Pauline Anthropology has long been seen as the key to the quest for the human being in New Testament theology. But there are other concepts in ancient Roman and early Jewish religious-philosophical thinking that deserve our attention in this regard. Exegetical analyses of James 1.2–18 and 3.13–18 point to a view of the human being that traces the ability to do what is good back to God's working within and his bestowal of wisdom. Surveys of ethical passages in the Wisdom of Solomon and Epictetus indicate that the origin of ethical decisions can be understood in psychological as well as religious terms. In the light of such anthropological discourses the Pauline argument about the human being in Romans 5–8 can be seen from a new perspective.

In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul addressed the occasion of deaths among Christians with stock arguments of the consolatory genre, without using the typical epistolary structure associated with consolation in ancient handbooks of letter-writing. It is demonstrated that three of Seneca the Younger's letters also employed stock arguments of consolation, but did not follow the usual structure for a letter of consolation. Using Seneca's letters as a test case for what constituted pagan ideas of consolation, we highlight some compelling reasons for reading First Thessalonians as a letter of consolation, a reading that offers some new insights into the passage on the right Christian attitude towards death in 1 Thess 4.13–5.11.

Rom 4.17d is often read as referring to creation, perhaps even creatio ex nihilo. Others argue that this doctrine was not yet conceptually available. After exploring what ‘nothing’ means in similar phrases in Paul's ancient context (2 Macc 7.28 and Philo), the first conclusion is that if Rom 4.17d refers to creation then Paul's ‘nothings’ most likely do not refer to an absolute nihil. However, after exploring Rom 4.17 in the context of Paul's argument, the final conclusion is that in Rom 4.17d Paul does present absolute ‘nothings’, though in God's speech to Abraham, not at creation. Paul's theology encompasses God's authority and causation ex nihilo.

Rome or Syria? This article addresses the issue of the provenance of Mark's Gospel by exploring affinities between the second Gospel and Jewish sectarian groups of the first centuries bce and ce. It is argued that Mark displays certain sectarian tendencies, and that these tendencies, most notably seen in the Gospel's negative evaluation of the Jerusalem temple and its priestly overseers, strongly suggest that the Gospel was written in close geographical proximity to Jerusalem and its temple. Accordingly, an area in the Syrian Decapolis is a much more likely place of origin for Mark's Gospel than that of Rome.

This article reads Acts 27–28.10 as an ‘aquatic display’ that offers Christ-believers a spectacle of navigating the stormy imperial world. It argues that Pliny's Panegyricus similarly employs aquatic displays to instruct in negotiating the emperor Trajan's power. It identifies four means in Acts 27 that assert Rome's power – judicial, military, economic, and the sea as a contested site where the sovereignties of God and Rome compete and cooperate – and which Christ-believers must negotiate by various means including submission, awareness of danger, courage, social interaction, agency, contribution to well-being, and discernment of and contestive allegiance to God's greater sovereignty.

Since the publication of John Mill's Greek New Testament in 1707, scholars have shown repeated interest in the number of textual variants in our extant witnesses. Past estimates, however, have failed to tell who estimated, how the estimate was derived, or even what was being estimated. This study addresses all three problems and so offers an up-to-date estimate based on the most extensive collation data available. The result is a higher number than almost all previous estimates. Proper use shows that the number reflects the frequency with which scribes copied more than their infidelity in doing so.

As one of its rules, thoroughgoing eclecticism in New Testament textual criticism puts great store by an author's consistency of language, style and usage when assessing variation. This article examines the theoretical justification for such a rule and sets out a number of examples from throughout the New Testament to show how such an application works, even when the preferred solutions may go against traditional principles of text-critics such as the age, quality or quantity of witnesses in supporting a selected initial text. One section deals with conjectural emendation.

It is commonly thought that the apocryphal Letter to the Laodiceans was composed by an author who was little more than an editor, piecing together phrases from Pauline texts in a mediocre fashion. Not only does the text seem devoid of conceptual rigour and theological merit, but it is also thought to lack a coherent structure. This essay proposes that, to the contrary of most estimates, the Letter to the Laodiceans exhibits a discernible structural coherence from which a rhetorical strategy is evident.

Previous reconstructions of the ‘Miracle on the Jordan River’ (Papyrus Egerton 2, 2v.6–14) are unconvincing because they lack clear parallels with known texts. This short article proposes a new transcription, based on the apparent parallels with Elisha's miracles in 2 Kings and Josephus, Jewish War 4.460–4. It concludes that the author of the Egerton Gospel used Elisha typology in the depiction of Jesus’ miracle on the Jordan.

A causal clause is often used to translate ὅτι in John 8.47. This, in combination with a problematic translation of the prepositional phrase διὰ τοῦτο, creates (in the translations) a logical argument that is contrary to the argument in Greek. The NRSV translates: ‘Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.’ The translation is somewhat different from the King James Version, which interprets the ὅτι-clause as causal: ‘He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.’ Both translations and the implied logic must be rejected for philological reasons. The correct translation is: ‘He that is of God hears God's words. From this follows: you do not hear. Thus, you are not of God.’ The difference is obvious: the logical argument is turned on its head. The usual way to translate this argument implies a predestination: the Jews are simply ‘not of God’. The semantically correct translation makes obvious the connection between their decision (i.e. not to listen to Jesus) and the judgement spoken by Jesus.