The article explains the problematic Second Teacher episode in the so-called developmental interpretation of IGT recently proposed by M. R. Whitenton and J. R. C. Cousland. The article shows that the killing of the second teacher in the text of Gs, which is appropriately identified as problematic for the developmental interpretation, appears to be a later version of the episode that most likely already sought to supplement a more original account. In the earliest recoverable form, preserved in the early versions (Syriac, Latin and Ethiopic), the story consistently does not blame Jesus for the death of the second teacher, either in the episode itself or in the other passages. So in the earliest surviving version(s), the teacher dies but not because of a curse from Jesus. Therefore, this episode does not disturb the so-called developmental interpretation.

Angesichts der fortschreitenden Publikation der Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR), der Weiterarbeit an den Bänden des Evangelisch-Katholischen Kommentars zum Neuen Testament (EKK) und der Fortsetzung von Blackwell's Kommentarserie Through the Centuries lautet die Leitfrage des vorliegenden Artikels: Wie kann zur Theoretisierung und Methodisierung einer Rezeptionsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments beigetragen werden? Um diese Frage zu beantworten und Perspektiven zu entwerfen, unternimmt der Artikel den Versuch einer neuerlichen Klärung der Begriffe ‘Wirkungsgeschichte’ / ‘wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein’, ‘Auslegungsgeschichte’, ‘Rezeptionsgeschichte’ und schlägt zwei Fragenkataloge vor, die das Vorgehen einer cross-temporal und cross-cultural ausgerichteten Rezeptionskritik des Neuen Testaments inhaltlich und methodisch reflektieren und kontrollieren.

In Luke-Acts, the city of Jerusalem is mentioned very often. The city is considered the site of the temple and forms the centre of the narrative spatial configuration of Luke-Acts. Narrative analysis and the evaluation of the lexically marked language (‘terminology of salvation’) show that for the author of Luke-Acts, the city and its inhabitants, who are mainly portrayed as hostile opponents of Jesus and Paul, have no future within the narrative of Luke-Acts. However, Jesus will appear as the Son of Man at the Parousia in Jerusalem and will also bring the liberation of the city of Jerusalem (Luke 2.38: λύτρωσις ᾿Ιɛρουσαλήμ).

Συνɛίδησις is a relatively rare word, but a favourite for Paul, whose undisputed texts contain nearly half of its New Testament occurrences. In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars debated the origin of the substantive and the possibility of Stoic influence, which led to a consensus that the term was not a technical philosophical one and Paul's use was not affected by Stoic thought. There is evidence, though, that the presence of συνɛίδησις in a few Stoic texts is due to its semantic relationship in Stoic discourse with συναίσθησις, the Stoic term for self-perception, which was a key component in their epistemological and ethical theory. This article argues that a reading of Paul's use of συνɛίδησις as Stoic self-perception explains the distinctive features of his use to which scholars have recently drawn attention, namely, the permanent and continuous operation of the συνɛίδησις, its ability to be passively impacted by the actions of others and the neutral or positive content of its reflexive knowledge. After a review of recent scholarship, I discuss the role of συναίσθησις in Stoic theory and the evidence for its semantic relationship to συνɛίδησις, then offer a reading of 1 Cor 8–10 demonstrating Paul's use of συνɛίδησις as self-perception.

While it is easy to interpret the first and second of the Matthean Antitheses (5.21–30) as intensifications of the Mosaic law, it is difficult to interpret the remaining Antitheses (5.31–48) in this manner. In the history of interpretation, two main strategies have been adopted for dealing with these later Antitheses, the ‘rejected interpretation’ hypothesis and the revocation hypothesis. The ‘rejected interpretation’ hypothesis, however, is only plausible for the last Antithesis (5.43–8), which appends ‘and hate your enemy’ to the Levitical exhortation to love one's neighbour; in all other instances, the ‘thesis’ statement is either a biblical citation or a close paraphrase of one or more biblical passages. Although the revocation hypothesis has often been deployed in an anti-Jewish way, there is nothing intrinsically anti-Jewish about it; indeed, both biblical authors, such as the Deuteronomist and Ezekiel, on the one hand, and some rabbis, on the other, explicitly revise prior biblical laws while at the same time claiming to be changing nothing. Matthew does something similar when he introduces the revisionist Antitheses with a programmatic statement about the unchangeableness of the Law (5.17–20). The Matthean Jesus, then, is not ‘seconding Sinai’ but correcting it.

The use of συντɛλέω to speak of God's ‘completion’ of the new covenant (Heb 8.8) has generated various explanations. Yet none of them factor in an important clue in Hebrews, namely, the rest discourse. By establishing literary and theological connections between Heb 3.7–4.13 and 8.8–12, this study argues that the promise of the completion of the new covenant evokes the completion of creation and its ensuing sabbath rest. Such an evocation brings to surface a logic of Christology and new creation embedded in Hebrews.

Although an increasing number of works are focusing on depictions of God in the New Testament, none so far specifically focus on how these depictions rely on anthropomorphic language in their presentation of God. This article attends to this oversight by turning to the Synoptic Gospels (and the book of Acts) as a test case. Not only do these narratives lack an explicit anti-anthropomorphic agenda, but they also rely on divine anthropomorphisms that are derived from Jewish Scripture. To demonstrate this claim, the article concentrates on how Matthew and Luke expand Mark's anthropomorphic presentation of God and how Luke's presentation emerges as the most anthropomorphic of all. It also discusses how Mark, Matthew, and Luke's respective narratives depict God's human, or human-like, characteristics according to the following four categories: (1) God's human roles and titles, (2) God's depiction as an acting subject who speaks and desires to be in relationship with humans, (3) God's concrete presence located in space, and finally, (4) God's description as a character with recognisable body parts and other markers of corporeality. In the end, we shall see that anthropomorphism is a central component of God's characterisation in the Synoptics and that this anthropomorphic characterisation better enables readers to see the Jewish, scriptural shape of God as a personal deity who desires to be in relationship with humans.

In Luke 6.11, the scribes and Pharisees are filled with ἄνοια after they witness Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath. Modern English translations, beginning with the RSV, translate the word ἄνοια as rage or fury, whereas older English translations render it as madness, and modern German translations follow Martin Luther by rendering the phrase with terms such as unsinnig (‘wurden ganz unsinnig’) or Unverstand (‘wurden mit Unverstand erfüllt’). This article argues that Plato's explanation of the word ἄνοια in Timaeus 86b provides the typical semantic range of the word; it includes ἀμαθία (the folly of ignorance) and μανία (the folly of madness, or the loss of one's rational faculties), but not anger.1 This twofold usage is reflected in Greek literature from the fifth/fourth century bce through the fifth century ce, including in 2 Tim 3.9, the only other text in which ἄνοια occurs in the New Testament. To say that the scribes and Pharisees are filled with rage in Luke 6.11, therefore, both exceeds the typical function of the word ἄνοια and risks further dehumanising two groups of people who are too often dehumanised by Christian tradition.

Paul's reference to his adaptability to different groups in 1 Cor 9.19–23 is central to recent discussions about Paul's Jewishness. This paper argues that the crucial context for Paul's metaphor of self-enslavement (1 Cor 9.19) is not to be found in anthropological passages such as Rom 6 or Gal 5, but rather in the conditions of a slave's life in antiquity. This leads to an interpretation that combines essential concerns of a Paul within Judaism perspective with those of more traditional exegesis.

The ending of Mark, ‘And they (the women) said nothing to anyone for they were afraid’ (16.8) is one of the most famous cruxes in the New Testament. Could the author really have intended to complete the gospel in such a way? Building on a suggestion made by Joel Marcus and Benoit Standaert, this article defends the hypothesis that Mark is deliberately making a reference to Genesis 18.15 LXX. The same rare expression ἐφοβήθη γάρ which has the verb ‘to be afraid’ followed by the preposition γάρ, appears in a comparable context. In both cases, one or more women are presented by God or his messengers with what could appear to be an unlikely promise and a radical impossibility: the birth of a child in old age or the resurrection of a dead person. While presenting a critique of S. Hultgren's recent proposal that Dn 10 is the background of Mark, the approach here is to add an argument based on a scriptural allusion, which Mark was perfectly capable of making, in support of the now predominant view, but still with many critics, that the writer fully intended to end his gospel with 16.8b.

Vat. iber. 4, a membrum disjectum of the manuscript Sin. geo. 49, contains on two of its folios the Syriac Gospel text as the lowest layer (scriptio ima) within a double palimpsest. Comparison with known Syriac versions of the extant text – Matt 11.30–12.26 – shows that the text represents the Old Syriac version, and is particularly akin to the Curetonianus (Syc). On palaeographic grounds, the original Gospel manuscript can be dated to the first half of the sixth century. The fragment is so far the only known vestige of the fourth manuscript witness to the Old Syriac version.

The title σωτήρ, ‘saviour’, is bestowed on Christ and God in the New Testament and rendered in the Latin translations by conseruator, saluificator, salutificator, salutaris and saluator. Although these terms convey the same meaning, they are not interchangeable: this study argues that conseruator, which is the most frequent word for saviour on imperial coins, is rarely attested in the Latin versions because of its association with the imperial cult. The predominant translation, saluator, was coined as an alternative rendering to the other words which had religious and political connotations.

Ruben van Wingerden's articles on carrying a patibulum and σταυρός are admirably precise. However, his analyses of two texts of Plautus and a fragment of Clodius Licinus are problematic. In contrast to van Wingerden's rather minimalistic conclusions regarding carrying a patibulum or σταυρός, it seems likely that carrying a patibulum was a general element in Roman practice in accounts in which patibula are mentioned in conjunction with crucifixions – even when there is no explicit reference to carrying the patibulum through the streets.

The saying in Matthew 9.37–8 and Luke (Q) 10.2 reads as follows: ‘He said to his disciples: The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. So ask the Lord of the harvest to dispatch workers into his harvest’. The present study attempts to illuminate this logion by considering its setting in first-century Palestine. The focus here is not on the logion's possible metaphorical application, but on the literal saying, which involves ancient agriculture.

Aus dem direkten Vergleich der beiden möglichen Leseweisen lässt sich ein Fazit formulieren. Die Technik der „Doppelkodierung“ (R. Feldmeier) zeigt sich darin, dass Lk 18,1–8 eine Alltagsepisode mit einem Moment des spöttelnden, vielleicht sogar stumpfen Humors erzählt und dabei eine Semantik benutzt, die auch in den Schriften Israels beheimatet ist. Auch wenn die „jüdische“ Denkwelt der Weisheitsliteratur in Lk 18,1–8 auf den ersten Blick keine Rolle zu spielen scheint, so wird sie dann für die Folgeszene in Lk 18,9–14 relevant. Lk 18,1–8 ist keine Relecture der Weisheitsliteratur, sondern mutet mehr wie eine Hommage an. Es klingt hier sprachlich bereits etwas an, das erst in der nächsten Perikope inhaltlich sichtbar verarbeitet wird. M.E. handelt es sich bei dieser Technik nicht um ein Zufallsprodukt, sondern um eine bewusste Entscheidung. Lukas ging so souverän mit den Schriften um, dass er sie kreativ mit hellenistisch anmutenden Erzähletappen verschmelzen konnte. Ebenso zeigt sich, dass er in den Schriften nicht nur Dekoration sah, sondern mit Hilfe der Frömmigkeitskritik arbeitete, um daraus für die Völkerwelt geöffnete, „jüdische“ Ideen über Gerechtigkeit und Glaubenspraxis entstehen zu lassen. Vor dem Hintergrund der Lektüre zeigt sich eine Unsicherheit, ob die Kategorien „Judenchrist“ und „Heidenchrist“ bei Lukas wirklich funktionieren.