This book was written in 1994–6, when I held a British Academy Research Readership awarded for the purpose. I am extremely grateful to the Academy for this award, which enabled me to complete a major piece of research.

I am also grateful to all those who have discussed with me the problems of method and of detail which this work has entailed. I effectively began this research while reading for a doctorate at Durham University under Professor C. K. Barrett, whose extraordinary combination of learning and helpfulness with lack of bureaucracy or interference remains a model to which one can only aspire. I should particularly like to thank also the late Professor M. Black, Dr G. J. Brooke, Professor B. D. Chilton, Professor J. A. Fitzmyer, Professor R. Kearns, the late Professor B. Lindars, Professor M. Müller, and Professor M. Wilcox. I should also like to thank members of the Aramaic Background and Historical Jesus seminars at the Society for New Testament Studies, the Jesus seminar at meetings of British New Testament scholars, and an annual seminar on the use of the Old Testament in the New now generally held at Hawarden, for what I have learnt from them. I alone am responsible for what I have said.