An abiding challenge for NT study is that of defining generic relationships among texts. The problem is especially significant for gospel sayings material, literary texts which most explicitly evoke and imitate the styles and forms of spoken language. It will be useful, then, to define generically a hitherto unnoticed Synoptic sayings-type exemplified just seven times in the gospels, especially if a class of unusually difficult texts may thereby be illuminated. Its rarity notwithstanding, the ‘Gnomic Quatrain’ (GQ) should be of particular interest as a special elaboration of the much more fundamental genre of the gnomic sentence.

By anybody's reckoning, the Parable of the Dishonest Steward in Luke 16.1–8a is a problem. Here Jesus seems to be holding up a criminal act as an example to be emulated. A steward is accused of not doing his job properly, and is dismissed by his master. Before he is actually deprived of his job, he considers what to do about his dilemma. He does not wish to do manual labour or to beg, so he lowers the debts of each of his master's debtors with the hope that they will care for him when he must leave. The master thereupon commends him for his cleverness (16.8a).

1 Corinthians presents many problems, whose difficulty consists in large measure in their interrelatedness; but the major problem of the first four chapters is the nature of the σοφία against which Paul polemicizes. This is especially mysterious because the apostle treats it with unquestionable seriousness, and yet it does not apparently recur in any other letter, not even in 2 Corinthians. As it is so closely linked in the text with the σχίσματα which are the topic of 1.12–17, 3.1–17 and 3.22–3, if not other verses, it is necessary to begin with a brief discussion of that question.

Literarkritische Briefteilungshypothesen sind zur Zeit nicht sehr beliebt. Zunehmend setzt sich die Einsicht durch, daβ die Gestalt des textkritisch gewonnenen Textes gegenüber alien auch noch so plausibel erscheinenden Zerlegungen und Umstellungen einen Vorrang hat. Doch kann dieser Vorrang keineswegs ein absoluter sein, da die Möglichkeit, daβ mehrere an denselben Adressaten gerichtete Paulus-Briefe im Zeitraum zwischen ihrer Erstrezeption und der handschriftlichen Vervielfältigung im Rahmen eines überregionalen Corpus Paulinum redaktionell zu einer Briefeinheit kombiniert wurden, nicht generell von der Hand zu weisen ist, wie der immer noch bestehende groβe Konsens in der gegenwärtigen Einschätzung des 2 Kor eindrücklich belegt.

Paul's teaching about the attitude of the Christian towards the state is well known in Rom 13. There the rulers are God's vicegerents, God's deacons for the praising of those who do good and for the punishing of evil-doers. All are to be subject to them in order to avoid God's wrath and to maintain a good conscience. They are deserving of financial support as God'a λειτουργο and are to be shown honour and respect. Does Paul espouse a contradictory view of the state in 1 Cor 6? Here they are not God's λειτουργο, but οἱἄδικοι, the unrighteous, v. 1. They are those least esteemed in the κκλησα, v. 4, and appearing before them is plainly wrong for Christians, v. 6. The Corinthians were not called upon to honour them by Paul in 1 Cor 6, if they are indeed the same persons mentioned in Rom 13.

Colossians 2.15 is a notoriously difficult verse both to translate and to interpret. While textual problems are minimal, lexical, syntactical, and historical problems abound. The interpretation of almost every word or phrase has been disputed. Punctuation too is open to more than one possibility. F. Prat writes:

The grammatical peculiarities in the Greek of the book of Revelation have long been noted. In his recent SNTS monograph Steven Thompson re-examines ‘the peculiar language associated with the verb and with clauses in the Apc which have for centuries been a source of perplexity and misunderstanding’. The major portion of this work, based on his dissertation under Matthew Black, looks at the ‘un-Greek use of the verb’ and attributes it to ‘the influence of Semitic syntax, primarily biblical Hebrew’. Reviewers have observed that Thompson uses evidence mostly from the LXX, without directly considering the influence of the LXX itself. Barnabas Lindars evaluates the evidence as suggesting ‘familiarity with the biblical Hebrew and its representation in LXX’. Max Wilcox notes Thompson's dependence on the LXX as a major weakness in the argument: ‘it is also necessary to show why those constructions may not owe their presence in Revelation to some form of influence of the LXX or perhaps even to a deliberate modelling of the language and style of the book on that of Old Testament Hebrew or Aramaic in translation’.

The figure ‘like a son of man’ in John's initial vision on Patmos, after identifying himself as ‘the first and the last and the living one’ who ‘died and behold I am alive for ever and ever’, (Rev 1.17– 18), directs the prophet in v. 19 to ‘Write therefore the things you have seen [ἃ εδες] and the things that are [ἃ εἰσίν] and the things that are going to happen afterward [ἃ μέλλει γενέσθαι μετà τατα].’ This pronouncement is commonly regarded as a clue of some kind to the structure or message of the Book of Revelation, yet it is seldom discussed in detail by the commentators.