Our General Meeting this year is to concern itself with a subject of a highly technical and specialist character. Your President has been expressly absolved from the obligation of selecting a subject related to Qumran. And indeed it may be thought more fitting that a Presidential Address should deal with a subject of a more general interest and with a more immediate bearing upon the life and destiny of mankind.

Die synoptischen Evangelien führen übereinstimmend die im Gottesdienst der Gemeinde gefeierten Sakramente von Taufe und Abendmahl darauf zurück, daß diese durch Jesus selbst gestiftet und von ihm eingesetzt worden seien. Die Jünger sollen nach dem Befehl des Auferstandenen die Menschen, die sich auf ihre Predigt hin bekehren, taufen. Und die Gemeinde soll die Mahlgemeinschaft mit ihrem Herrn auch nach seinem Tode unter dem Genuß von Brot und Wein fortsetzen. Zum Gedächtnis Jesu wird das Sakrament des Abendmahls von den Seinen gefeiert. Und in der Taufe handelt der erhöhte Kyrios, indem neue Glieder in die eschatologische Heilsgemeinde aufgenommen werden.

According to the general consensus of expert opinion the Gospel of Mark was composed sometime between the years A.D. 65–75. But most authorities find that they cannot leave this decade as just a convenient round figure; for it contains the cimacteric year 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman armies. Accordingly, they endeavour to define the date of the Gospel's composition more precisely in relation to this event. Those who elect for a pre-70 date usually give as their reason for so doing that fact, as they see it, that the Gospel contains no explicit reference to this signal event. Such a conclusion is rarely felt to need a detailed justification, it being apparently assumed that mention of the fact is reason enough; it has possibly been thought also that no vital issue turns upon establishing precisely a pre-70 date.