L'an dernier ce séminaire a été consacré à l'étude du récit johannique de la Passion. Les deux travaux principaux qui ont été présentés suivaient la méthode historico-critique, qui consiste essentiellement à rechercher la provenance des matériaux, leurs sources; concrètement il s'agissait surtout de préciser le rapport entre Jean et les synoptiques. Cette méthode s'identifie pratiquement à l'étude de l'histoire de la tradition et de la rédaction; elle est fondamentalement de type diachronique. Dans le séminaire de cette année, nous avons à examiner Jn. 20 et 21. Pour l'analyse du chapitre 20, qui nous a été confiée, la méthode suivie, comme nous l'annoncions déjà l'année dernière, sera nettement différente: nous voulons considérer ce chapitre comme une unité littéraire, et en faire une lecture synchronique. La conviction qui est à la base de cette approche, c'est que le texte est bien plus que l'agencement de matériaux préexistants: le tout est plus que la somme des parties. L'œuvre d'un grand auteur est une création nouvelle. Elle ‘réinvente ce qu'elle assimile, elle transfigure ce qu'elle accueille; sur le fond de la tradition qui la porte et la féconde, elle ouvre un avenir inédit’. En proposant une lecture synchronique du texte de Jean, nous voulons done chercher ‘le principe d'unité dynamique qui en constitue la cohérence interne’, autrement dit, sa finalité propre. C'est dans ce principe interne d'unité, et non dans la multiplicité des matériaux assemblés, que nous réussirons à trouver la vérité du texte.

Professor W. G. Kümmel's Promise and Fulfilment marked a permanent advance in the understanding of the eschatological teaching of Jesus. Going beyond the ‘realized’ eschatology of C. H. Dodd and the ‘futurist’ eschatology of J. Weiss and A. Schweitzer, Kümmel demonstrated that for Jesus the kingdom of God was both a present reality and an imminent future expectation. The present study examines several texts in Luke in which the present and future manifestations of the kingdom are set in juxtaposition. It is hoped that this will illuminate the Evangelist's understanding of an important theme as it is related to other Gospel traditions and to the proclamation of Jesus.

A close comparison with Plutarch's De amore prolis and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics shows the author of 4 Maccabees to have used common topics from Greek ethical reflection on love for offspring as a means of commending Torah-observance as the means by which one is enabled to secure one's children's eternal well-being, fulfilling the natural goal of love for offspring more completely. The author shows how trust in God's future enables the mother to view even the death of her children as the fulfillment rather than the negation of her maternal investment, as in the laments of Euripides's heroines in Trojan Women and Hecuba, from which the author explicitly distances her, enabling her exemplary courage.

The current work argues for the compositional unity of 2 Corinthians. First, it addresses the chronological and argumentative relationship of chapters 10–13 to chapters 1–9. It next rejects the presence of so-called ‘interpolations’ and ‘sources’ in chapters 1–9. Finally, it considers the integrity of chapters 8 and 9. The uniqueness of this effort lies in its emphasis upon rhetorical reasons and warrants against the widely accepted partition hypothesis of Pauline historical- and source-critical scholarship. It does so by demonstrating the complex integrity of the argumentative development and trajectories in 2 Corinthians. It concludes with a new, suggestive approach to the correspondence as a complex, but nevertheless coherent, act of persuasion.

The parable of the Two Sons occurs in three variant textual forms. Despite the tendency among commentators to follow the Nestle-Aland text, which is based on the Sinaiticus textual form, the strong support in the tradition for each type of variant reading requires the textual question be reassessed. It is argued that although the Sinaiticus reading represents the pre-Matthean form of the parable, it was Matthew, and not a later scribe, who changed the order of the sons in order to privilege the second son. This aligns with the evangelist's concern to depict the rejection and replacement of the Jewish leadership. Yet, although the Vaticanus reading reflects the authentic Matthean form of the parable, the earlier Sinaiticus form resurfaced and intruded itself back into the MSS tradition.

In one of the strangest stories in his strange Gospel, Mark records the two-stage healing of a blind man by Jesus in Bethsaida (8.22–6). Jesus’ first healing action of spitting on the man's eyes and laying hands on them is only partially successful; the man now sees something, but what he sees is people who look like walking trees (8.24). His vision is still unclear, so Jesus must repeat the therapy, this time with more felicitous results: και διεβλεψεν [sc. oτυϕγoς] και απεκατεστη και ενεβλεπεν τηλαυγως απαντα. But how exactly is this clause to be translated?

It is often held that where a word or passage is not found in all the manuscripts, but occupies different places in the manuscripts in which it does occur, that is a sign (though not an incontestable proof) that it was not in the original text but has been interpolated.

New information coming from the excavations at Sepphoris has redefined the understanding of life in central Galilee during the first century. Beginning in 3 BC, Herod Antipas built Sepphoris into a beautiful and fortified capital city, called by Josephus ‘the ornament of all Galilee’. Jesus grew up in Nazareth which was less than 4 miles south of Sepphoris, an hour's walk away. This paper focuses on the challenges to NT scholarship that arise from this new and exciting evidence.

The nearly three decades since the publication of E. P. Sanders's work on Paul and Judaism have witnessed a spate of new proposals for reading Gal 3.10, one of the most difficult and contested passages in Paul's letters. For some, the ‘traditional’ interpretation is still preferred, though the ‘exile/restoration’ reading has gained some momentum recently. The following article will critique both of these readings, proposing a new interpretation of this passage, one that regards Paul as citing Deut 27.26 in continuity with its meaning in its narrative setting and that finds an interpretive grid in the logic he unfolds in Gal 2.15–21.

This article demonstrates that according to the Acts of the Apostles, the major charges brought against Peter, Stephen, and Paul—as well as, in later Christian texts, against James—are violations of the Temple's sacredness, both by means of statements about and actions within it. On the narrative level, in their portrayal of the conflicts and trials of these early Christian leaders, the ancient Christian sources argued that because the early Christian community in Jerusalem sought to partake in the Temple worship in its own way, Jesus' followers were falsely accused of violating the Temple's sacredness. On the historical level, it may be concluded that these events were authentic, and that they were affected by two factors: (a) The assumption, on the part of the Jewish community, that Jesus represented an anti-Temple stance. This assumption was based on Jesus' ‘cleansing’ action at the Temple, and the saying attributed to him regarding the destruction of the Temple and the erection of a new one ‘not made with [human] hands’. As such, Jesus' followers were viewed as posing a threat to the Temple as well. (b) The meticulous approach to Temple rituals held by the Sadducean high priests in charge of the prosecutions. According to their approach, any deviance from the proscribed procedure desecrated the sacrificial cult and was to be avoided at any cost.

According to the most widely accepted theory, Luke and Matthew used the gospel of Mark as the main source for their own gospels. In so doing, Matthew reproduced almost all the contents of Mark; Luke however omitted one large block of Marcan material: Mark 6.45–8.26. Luke may have omitted this section because his copy of the gospel of Mark was lacking this section, or because, although he knew this material, he chose to omit it from his gospel.

This article addresses a debate over the proper interpretation of the phrase ἔχοντες χάριν πρὸς ὅλον τὸν λαόν in Acts 2.47. Several authors have been persuaded by T. David Andersen's argument that this expression means that the Jerusalem community was ‘showing favour towards all the people’ rather than ‘having favour with all the people’, as it has usually been translated. Andersen's evidence is much more ambiguous than he suggests, however, and I present three more precise parallels to the phrase in Acts 2.47 that strongly support the standard translation.

In this article I catalogue and analyse every form of the title – inscriptions, subscriptions and kephalaia – that appears in the New Testament papyri, bringing together this material for the first time. The titles provide new evidence for examining questions related to traditions of entitling in antiquity more broadly and offer a space to consider the dynamic relationships between medium, materiality, book-forms, paratextuality and interpretation, both in antiquity and in our own scholarly culture that stands between print and digital forms. The material also highlights interesting divergences in labelling strategies between the titles of works in the various New Testament sub-corpora and suggests that the kat’ andra formula is not the only way to entitle a Gospel.

Scholarly consensus generally assumes that the Gospel of the Ebionites as preserved by Epiphanius is either a harmony of the Synoptic Gospels or excerpted mainly from Matthew. A synopsis of the texts, however, demonstrates that the Epiphanius quotations show stronger affinity with Luke than with Matthew or Mark. Indeed, the evidence suggests that Epiphanius's references to the Gospel of the Ebionites are not excerpted from Luke, but rather from a Greek translation of the elusive Hebrew Gospel attested by a number of church fathers, and thus one of the sources of Luke mentioned in the prologue of his Gospel.

The mainstream approaches to the Synoptic Problem all agree: there are no extant instances of Q. The shape of ‘Q’ changes, however, if, as proposed in the companion article, ‘Streeter's “Other” Synoptic Solution: The Matthew Conflator Hypothesis’, Matthew sometimes conflates Luke with Luke's own source. Where this happens Luke's source qualifies as an instance of ‘Q’ – inasmuch as it preserves sayings of Jesus used, ultimately, by both Luke and Matthew. This fresh conception of ‘Q’ opens up the possibility that examples of ‘Q’ are, after all, available. An extant text meeting this description is Didache 1.2–5a.

Luke depicts the problem of incorporating Gentiles into the Church as rooted in conflicting definitions of purity. Apart from the principal Torah distinction between clean and unclean animals, a third category is mentioned: ‘common’, referring to doubtfully pure food. Parallels to this usage are found in a range of Jewish literature, from the Hasmonaean to the Rabbinic period. The notion of doubtfully pure food can help explain Peter's refusal to slaughter and eat from the mixed group of animals in his vision. Categorizing people like Cornelius as ‘potentially defiled’ may have constituted a human ‘fence’ between scrupulous Jews and unclean pagans. Adherence to the stipulations of the apostolic decree by Gentile Christians removed the last hindrance to Jewish Christians having table fellowship with them.

Was δικαιοσύνη θεο⋯ bei Paulus besagt, ist immer noch umstritten. Bis in die jüngste Zeit hinein blieb dieser Begriff kontrovers. Aus der Fülle der Veröffentlichungen über diese Thematik sei nur auf die Monographien von Peter Stuhlmacher, Karl Kertelge, J. A. Ziesler und Elke Plutta-Messerschmidt hingewiesen. Doch sollen uns diese neueren Publikationen höchstens am Rande beschäftigen. Im Mittelpunkt unserer Überlegungen steht vielmehr der soeben erschienene Römerbriefkommentar Ernst Käsemanns. In ihm ist zusammengefaßt, was dieser Schüler Bultmanns im Laufe der letzten Jahrzehnte über Paulus und speziell über die δ.θ. gesagt hat. Es ist bekannt, daß Bultmann und Käsemanns in diesem Punkte differieren. Daß es aber gerade zwei der angesehensten und profiliertesten Neutestamentler sind, die eine Kontroverse über einen so zentralen Begriff der biblischen Verkündigung führen, macht wieder einmal deutlich, wie sehr Theologie immer wieder von neuem ihre Mitte bedenken muß; macht deutlich, wie wenig Theologie ein vorhandenes Etwas ist, das man sich als völlig Begriffenes in einem Akte aneignen kann. Theologie ist ja niemals statischer Besitz, Theologie ist immer wieder je neuer Vollzug, je neues Engagement, je neues Wagnis, je neues Sich-selbst-in-Frage-stellen. Deshalb lohnt sich der wissenschaftliche Streit um ihr Zentrum. Gerade hier sollte das Wort von Albert Einstein gelten: ‘Richtig streiten kann man nur mit seinen Brüdern und nahen Freunden; die andern sind einem zu fremd.’ Der notwendige theologische Streit um die δ.θ. verbindet allein schon dadurch, daß der Theologe als Theologe nur dann von ihr verantwortlich sprechen kann, wenn er es im Bewußtsein darum tut, ihr seine Existenz zu verdanken.

The appearance of another article on this fascinating and yet controversial subject needs some justification. After all, has not everything already been said? Since the publication of Rengstorf's famous study in Kittel have not the lines been drawn, the varying positions taken up and the evidence minutely sifted for every clue which might help us unravel a complicated New Testament crux interpretum? Is there really anything new to be said?