One of the best known facts of ancient history is the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70. Yet another, and related, historical datum, although known, has been greatly slighted: the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in A.D. 135. Between the First Revolt and the Second Revolt there lies a history of the Jewish State of sixty-five years which has come to be treated as something less than an epilogue. This period in the State's continued existence is an important lacuna that requires to be filled in, and to that end we here raise a single question: ‘Did Jews worship on the holy mountain until the final destruction in A.D. 135?’

There are problems with the text and interpretation of 1 Cor 6. 1–11 which call for a reappraisal of Paul's injunctions regarding the maintenance of discipline at Corinth. Doubts as to the meaning of words, even the punctuation, can be solved if one undertakes the unexpected, and places the problem at 1 Cor 5 along with that at 6. 1–11 (not neglecting ch. 7), and takes seriously words hitherto glossed over in the interests of a much more familiar conception of Paul's intentions. First we should consider the situation in which they all were, and finally we shall look into the risks Paul has obviously taken.

In the previous article the factual meaning, and the direct implications of the parable of the Unjust Steward were discussed. It remains to attempt to place each part of the chapter in the assumed setting, to which the parable originally belonged, or belonged in the materials from which Luke has taken these passages. It was pointed out that the burden of proof lies upon him who asserts that the passages which appear in sequence are not united by a thread of teaching. As it happens, that thread is not difficult to reconstitute, and its reconstruction is the task of this article.

Die gegenwärtige Exegese nimmt mehrheitlich an, dass die johan-neische Literatur in ihrer kanonischen Form (Joh, 1 Joh, 2 Joh, 3 Joh) das Resultat eines langen Prozesses der Ausgestaltung darstellt, der sich im wesentlichen der Tatigkeit einer Schule verdankt. Diese Annahme wirft zwei Fragen auf: Wie hat die johanneische Schule die Traditionen, deren Verwalterin sie war, aufgenommen und weitergegeben? Und welcher hermeneutischer Verfahren hat sie sich bedient, um die verschiedenen Ausformun-gen dieser Traditionen zu interpretieren und zu aktualisieren? Im Sinne einer Arbeitshypothese schlagen wir vor, im Prozess der Relecture eines der wichtigsten Verfahren zu sehen, das die theo-logische Arbeit der johanneischen Schule auszeichnet. Dieser Prozess der Relecture ist keine Erfindung der johanneischen Kreise; er ist bereits sowohl im Alten Testament, insbesondere in den prophetischen Büchern,4 als auch in den paulinischen und synop-tischen Traditionen belegt. Das Ziel der folgenden Ausführungen besteht darin, die unterschiedlichen Aspekte dieser Arbeit der Relecture, die wir in der johanneischen Literatur und insbesondere im vierten Evangelium wahrnehmen, zu beschreiben.

Nicodemus is an enigmatic literary character who is wavering in no man's land in John's narrative between Jesus' opponents and his true disciples. Some scholars have taken Nicodemus as an example of someone of inadequate faith who remains an outsider throughout the narrative, while others have traced his development from initial and tentative faith to open and public commitment to Jesus. The present article, however, agrees with those who have acknowledged that no single trait determines Nicodemus's portrait, but, in the end, this portrait remains ambiguous. In the article, a text-centered approach to Nicodemus is complemented by asking how this ambiguous literary character may have functioned as a symbol for those who shared John's dualistic tendencies. The article draws upon the social identity approach in order to explain how Nicodemus's ambiguity may have helped the Johannine Christians to accept the uncertainties in their social environment without abandoning the stereotyped and fixed thrust in their symbolic world.

Like its last verse (Jn 1.18), the Prologue of the Johannine Gospel has a double meaning: christological and soteriological. The christological one is mainly connected with John 1–20, the soteriological with John 21, and both are linked to 1 John. Indeed, while the Prologue interacts with the Gospel narrative and with the Epilogue (Jn 21), it works also as a ‘relecture’ (re-reading) of 1 John. It recapitulates the promise by Jesus to lead the believers ‘where he is’—i.e. ‘in(to) the bosom of the Father’ (Jn 1.18//Jn 12.26; 14.2–3, 6; 17.24)—as well as the assertion of the Letter regarding the children of God (Jn 1.12//1 Jn 3.1–2). In adding a Prologue and an Epilogue, the last redactor of Jn created a huge meta-historical arch evoking the whole Divine design, from the Alpha before the Creation (ἐν ἀρχῇ, Jn 1.1–2) to the Omega of the eschatological coming of the Risen One (ἕως ἔρχομαι, Jn 21.22, 23; cf. the παρουσία of 1 Jn 2.28). The Prologue is then the keystone and the reading key of the Johannine literature.

Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons. (1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.

Traditional Protestant accounts of Paul's theology are often criticized for their inability to relate justification by faith and the participatory categories of Paul's thought. The two are driven apart by sharp distinctions between declaring and making righteous, between justification as a once for all external act and regeneration as an internal lifelong process. The way is left open for justification to be treated as a legal fiction. Contrary to popular misconceptions, these difficulties do not stem from Martin Luther. In his exegesis of Paul, Luther intimately connects justification by faith and participation in Christ, integrating the two effectively. This article explores the manner in which Luther does so, evaluating his exegetical conclusions and assessing their relevance for contemporary attempts to interpret Paul's theology.

When Paul employs the motif of oneness in 1 Corinthians 12 and joins it to the metaphor of Christ's body, he is drawing not only on Greco-Roman political rhetoric, as argued by the majority of interpreters, but also, and at times more directly, from theological wells found within his Jewish theological heritage: the use of the phrase ‘one body’ in 1 Corinthians is an ecclesial application of the Shema. Paul's oneness language expresses not simply a call to internal unity or social harmony. Ultimately, the ecclesial designation ‘one’ is a succinct articulation of an ecclesiology of Christological monotheism.

Mon propos n'est pas de faire le status quaestionis sur les travaux qui, depuis maintenant deux décennies, ont systématiquement étudié le NT à l'aide de la rhétorique gréco-romaine. Sans doute est-il encore trop tôt pour dresser un bilan exhaustif. Malgré tout, les tendances de la recherche se dessinent avec suffisamment de précision pour qu'il soit possible de suggérer des pistes de réflexion et des changements substantiels dans l'approche rhétorique des textes – en particulier pauliniens.

The recent interest in social memory theories among NT scholars promises a new framework for the study of the social dynamics reflected in the Gospels. This essay employs Eviatar Zerubavel's ‘sociomental typography’ of the ‘sociobiographical memory’ in order to conceptualize the contours of the Sitz im Leben of the Gospel of Matthew. The perspective of social memory as described by Zerubavel reveals the mnemonic character of the Sitz im Leben and discloses how those participating in it related to and used the Gospel of Mark, identified with the scribal traits of the Matthean disciples, cherished Peter, and situated themselves in history.

In 1892 Adolf Harnack, writing on the relation of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, posed the question in these words: ‘What is the aim of the Gospel, what is the aim of the Prologue? Are these aims identical or is the Prologue really an introduction to the Gospel?… Is it the key to understanding the Gospel?’ My aim in this paper is to consider once again this question of the function of these opening verses. What did the author – or redactor – of the gospel aim to achieve by beginning his book in this way?

Das traditionelle christliche Bild des Täufers ist geprägt durch religiöse Volkskunde und Feömmigkeitsgeschichte, die aufgrund der unseligen ‘Zergegnung’ zwischen Christen und Juden durch die Jahrhunderte hindurch bis zum Holocaust von antijüdischen Stereotypen bestimmt sind. Je ausgeprägter die Christologie, um so unmiβverständlicher ist die theologische Degradierung oder Enterbung in Form der Vereinnahmung, etwa wenn man Johannes den Täufer aufgrund von Mt 11.11 (‘Amen, das sage ich euch: Unter alien, die von einer Frau geboren sind, trat keiner auf, der gröβer ist als Johannes der Täufer’) als ersten überregionalen Heiligen der christlichen Kirche in Ost und West verehrte. Oder: Wer erinnert sich nicht an den Johannes auf dem Isenheimer Altar des Matthias Grünewald, wo der langgestreckte Zeigefinger des Täufers überdeutlich seine heilsgeschichtlich-hinweisende, unter-geordnete Rolle festlegt.

The much greater similarity of Colossians and Ephesians to each other than of either to any other Pauline letter has been recognized since the beginning of the historical critical movement, and been seen to require explanation. In this paper we shall be concerned to examine only the purely literary aspect of the problem of their relationship leaving aside their theological similarities and dissimilarities; nor shall we attempt to draw theological conclusions from our discussion of individual phrases or verses. To do this would require setting them in their context in Ephesians and vastly increase the length of the paper.

In recent research, the claim has been made that Paul's statements about the law in Galatians are often misread from the perspective of the post-reformation law/gospel debate. The thesis of this article is that Galatians has also suffered from a different kind of misreading, that is a reading from a specific perspective of the Corinthian correspondence and which mistakenly assumes that the main issue in Galatians is a defense of Paul's apostolic authority. It will be argued that the main focus is on the nature of Paul's gospel and, therefore, on the theological basis on which it rests. For this purpose, a number of arguments will be presented relating to the function of Gal 1. 10–11 and 2. 20, both critical transitions in the structure of the letter. These arguments are based on a pragmatic analysis of the letter as a whole, which cannot be discussed here in any detail. It should be stressed, however, that for the determining of the rhetorical function of any subsection of the letter, an analysis of the entire text as a communicative unity is essential. Therefore it is necessary to explain certain methodological implications of the approach which will be followed here.

Pauline studies have long dealt with the theology (and sometimes the ethics) of Paul and the career of the apostle to the Gentiles. Lesser attention has been given to the communities of Paul. When Victor Furnish's Forschungsbericht took up ‘the Pauline congregations’, as part of what he termed an ‘overdue refocusing’, the emphases were on (1) relations with Jewish Christianity; (2) Paul's opponents; and (3) social history. The first area still often reflects hypotheses of the Tübingen School; the second, conflicts with rampant Judaizers or Gnostics or both as the opposition. Social world research looks to accumulate descriptive data from antiquity or also to use some modern sociological theory, to interpret Pauline church life and structures.

Es soil nicht nur die allgemeine, religionsgeschichtliche Frage gestellt werden, wie weit Paulus faktisch in der Tradition der jüdischen Weisheit steht. Die Frage soil präzisiert werden: Wie geht Paulus aktiv mit dieser Weisheit um, indem er ihre Methoden verwendet, ihre Gedanken verarbeitet, im Stil der Weisheit literarisch gestaltet? Vielleicht ergeben sich aus dieser Fragestellung Gesichtspunkte für ein Urteil in dem immer noch offenen Streit darüber, wie das sachliche Zentrum seiner Theologie zu bestimmen sei: Ist er der Theologe der Rechtfertigung, hellenistischer Mystiker, apokalyptischer Pneumatiker oder in einem allgemeineren Sinne theologischer Weisheitslehrer? Umstritten sind: die Struktur seiner Eschatologie, das Verhältnis von Eschatologie und Heilsgeschichte, Eschatologie und Ethik, Soteriologie und Ethik usw. Vor allem: 1st seine Theologie wirklich als ‘Anthropologie’ zu bestimmen (Bultmann) oder ist sie primär Entwurf eines (eschatologisch bestimmten) Weltbildes bzw. Geschichtsbildes?