From a practical standpoint, it is a great advantage to ‘kill two birds with one stone’. But it is rare indeed to be able to confront and accomplish three significant tasks in one unified effort. That, however, is exactly what this slender treatment proposes to do: tackle the questions of structure, unity and theme that have long haunted the study of Philippians essentially in ‘one fell swoop’.

The focus of this investigation is on two female characters in John's Gospel, Mary of Bethany and Mary of Magdala. Key are the development and unfolding of these characters within the passion narrative and their relation to other female and male characters. According to Culpepper,‘… one of the most interesting elements of any story is the cast of characters’, and: ‘Much of the power of the Fourth Gospel comes from its vivid characterizations and their effects upon the reader.’ Nevertheless, not much attention has been paid so far to characterization in John (and to characterization in general), and female characters have been even more neglected and treated like stepdaughters. This holds true also for female characters in the Gospel of Mark, which has been the focus of interest in narrative-critical studies.

This article identifies two previously unnoticed items of textual evidence that support the view that 1 Cor 14.34–5 (‘Let women keep silence in the churches …’) was an interpolation. I conclude that Bishop Victor ordered the rewriting of 1 Cor 14.34–40 in the margin of Codex Fuldensis (see photograph on page 261) with w. 34–5 omitted and that there is a text-critical siglum that indicates the scribe's awareness of a textual variant at the beginning of 1 Cor 14.34 in Codex Vaticanus (see photograph on page 262). This text-critical evidence, plus the evidence from the non-Western Greek ms. 88* and Vulgate ms. Reginensis with w. 34–5 transposed after v. 40, makes an already strong case for interpolation even stronger. The text-critical sigla in Vaticanus open a new window onto the early history of the NT text. While tangential to the main argument of this article, this may well be its most important contribution.

No one who is at all familiar with New Testament studies can fail to be fascinated by the extraordinary range of problems surrounding the so-called pericope de adultera, which appears in some translations as John 7.53–8.11 but which ‘has no fixed place in our witnesses’. ‘By a happy chance’, as the late Barnabas Lindars put it, ‘this fragment from an unknown work has been preserved in the MS tradition of John.’ Its absence from most reliable MSS, and the diversity of readings within the minority of MSS which include it at some point, are sufficiently problematic to prod the creative imagination of critical scholarship into remarkable productivity from time to time, and any new MS discovery is sure to reinvig-orate debate on this particular cause célèbre.

Recently, several New Testament scholars have examined the lists of hardships found in the Pauline epistles and their relation to similar lists in other ancient writings. For example, in Cracks in an Earthen Vessel, John Fitzgerald interprets several ‘catalogues of hardships’ in the Corinthian correspondence based upon his study of the ancient, Greco-Roman literary practice of compiling lists of hardships. Fitzgerald seeks ‘a clarification of the forms and functions of peristasis catalogues in general and Paul's in particular’. Similarly, Martin Ebner seeks an understanding of the forms, motifs, and functions of hardship lists throughout Paul's writings as his subtitle (Untersuchungen zu Form, Motivik und Funktion der Peristasenkataloge bei Paulus) indicates. Yet while adding to the span of knowledge of peristasis catalogues, both Fitzgerald and Ebner have largely ignored important aspects of the form and function of hardship lists in some ancient writings. Furthermore, a crucial connection between the ancient, Greco-Roman use of peristasis catalogues and Paul's apostleship of weakness as exemplified in 2 Cor 11.23b–33 has been insufficiently analyzed.

The identity of Paul's opponents in Philippi continues to elude historical illumination. It is usually assumed that the persons referred to in Phil 1.15–17, who ‘preach Christ from envy and rivalry’ (v. 15) and attempt to afflict Paul in his imprisonment (v. 17), are with Paul in Ephesus (or wherever Paul is thought to be imprisoned). Attempts to discern the identity of the opponents in Philippi, therefore, usually focus on the teachings in 3.2–21. Most attention is given to the warnings against ‘dogs’, ‘workers of evil’, and ‘mutilation of the flesh’ in 3.2, and against ‘enemies of the cross’ in 3.18–19, which seem to represent direct evidence for at least the presence of opponents. These warnings are followed by affirmations (3.3–16 and 20–1) which are assumed to distinguish Paul's own understanding of Christian existence from that of his opponents, and thus to reflect the views of the opponents in ‘indirect’ ways. This evidence, however, has been worked over again and again with no consensus regarding the identity of the supposed opponents.

The prevailing view among modern critics and translators of the NT is that the adjective μονογενής in John 1.14, 18; 3.16, 18 and 1 John 4.9 means ‘only’ or ‘single’. Against this consensus several authors have recently re-argued the case for interpreting the adjective as ‘only-begotten’, claiming that it does after all include the notion of derivation or birth. By a thorough examination of the use of μονογενής in Greek literature I hope, however, to show that the adjective's usual meaning is in fact ‘unique’ or ‘only’, ‘single’. It will furthermore be argued that this sense best suits the context of the term's occurrences in John as well. Finally, I shall try to show how the interpretation of the Johannine μονογενής as ‘only-begotten’ originates in, and is the result of, developments in Christology which do not antedate the second century AD.

Two areas of biblical study identified as ‘growth points’ are the sociological and narrative approaches to early Christianity and its literature. Although these two approaches may be the offspring of different departments within the university, they are intricately related: narratives relate to a social context to the extent that they reinforce or subvert socio-perspectives. This project explores the interface of the two, examining one aspect of the narrative of the Fourth Gospel and considering ways in which it might have functioned within the social context of Johannine Christianity. While some literary critics draw high walls around a text to contain the ‘text world’ and keep it from outside contamination, others work on the basis that narratives are often referential, pointing to other narratives and building their own storyline in relation to them in some fashion. The latter approach is the one taken here, as certain points in the Johannine storyline are considered in relation to two important stories within early Christian tradition and within Judaism. The starting-point for this investigation is the feeding miracle in John 6.

The nature of the ‘Colossian heresy’ remains obscure. It has gnostic features, but ChristianGnosticism is usually dated to the second century. It has elements of Judaism, but we know nothingof first-century Jewish gnosis. It may be a syncretistic ‘philosophy’, but such a description is barren, and explains nothing. It may be a kind of mysticism, but again the idea is difficult todefine, and the picture is left vague. I am proposing in this article to draw a comparison with anearly Gnostic document, the Apocryphon Johannis, which has clear Jewish roots; and to explain Colossians as Paul's response to a Jewish-Christian countermission which preached a myth close to, but distinct from, that in Apoc. Joh.

Because ancient writers spoke as they wrote, their texts were understood to have oracular quality. Authors, limited by the convention of scriptio continua (the practice of writing words, frequently abbreviated, without spaces and punctuation), were careful to supply their readers with aural clues of textual structure, clarifying their emphases by various means of repetition. Readers listened for the writer's ‘voice’: for clues of aural structures – rhetorical devices (anaphora, inclusio, antithesis, etc.), for enthymemes and topoi in deductive reasoning and for examples in inductive reasoning – even as they voiced the words of the text. ‘Reading’, as Paul J. Achtemeier points out, ‘was … oral performance whenever it occurred and in whatever circumstances. Late antiquity knew nothing of the “silent, solitary reader”’ (original emphasis).

Timothy 3.11 has long been recognized as an anomalous element in the discussion of deacons in 3.8–13, to which topic the author of the Pastorals has turned his attention as the second of the two offices described in the first half of chapter 3. Interpreters have struggled to identify the women addressed in this verse. Answers have scarcely been lacking, responses notable for their variety and for the unspoken assumptions delimiting the possibilities entertained. This paper, by scrutinizing the syntax of 3.11 and the structure of the passage on διάκονοι, ‘deacons’, discerns new evidence for the identification of these women as partners in ministry with the explicitly named men of the passage.

Das zum lukanischen Sondergut zählende Gleichnis vom ungerechten Verwalter gehört zu den schwierigsten Passagen des Neuen Testaments. Seit der frühen Kirche haben sich Interpreten vergeblich um eine sinnvolle Deutung dieses Gleichnisses bem¨ht. Als Crux erwies sich vor allem Vers 8a: Warum lobt der Herr die Klugheit seines Verwalters, obwohl dieser betrügerisch und ungerecht handelte?