The theme is one that could easily be allowed to develop into a history of the apostolic age. I hope to keep it within reasonable bounds by approaching it in the main from one angle only. Like most of the great figures of the past, Paul is known to us both as a historical and as a legendary figure, and it is my intention in this paper to consider in a small way not only how the real Paul and the legendary Paul illuminate each other, but also how, between them, they cast a measure of light upon an obscure period.

Der letzte Aufsatz in dieser Reihe (‘Neue Neutestamentliche Papyri II’) erschien im Jahrgang XII, 1966. Er behandelte vor allem die grundsätzlichen Fragen, welche durch 75 ausgelöst worden waren. Damit waren die Papyri aufgearbeitet, welche in der ‘Kurzgefaßten Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments’ verzeichnet waren. Die Liste reichte zwar bis 76, aber über diesen Papyrus – aus dem 6. Jahrhundert stammend und Joh. iv. 9, 12 enthaltend – war nichts besonderes zu sagen.

Die Weise, in der man mit der Rezeption königlicher Messiastraditionen im NT zu rechnen pflegt, bringt große methodische Schwierigkeiten mit sich. Von der alten Konzeption der ‘Spiritualisierung’ nationaler Erwartungen (Baur, Wernle etc.) hat man prinzipiell noch immer nicht abrücken können: Das Maß, in dem nationale Eschatologie christianisiert worden sein soll, entzieht sich historischer und soziologischer Erklärbarkeit. F. Hahn kann die Verwendung des jüdischen Messiastitels nur auf dem Umweg über sein Schema erklären, nach dem derartige Titel zunächst auf den Wiederkommenden bezogen worden seien: ‘Der jüdische Messiastitel war für Jesus und die Urgemeinde als solcher nicht tragbar’–das sei nur nach einem längeren Prozeß der Christianisierung möglich gewesen, in dem der Messiasbegriff besonders mit dem Leidensgedanken verbunden worden sei; Ursprung der erst nach der älteren Zeit einsetzenden Entwicklung sei die Spottinschrift am Kreuz gewesen.–Zu den Einwänden, die Ph. Vielhauer gegen diese Konzeption vorgebracht hat, ist hinzuzufügen, daß die These von der Hinrichtung Jesu als eines Messiasprätendenten (Kreuzesinschrift) angesichts des Befundes bei Mk ein Zirkelschluß ist. Denn woher weiß man, wie der Titel ‘König der Juden’ zu verstehen ist–und in welchem Zusammenhang steht dieser Titel mit den sonst bei Mk. berichteten Auftreten Jesu? Überdies ersetzt das von F. Hahn konstruierte Schema der allmählichen Übertragung der Titel auf den Irdischen nicht einen historischen Nachweis, wie es überhaupt möglich gewesen sei, derartige Titel zu applizieren. Enteschatologisierung allein erklärt noch gar nichts. Vor allem hat Hahn die Kategorie der ‘Wiederkehr’ Jesu zum Gericht nicht historisch verständlich machen können. Hier handelt es sich aber deutlich um eine ‘prophetische’ Kategorie (Vgl. Anm. 142): Der Verkünder kommt als Zeuge wieder. – Ebensowenig wie F. Hahn kann aber auch Ph. Vielhauer die Applikation jüdischer Messianologie auf Jesus erklären: Er rechnet mit einer totalen Umkehrung des jüdischen Messiasbegriffes, bzw.

Au commencement de l'exégèse critique est la foi. Les relations de l'une à l'autre sont réelles, bien qu'elles-mêmes soient distinctes. Afin qu'elles restent soigneusement distinguées tout en étant connexes, et que leurs niveaux d'activité propre demeurent rigoureusement séparés, il est utile de revenir parfois sur des choses connues.

Our knowledge of the corpus of extra-biblical and extra-rabbinical Aramaic texts has largely been the acquisition of the last seventy-five to a hundred years. Through numerous discoveries in Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Persia and the Indus Valley we have come to know what various phases of Aramaic were like from the tenth century B.C. until roughly the eighth century A.D. This knowledge has enabled us to situate the biblical Aramaic of Ezra and Daniel in a matrix similar to that provided by extra-biblical Hebrew texts for biblical Hebrew.

One reason why the New Testament language was once thought to constitute a backwater from the main stream of Greek literature, and was allotted a place of its own, was that it apparently differed so much from the literature of its period and created no formal precedents in style for later Christian or secular literature. The matter is well discussed by N. W. Lund, who refers to Franz Overbeck's opinion and the subsequent views of E. Norden as far as the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles are concerned. Opinion during the present century no longer sees the NT language as a backwater but stresses its affinities with the vernacular. However, one may feel concerned that the literary elements in this language should not be overlooked. With a message appealing to all humanity, the NT not surprisingly is sometimes colloquial and even uses slang in one or two words, so that it is little wonder if there is a tendency at the present time to assume that its language is much closer to the non-literary Koine than to the cultured Greek of the period.

The American scholar John Knox is noted for his defence of the thesis that the canonical gospel of Luke reached its final form after it had passed through the hands of the heretic Marcion in the second century. This thesis, hinted at by the scholar Semler in the eighteenth century and argued by F. C. Baur in the nineteenth century, was again stated by John Knox in an article in 1939 and in a book, Marcion and the New Testament, in 1942..

Die Frage nach dem religionsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der Perikope von der Hochzeit zu Kana ist noch immer nicht zufriedenstellend beantwortet.

Extensive literature about the Temptations provides a collection of parallels from the history of religion, biblical material and a wide range of individual observations.

Das kleine Gleichnis von den ungleichen Söhnen in Matth. xxi. 28–32 hat in der Forschung hauptsächlich wegen seiner verwickelten Textüberlieferung Beachtung gefunden. Es reizte bedeutende Außenseiter wie J. Wellhausen, A. Merx und E. Hirsch zu Rehabilitationsversuchen der ‘westlichen’ Überlieferung, ohne daß deren stark psychologisierende Überlegungen, wie sie ähnlich schon Hieronymus angestellt hatte, überzeugen konnten. Auch der neueste Rekonstruktionsversuch von J. R. Michaels, der auf die Kombination sekundärer Lesarten hinausläuft, widerspricht allen Regeln textkritischer Vernunft. Unsicher bleibt, ob man mit Alands Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (1967) den Jasager oder mit dem Greek New Testament den Neinsager voranstellen soll; für den Sinn ist dies unerheblich. Über die Herkunft der Parabel machte man sich meist keine Gedanken; die Bezeichnung ‘Sondergut’ schien zu genügen. Auf die Logienquelle wollten A. Plummer, A. Loisy, C. G. Montefiore und – sehr zurückhaltend – E. Hirsch unser Gleichnis zurückführen, während E. Lohmeyer seine heute vergessene Pais-Quelle als Fundort anbot.

The fundamental outlook in what follows is that there is a fairly consistent, compact, yet expanding and developing promise tradition which is founded on the promises to David (and his descendants) in the Hebrew Scriptures; that this tradition in certain ways has been rejuvenated and strengthened in the early Christian period; and that it enters Christianity in connection with the application of these promises to Jesus' resurrection apart from the title Son of David itself, a title whose acceptance and adaptation in early Christianity appears on both historical and redaction critical grounds to be relatively late. The hypothesis is not totally new. My intention will be to put some older information into what will hopefully be an illuminating perspective, to draw out some implications from the perspective itself, and to nail down the hypothesis of the use of Old Testament texts in connection with the resurrection of Jesus a little tighter. I have not undertaken here to trace out a history of tradition in the New Testament such as can now be found in C. Burger's excellent study, Jesus als Davidssohn, though the direction of the paper will support the legitimacy of his starting point in early Christian formulae.

The role of St Paul's co-workers may be inferred in some measure from the designations or ‘titles’ given to them. When used of colleagues in the Christian mission, the term ‘brothers’ often means preachers although it may include travelling companions (συνεκδήμοι) and others who are not necessarily engaged in ‘religious’ functions. ‘Co-worker’ (συνεργός) also appears to have a rather broad connotation. But it refers most frequently to teachers and preachers, those who are deserving of esteem and of financial support. The designation διάκονος (‘minister’) emphasizes these functions even more. Some of the terms or their cognates – άπόστολος, διακονία – are specifically mentioned by Paul as charisms, gifts from the risen Christ.. In brief, Paul's co-workers were charismatically endowed persons. This kind of authorization was, of course, the presupposition of leadership in the early church quite apart from the meaning of the ‘titles’. However, with reference to the co-workers engaged in preaching and teaching, one may be more specific. They appear to belong to a category that the Apostle calls πνευματικοί, spiritual ones.

It has become almost a commonplace in New Testament scholarship to attribute to Christian prophets in the early Church a creative role in respect of sayings which the Gospel tradition presents as dominical utterances. The authority, among modern scholars, for this view is to be found in the formcritical analyses and conclusions of Rudolf Bultmann. Christian tradition, he affirms, took over certian Jewish materials and put them on the lips of Jesus (e.g. the Marcan Apocalypse): the Christian community also revised or reworked elements from older traditions (e.g. the interpretation of the Sign of Jonah in connection with the person of Jesus, Matt. xii. 40) and even formed logia which reflect its own interests and concerns. Such logia are ‘inauthentic’ (in the sense that they are not genuine dominical sayings) and, according to Bultmann, they may originally have gained currency as utterances of the Spirit in the Church, without their ascription to Jesus being initially intended. Sayings like Rev. xvi. 5 (in which the risen Christ speaks) and Rev. iii. 20 show clearly the process of the creation (or, reformulation) of such logia (den Prozeβ der Neubildung solcher Herrenworte). These sayings would only gradually (erst allmählich) have been regarded as prophetic words of the historical Jesus. ‘The Church drew no distinction between such utterances by Christian prophets and the sayings of Jesus in the tradition, for the reason that even the dominical sayings in the tradition were not the pronouncements of a past authority, but sayings of the risen Lord who is always a contemporary for the Church.’

In 1830 F. C. Baur tried to demonstrate that the early Church was split up into Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, but more than a hundred years later H. Köster wrote: ‘…a label such as, for example, “Jewish-Christians” is misleading insofar as everyone in the first generation of Christianity was a Jewish-Christian anyway…’. In spite of this observation it still seemed possible to organize a ‘colloque’ on Jewish Christianity and to publish a book with many contributions to this subject. But it cannot be denied that the word ‘Jewish Christian’ poses a problem which we shall study in the present essay. First we shall give a brief survey of the study of Jewish Christianity from F. C. Baur to the present time in order to show the development of the word ‘Jewish Christian’, and with the results of this survey we shall then try to show what can be regarded as belonging to the field of Jewish Christianity at the present moment.