulative, three-fold impact of this indictment resounds a note of finality, of foreclosure upon Israel which consequently consummates an era and looks ahead almost exclusively to a Gentile church. The two leading clusters of opinion expressing this understanding are those associated with E. Haenchen – viz., that repentance for Israel by the end of Acts is de facto now over, with Gentiles replacing Jews as the people of God – or with J. Jervell – that a core of repenting Jews constitutes a restored Israel which, along with increasing numbers of Gentiles, by the end of chapter 28 has completed its mission to unrepenting Jews who no longer have a right to the name ‘Israel’ or ‘people of God’.

Much of the scholarly attention given the Thessalonian epistles has been devoted to various debates. These polemics have included the epistles' authenticity, with some arguing that 1 Thess 2. 13–16 and Thessalonians are post-Pauline, often by appealing to letter structure. Lack of agreement exists as well with the interpretation of Paul's eschatology–the letters' main concern - and difference of opinion also characterizes the function of Paul's apology in 1 Thess 2. 1–12 and his paraenesis, particularly in 1 Thess 4. 1–12. While scholars have actively pursued the pros and cons of these issues, most have been rather passive when it comes to discussing ‘the idle’ (l Thess 4. 11–12; 5. 14; 2 Thess 3. 6–13) – the second most significant theme in the epistles. They usually continue the traditional eschatological explanation for the origin of the problem. This study will survey the history of this interpretation, investigate 2 Thess 3. 6–13 and recommend that a social explanation best satisfies the evidence. This study also seeks to demonstrate the fallacy of explaining historical phenomena from just theological structures and the importance of the interaction between the world of ideas and social structures for interpretation – the importance of which has been shown by redaction criticism's concern for the Sitz im Leben and by recent social descriptions of early Christianity.

Since World War II, the chief method by which scholars have studied the Gospels has been redaction criticism. More recently, however, literary, or narrative, criticism has also been on the rise. If one analyzes these methods, one quickly discovers that peculiar to each is a ‘model of readership’ that dictates who the ‘primary reader’ (reader or hearer of first reception) of a Gospel is and how he or she relates to the materials being presented in the Gospel. The purpose of this article is multiple: to point out who the primary reader in each of these methods is conceived to be; to take note of the role the primary reader is thought to play in the reading process; and, perhaps most importantly, to assess the adequacy of the model of readership that characterizes each method. To give the discussion focus, I shall restrict scrutiny to the Gospel according to Matthew.

The variants found in the Greek text of Acts that are included in this paper have been selected for three reasons: 1) They all contain readings which have the combined support of the Byzantine majority text and papyri. These have been taken from the lists to be found in Harry A. Sturz, The Byzantine Text-Type and New Testament Textual Criticism (Nashville, Camden, New York: Thomas Nelson, 1984). 2) They have a bearing on a recent study of Acts by M-E. Boismard and A. Lamouille, Le Texte Occidentale des Actes des Apôtres: Reconstruction et Réhabilitation (Paris: 1984), to be referred to hereafter as B + L. In their work B + L print as Lucan two versions of Acts, the Alexandrian (TA) and the Western (TO). 3) They show differing types of scribal emendation.

For some time the present writer has been impressed by certain verbal and phraseological correspondences between a number of ancient inscriptions, relating to temple building and public works, and a rather extensive metaphor in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. This paper will address some parallel features of form and content shared by a particular inscription of the 4th century B.C. from Arcadian Tegea and the Pauline metaphor (1 Cor 3. 9b–17), features which offer tangible assistance in the interpretation of the latter.

George W. Knight III has continued the scholarly inquiry into the word αὐθεντέωand its use in 1 Tim 2. 12 with his well researched 1984 NTS article ‘ΑϒΘΕΝΤΕΩ in Reference to Women in 1 Timothy 2. 12’. It is a study using what scholars have used until now as their main reference tools, that is, Greek lexicons and their referenced citations. Since that time, however, there has opened up an additional tool for linguistic scholarship, the computer database. The ‘Thesaurus Linguae Graecae’ computer database project (developed and housed at the University of California – Irvine) is presently becoming available for scholarly use and it has been consulted on the strange philological development of this same Greek word αὐθεντέω (with its cognates αὐθέντης and αὐθεντία and its solitary NT usage in 1 Tim 2. 12.

The importance of the OT theophanies in relation to NT conceptions of the End has never been sufficiently realized. Again and again the prophets and psalmists spoke not merely of the Day of the Lord but they spelled this out in terms of a divine coming. Thus in Mic 1. 3 we read that ‘the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down …’ Psa 96. 13 declares, ‘He cometh to judge the earth.’

The saying of the Mote and Beam (properly Chaff and Pole) has caused some difficulty; but alas an intricate and subtle saying, paradoxical (not absurd), has been domesticated by being seen as a trite commonplace. The obvious questions are why only one eye is involved: for only if both were affected could a foreign body not be extricated; and why does the seer of the Chaff have to have a Pole in his eye; why, again, does he take the initiative, offering to attend to his ‘brother’, whereas in a case of a foreign body the initiative comes from the sufferer; why is it assumed that a ‘casting out’ will occur (έκβάλλειν has a very sombre semantic scope); and whence comes that grotesque Pole (conventionally ‘beam’)? The answers must be sought in many quarters, viz. (1) a popular saying known in more than one culture, (2) the behaviour of the eye, (3) a common Jewish cluster of idioms, (4) the pious ideal in Israel on the subject of rebuke, reproof, and (5) the Law and the Prophets. Our saying has languished because information from these quarters has not been combined.