An important component in the recent discussion of the Second Gospel has been a continuing fascination with the Markan passion narrative. John Donahue has summarized the research under three headings, which represent recurring questions that scholars have put to the text. (1) What roles did the Scriptures and their motifs play in the formation and growth of the Markan passion narrative? (2) Did Mark make use of an extant passion narrative, and if so, what did it look like? (3) To what extent and in what ways does the Markan passion narrative reflect Mark's own theological and literary interests?

Mark 4:1–8:26 is a compositional unit whose external boundaries are determined by its internal structure. Because neither this structure nor the unit it defines has been observed previously I shall concentrate on them, dealing with other views of Mark's composition only when they are relevant to my argument. My purpose is to identify the compositional structure of Mark 4:1–8:26, and to point to some of the hermeneutical implications of the structure. The method to be followed is composition-critical to the extent that it is concerned both with the segmentation of the narrative into its constituent units and with their arrangement as a key to their significance in their Markan literary context. I acknowledge that most of these units originated in pre-Markan traditions, some of which may have been accessible to Mark in the form of collections, and that Mark's dependence upon such material determines the hermeneutical problem of his narrative. This problem can be expressed either as the question of the author's investment in his material or as the question of the literary significance of the once preliterary material. Because the answer to the former question is necessarily an inference from the answer to the latter, my orientation is to the latter, namely, to the question of the relevance of the compositional structure of Mark 4:1–8:26 for understanding the compositional significance of its parts.

With the letter to the Romans our firsthand source of information for Paul's activity and achievements as a devoted supporter of the one whom years before he had bitterly opposed comes to an end. In all probability, Romans, written in Corinth as he planned for his subsequent activity in the West, whither he was soon to go, after a final visit to Jerusalem which he apparently viewed with concern, even reluctance, was the last letter to come from his pen, for the letters commonly styled “Letters of the Captivity”—Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians (if actually written by Paul), and Philemon—were not subsequently written from Rome, but in all probability were the product of his years in and about Ephesus, where in all likelihood he had suffered once again “prisons more abundantly, stripes above measure, deaths oft.”

Paul's remark about the intercessory prayer of the Spirit in Rom 8:26–27 is unparalleled in the NT and has traditionally caused difficulties for the translator or interpreter. There is, for example, the tendency in modern versions to soften the statement that “we do not know what to pray for as we ought” to “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (RSV). The problem here may be a failure to acknowledge Paul's eschatological perspective in the immediate context in Romans 8 in which the focus is on the invisibility of what the Christian is called upon to hope for (8:24–25). Neglect of the context has also led to a failure in many modern versions to preserve the continuity of the metaphor στενάζειν/στεναγμός in vv 22, 23, 26: the RSV, for example, renders the noun in v 26 “sighs” but translates the verb “groans” in the other verses. Such a shift of language makes the initial ὡσαύτως of v 26 a problem, for it is precisely the repetition of στενάζειν/στεναγμός which undergirds the comparison. It is not the intention of this note to discuss these issues in detail, but to concentrate on the meaning of v 27.

Rudolf Bultmann's dissertation is still the best general description of diatribal style and remains the authority on the subject for most NT scholars. Bultmann draws attention to the dialogical element in the diatribe in which a speaker or writer makes use of an imaginary interlocutor who asks questions or raises objections to the arguments or affirmations that are made. These responses are frequently stupid and are then summarily rejected by the speaker or writer in a number of ways, for example by οὐδαμῶς (“by no means”), οὐ πάντως (“not at all”), οὐ μὰ Δία (“indeed not”), or minime (“by no means”). The limited purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which μὴ γένοιτο (“by no means”) is widely used in the diatribal literature, usually thought to be represented in Greek by the Dissertation of Epictetus, certain Moralia of Plutarch, various works of Philo, and by Bion, Teles, Musonius, Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, and Maximus of Tyre. In fact, however, this particular rejection, as it appears as a response in a dialogue without being part of a larger sentence, is unique to Epictetus and Paul. Bultmann's interpretation of the diatribe is heavily dependent on Epictetus despite the latter's peculiar development of the style, and the generalization about the use ofμὴ γένοιτο in the diatribe is made on the basis of Epictetus.

In Jesus the Magician I argued that the earliest pagan reports of persecutions of Christians—those in Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the younger—indicate that the persecutors believed the Christians were practicing magic. Here I want to explain their belief by reviewing the eariest evidence for Christian congregational practices and indicating how these practices would have been understood by the ancient Christians' neighbors. This does not imply that there were not other grounds for the persecutors' belief. Magic seems to have figured in the charges for which Jesus was condemned; it certainly was prominent in the propaganda against his cult that was spread by rival Jewish groups. Such propaganda doubtless shaped the expectations with which many outsiders viewed early Christianity, and people are apt to see what they expect to see. Nevertheless, Pliny's famous letter shows that Roman authorities sometimes tried to get beyond rumor to the facts. Accordingly we should ask what the facts would have looked like to men of the Greco-Roman world in the late first and early second centuries, a world in which magic was practiced on all levels of society and almost universally believed to be effective. As “the facts” we may take, with some reservations, the evidence about Christian congregations to be found in Paul's relatively unquestioned letters—Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, or Philippians, and Philemon.

Many difficulties beset the interpreter of Paul's response to the case of incest at Corinth. With the partial exception of the letter to the Romans, Paul's letters are occasional pieces written in response to very particular circumstances in the communities addressed. The occasional character of the first letter to the Corinthians is evident as Paul responds to oral reports (1:11; 5:1; 11:18) and to written queries (7:1). The interpreter is acutely aware of having access to only one side of a conversation, to only half a correspondence. Because of the close contact between writer and addressees, much could be left unsaid.

Even though the text of 1 Cor 15:31–32 printed above agrees with all recent critical editions of the NT, it almost certainly is false to the autograph. The basis for this claim comes neither from new textual evidence nor from a more scientific analysis of the old evidence, but from conjecture prompted by internal problems in the passage which other methods have not yet solved. Before I make my case, however, I should mention the two points in these verses where the ancient versions differ. Some texts do not contain the ἀδελϕοί (“brothers”) in line 31b, and others expand it to ἀδελϕοί μου (“my brothers”) or to ἀδελϕοί ἡμῶν (“our brothers”). Because it is difficult to know which reading is best, the American Bible Society edition is wise to put ἀδελϕοί in brackets and to acknowledge the difficulty in the apparatus.

One of the most controverted questions in the study of the Epistle to the Hebrews is the nature of the eschatological perspective which it represents, and a focal point of the debate about this issue is the passage on the “rest” which awaits the addressees (4:1–11). The two ends of the spectrum of recent interpretation are represented by Theissen on the one hand, who sees Hebrews here as developing a “Gnostic” tradition paralleled by materials in Philo, and by Buchanan and Hofius on the other, who see Hebrews as working wholly within the framework of Jewish apocalyptic expectations. Parallels adduced by these interpreters are, to one degree or another, illuminating, but the concentration on these parallels may obscure the dynamics of Hebrews' argument, which should serve as the fundamental criterion by which to assess the work's eschatology. This brief paper will attempt to illuminate those dynamics.

First published in 1934, Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum warned against simply equating the words “orthodoxy” and “heresy” with the notions of majority and minority and with the process of deviation from correct belief to wrong belief. Bauer sought to show that in the first two Christian centuries orthodoxy and heresy did not stand in relation to one another as primary and secondary. He tried to prove that in many regions what came to be known in the ecclesiastical tradition as “heresy” was in fact the original manifestation of Christianity. For example, according to Bauer, the major figures in earliest Christianity at Edessa were the “heretics” Marcion, Bar Daisan, and Mani. In Egypt a gnostic form of Christianity appears to have been dominant before A.D. 200, and in Asia Minor “orthodox” leaders such as Ignatius and Polycarp waged only moderately successful battles against gnosticism and judaizing Christianity.

Dietary laws, as well as problems in regard to their observance, are prevalent in religious groups even today and were fairly common in antiquity. Outsiders and insiders as well often wondered what the point of the laws was, and in three significant communities—Pythagoreans, Jews, and Christians—the regulations were interpreted, or interpreted away, with the help of philosophical or even historical analysis.

Interpretation of the OT is a many-faceted thing in gnostic literature. The old view that Gnosticism implies a rejection of the OT has had to be considerably modified in the light of new discoveries. The Nag Hammadi texts have shown that the Gnostics made far more use of the OT than could have been expected on the basis of older premises. R. McL. Wilson, in a recent article, has pointed out that no less than seventeen OT books are quoted in the gnostic writings collected in Werner Foerster's anthology. To be sure, Genesis—especially the first chapters—is by far the most-quoted OT book. And it is obvious that the use made by the Gnostics of Genesis and other OT writings is hardly conventional, to say the least. Even so, it is of no use to scholarship simply to be satisfied with calling attention to the “perversity” of gnostic OT interpretation. For it is important to observe the manifold ways in which the OT is utilized in gnostic, especially Christian gnostic, texts. One can then attain a proper understanding of the role of biblical interpretation in the development of Gnosticism, as well as early Christian theology in general.

The exact nature of Ham's crime against the drunken Noah has long fascinated exegetes, who have been left dissatisfied by the simple voyeurism described in the biblical text. One particularly interesting explanation, namely, that Ham actually castrated his father, first emerges in a Talmudic account of a debate about Gen 9:24 between Rav and Samuel, two renowned third-century Babylonian rabbis

The story of the translation of the Bible into Greek was widely known in early Christian literature. Epiphanius utilized various sources in his form of the story, which is given in On Weights and Measures, including the Epistle of Aristeas, as well as others. On Weights and Measures is known in three forms today, Greek, Syriac, and a recently identified Georgian version. Up to the discovery of the Georgian, the Syriac was considered to be the most original, while the Greek MSS were thought to present a mutilated text. The newly discovered Georgian version contains certain traditions which have been claimed to be extremely ancient. These are found, in particular, in the epistles of Ptolemy to the elders of Jerusalem.