Robert Gundry, in a new major commentary on Mark, advances convincingly the thesis that the second Gospel is an extended apology for the cross. More specifically, Gundry argues that Mark portrays the passion of Christ as an aspect of his glory. This article intends to follow that thesis up an avenue not travelled in Gundry's commentary – namely the Via Dolorosa, which, I will argue, replaces the Sacra Via of Rome and renders the passion a triumph in a quite literal sense. In other words, I will maintain that details of a particular segment of the crucifixion narrative (Mark 15.16–32) evoke a Roman triumphal procession, and that Mark designs this ‘anti-triumph’ to suggest that the seeming scandal of the cross is actually an exaltation of Christ. In this interpretation, many details of the crucifixion narrative that appear to be incidental are in fact important features in a parabolic drama which a late first-century Roman audience would be uniquely situated to comprehend.

Die traditionelle Definition der Gattung des Briefes als eines ‘halbierten Zwiegesprächs’ gilt auch für die echten Paulusbriefe: Sie vermitteln einen verhältnismäβig klaren Einblick in das Denken und in die unmittelbaren Absichten des Briefautors; wir wissen dagegen unmittelbar nichts über die Gesprächspartner, d.h. über das Denken der ursprünglich intendierten Rezipienten der Briefe und ihre besondere Situation. Allerdings können wir versuchen, aus den Briefaussagen jedenfalls die von Paulus angenommene Lage der Adressaten und ihre theologische Position – wie sie der Apostel in seiner Argumentation voraussetzt – zu rekonstruieren. Die Briefe nach Korinth bieten für diesen Versuch besonders günstige Voraussetzungen, vor allem beim Thema ‘Eschatologie’, das im Ersten wie im Zweiten Korintherbrief eine Rolle spielt. ‘Eschatologisch’ nenne ich dabei im folgenden solche Aussagen, in denen die (erhoffte oder befürchtete) geschichtliche Zukunft in irgendeiner Weise auf Gott hin transzendiert wird, sei es im Blick auf den einzelnen Menschen, sei es im Blick auf die Kirche, sei es im Blick auf die Welt als ganze.

1 Peter 2.4–10 is a significant passage within the letter, rich in material from the Jewish scriptures. Verse 9 is particularly significant for the construction of Christian group-identity in that it uniquely applies three words from the vocabulary of ethnic identity to the Church: γένος, ἔθνος, and λαός, widely translated as ‘race’, ‘nation’, and ‘people’. A survey of these words in pre-Christian Jewish literature (especially the LXX), in the NT, and in other early Christian literature, reveals how crucial this text in 1 Peter is to the process by which Christian identity came to be conceived in ethnoracial terms. Drawing on modern definitions of ethnic identity, and ancient evidence concerning the fluidity of ethnic identities, it becomes clear that ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ identities are constructed, believed, and sustained through discourse. 1 Peter, with both aggregative and oppositional modes of ethnic reasoning, makes a crucial contribution to the construction of an ethnic form of Christian identity.

The prohibition of women's speech at 1 Cor 14.34–5, in a letter which elsewhere presumes female prophetic activity, has intrigued scholars. Although some attempt to resolve this apparent inconsistency by interpreting the text as it stands, others resort to interpolation theories. Of the latter, the large majority employ only a few of the traditional text-critical criteria. For example, Hans Conzelmann relies solely on intrinsic probability to dismiss 1 Cor 14.33b–36 as a later insertion,2 despite the external evidence which recognizes no omission. Gordon Fee, a noted text critic, has recently examined this passage employing all the text-critical criteria. Surprisingly, Fee still considers vv. 34–5 an interpolation.

In spite of its popularity, the contention that the Christian conception of Jesus as a descending-ascending saviour figure was derived from the gnostic redeemer myth faces serious problems. Three are widely noted; another needs attention. (I) The sources from which our knowledge of the gnostic myth comes are late: e.g. the Naassene hymn, the hymn of the Pearl, the Mandean materials, the Manichean evidence, the accounts in the church fathers, and the Nag Hammadi documents. Sources from Chenoboskion like the Paraphrase of Shem, the Apocalypse of Adam, and the Second Logos of the Great Seth do contain a myth of a redeemer that is only superficially christianized. Hence the gnostics may not have derived their myth from Christians. It does not follow, however, either that Christians got it from gnostics or that it is pre-Christian. (2) A redeemer myth is not essential to gnosticism. Though gnosticism may contain a redeemer myth (e.g. the Naassene hymn), it may exist without one. In Carpocrates' system, for example, Jesus' soul remembered what it had seen in its circuit with the unbegotten God. The Ophites in Origen's Against Celsus know of no descending-ascending redeemer. They look to an earthly being who fetches gnosis from heaven. In Poimandres, the writer is the recipient of a vision in rapture. He then teaches the way of salvation. Indeed, the proto-gnosticism of Paul's opponents in I Corinthians apparently did not contain a redeemer myth. Such evidence demands that a distinction be drawn between two issues: (a) whether or not there was a pre-Christian gnosticism, and (b) whether or not there was a pre-Christian gnostic redeemer myth. Since a redeemer myth is not constitutive for gnosticism, the existence of a pre-Christian gnosis is no guarantee for the presence of a gnostic redeemer myth. (3) In the Christian sources where the gnostic myth has been assumed to be influential (e.g. the Fourth Gospel), there is no ontological identity between Christ and the believers as in gnosticism. There is, in the Christian writings, no pre-existence of the soul or redeemed redeemer. Given these difficulties, why the attractiveness of the gnostic hypothesis?

The importance of Paul's first extant letter to the study of early Christianity has clearly been demonstrated by the attention paid to just a small part of it, the ‘dreadful text’ of 1 Thessalonians 2.14–16, a ‘passionate, generalizing, hateful’ diatribe against the Jews for having killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and for interfering with Paul's mission to the Gentiles. Or so it has seemed to most historians, theologians, and exegetes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who have studied the passage. Those early, stunning verses of Paul, written probably in 50 or 51 C.E. from Corinth to his recently founded church in Thessalonica, have proved especially embarrassing to Jews and Christians who, in post-Holocaust self-examination and post-Vatican II ecumenical spirit, have been trying to exorcise the demons of antisemitism. How could Paul, a proud Jew and Pharisee, so categorically condemn his own people? And how can so early and sweeping a condemnation be explained by scholars who argue that such virulent antisemitism did not in fact develop until the latter part of the century, after the destruction of the Temple and the council at Jamnia?

Narrative criticism has called our attention to the fact that the Gospels have plots. Still, the actual work of describing the plots of our various Gospels has only just begun. This article intends to further that project with regard to the Gospel of Matthew. It will review and critique work that has been done so far and will then offer a more precise formulation than has been proposed previously.

The Coptic Gospel of Thomas is one of the most spectacular of the fifty-two tractates filling the thirteen codices of the Nag Hammadi library. Discovered in December 1945 by several Egyptian fellahin, the Nag Hammadi tractates were subjected to a variety of political and scholarly ploys, and were not made available in their entirety until the very end of 1977, when the last of the volumes of manuscript pages in the Facsimile Edition and the one-volume edition of The Nag Hammadi Library in English finally appeared.1 One of the very first of the documents to be published was the Gospel of Thomas, and its appearance has already stimulated the production of numerous articles and monographs by the scholars who have recognized its significance for our knowledge of Christian origins and early church history. Since the time of its initial publication scholars have suggested a variety of interpretations of the Gospel, and to date no consensus has been reached. Yet, in my estimation, a reasonably strong case can be made that the Gospel of Thomas, in its present form, belongs at least on the periphery of Christian Gnosticism, and to that extent the Coptic text may be termed a gnosticizing gospel.2

Die Weise, in der man mit der Rezeption königlicher Messiastraditionen im NT zu rechnen pflegt, bringt große methodische Schwierigkeiten mit sich. Von der alten Konzeption der ‘Spiritualisierung’ nationaler Erwartungen (Baur, Wernle etc.) hat man prinzipiell noch immer nicht abrücken können: Das Maß, in dem nationale Eschatologie christianisiert worden sein soll, entzieht sich historischer und soziologischer Erklärbarkeit. F. Hahn kann die Verwendung des jüdischen Messiastitels nur auf dem Umweg über sein Schema erklären, nach dem derartige Titel zunächst auf den Wiederkommenden bezogen worden seien: ‘Der jüdische Messiastitel war für Jesus und die Urgemeinde als solcher nicht tragbar’–das sei nur nach einem längeren Prozeß der Christianisierung möglich gewesen, in dem der Messiasbegriff besonders mit dem Leidensgedanken verbunden worden sei; Ursprung der erst nach der älteren Zeit einsetzenden Entwicklung sei die Spottinschrift am Kreuz gewesen.–Zu den Einwänden, die Ph. Vielhauer gegen diese Konzeption vorgebracht hat, ist hinzuzufügen, daß die These von der Hinrichtung Jesu als eines Messiasprätendenten (Kreuzesinschrift) angesichts des Befundes bei Mk ein Zirkelschluß ist. Denn woher weiß man, wie der Titel ‘König der Juden’ zu verstehen ist–und in welchem Zusammenhang steht dieser Titel mit den sonst bei Mk. berichteten Auftreten Jesu? Überdies ersetzt das von F. Hahn konstruierte Schema der allmählichen Übertragung der Titel auf den Irdischen nicht einen historischen Nachweis, wie es überhaupt möglich gewesen sei, derartige Titel zu applizieren. Enteschatologisierung allein erklärt noch gar nichts. Vor allem hat Hahn die Kategorie der ‘Wiederkehr’ Jesu zum Gericht nicht historisch verständlich machen können. Hier handelt es sich aber deutlich um eine ‘prophetische’ Kategorie (Vgl. Anm. 142): Der Verkünder kommt als Zeuge wieder. – Ebensowenig wie F. Hahn kann aber auch Ph. Vielhauer die Applikation jüdischer Messianologie auf Jesus erklären: Er rechnet mit einer totalen Umkehrung des jüdischen Messiasbegriffes, bzw.

In the early third and fourth centuries respectively, Ammonius of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea engaged in cutting-edge research on the relationships among the four canonical gospels. Indeed, these two figures stand at the head of the entire tradition of comparative literary analysis of the gospels. This article provides a more precise account of their contributions, as well as the relationship between the two figures. It argues that Ammonius, who was likely the teacher of Origen, composed the first gospel synopsis by placing similar passages in parallel columns. He gave this work the title Diatessaron-Gospel, referring thereby to the four columns in which his text was laid out. This pioneering piece of scholarship drew upon a long tradition of Alexandrian textual scholarship and likely served as the inspiration for Origen's more famous Hexapla. A little over a century later, Eusebius of Caesarea picked up where Ammonius left off and attempted to accomplish the same goal, albeit using a different and improved method. Using the textual parallels presented in the Diatessaron-Gospel as his ‘raw data’, Eusebius converted these textual units into numbers which he then collated in ten tables, or ‘canons’, standing at the beginning of a gospel book. The resulting cross-reference system, consisting of the Canon Tables as well as sectional enumeration throughout each gospel, allowed the user to find parallels between the gospels, but in such a way that the literary integrity of each of the four was preserved. Moreover, Eusebius also exploited the potential of his invention by including theologically suggestive cross-references, thereby subtly guiding the reader of the fourfold gospel to what might be called a canonical reading of the four.

In his excellent study of crucifixion, Martin Hengel has documented the harsh reality of the penalty in antiquity and has shown that it was seldom portrayed in detail or in an idealized manner. These facts are important and should be kept constantly in mind. They make all the more pressing the question why a detailed narrative of Jesus' death was composed and lead us to look closely at the way the story is told. An ancient opponent of Christianity, Celsus, provides an interesting illustration of both the cultural situation and the literary question. On the one hand, he expressed the general view that crucifixion was the most ignominious and shameful type of death. On the other hand, he made charges that were based, not so much on the disgrace of death by crucifixion as such, but on the way the story is told, on the character of Jesus as revealed by the narrative. As is well known, in part of his work entitled On the True Doctrine, he employed the device of a fictitious Jewish interlocutor. Alluding to the scene in Gethsemane, this critic challenged the teaching that Jesus was a god or the son of the most high God because he hid and tried to escape when the Jews decided that he was worthy of death. Further, this so-called god was betrayed by his own disciples, a criticism that applies to several scenes of the passion narrative. Returning to the Gethsemane story, the interlocutor attacks the theory that Jesus foreknew and intended his sufferings on the basis of his portrayal as mourning and lamenting and praying that this cup might pass from him.

In the development of Christology in the primitive church, the emergence of the worship of Jesus is a significant phenomenon. In the exclusive monotheism of the Jewish religious tradition, as distinct from some other kinds of monotheism, it was worship which was the real test of monotheistic faith in religious practice. In the world-views of the early centuries A.D. the gap between God and man might be peopled by all kinds of intermediary beings – angels, divine men, hypostatized divine attributes, the Logos – and the early church's attempt to understand the mediatorial role of Jesus naturally made use of these possibilities. In the last resort, however, Jewish monotheism could not tolerate a mere spectrum between God and man; somewhere a firm line had to be drawn between God and creatures, and in religious practice it was worship which signalled the distinction between God and every creature, however exalted. God must be worshipped; no creature may be worshipped. For Jewish monotheism, this insistence on the one God's exclusive right to religious worship was far more important than metaphysical notions of the unity of the divine nature. Since the early church remained – or at least professed to remain – faithful to Jewish monotheism, the acknowledgement of Jesus as worthy of worship is a remarkable development. Either it should have been rejected as idolatry – and a halt called to the upward trend of christological development – or else its acceptance may be seen with hindsight to have set the church already on the road to Nicene theology.

One of the thorniest questions in New Testament scholarship is the date of the composition of John's Apocalypse. Majority opinion now assigns that exotic book to the last decade of the first century A.D., ὸ , as Irenaeus says. But there are numerous problems with this date, and it is the contention of this study that the most natural date, the date indicated by the book itself and confirmed by outside sources, especially by the Roman historians of the early second century Tacitus, Suetonius and Plutarch is the period immediately following Nero's death in June of 68, that calamitous time known as the Year of the Four Emperors.

Ausgehend von der Gestaltung des Briefpräskriptes wird der Jakobus–brief in textpragmatischer Hinsicht als apostolischer Diasporabrief interpretiert. Intention, sprachliche Gestaltung und wesentliche Themen entsprechen der Tradition frühjüdischer Diasporabriefe (EpJer, 2 Makk 1–2, syrBar 78–86, ParJer 6.17–23). Die Überlieferung der frühjüdischen Diasporabriefe in griechischer Sprache verweist auf die Funktion des Griechischen als Medium der Einheit des Gottesvolkes unter den geschichtlichen Gegebenheiten des Frühjudentums. Aus dem Ver–gleich mit zentralen Aussagezusammenhängen der frühjüdischen Briefe (Gottesverständnis, Aussagen über das Gottesvolk, Zukunftserwartungen, Toraverstandnis) ergibt sich, daβ der Jakobusbrief mit ähnlichen sprachlichen Mitteln und durch eng verwandte Überlieferungen die Identität der Briefadressaten als an Christus glaubende Glieder des Gottesvolkes stärken will.

Most scholars acknowledge Matthew's debt to Mark in the composition of his own Gospel, and they are fully aware of his extensive redaction and expansion of this major source. Yet few scholars pose what is an obvious question that arises from these points: What was Matthew's intention for Mark once he had composed and circulated his own revised and enlarged account of Jesus' mission? Did he intend to supplement Mark, in which case he wished his readers to continue to consult Mark as well as his own narrative, or was it his intention to replace the earlier Gospel? It is argued in this study that the evidence suggests that Matthew viewed Mark as seriously flawed, and that he wrote his own Gospel to replace the inadequate Marcan account.

In his excellent study of crucifixion, Martin Hengel has documented the harsh reality of the penalty in antiquity and has shown that it was seldom portrayed in detail or in an idealized manner. These facts are important and should be kept constantly in mind. They make all the more pressing the question why a detailed narrative of Jesus' death was composed and lead us to look closely at the way the story is told. An ancient opponent of Christianity, Celsus, provides an interesting illustration of both the cultural situation and the literary question. On the one hand, he expressed the general view that crucifixion was the most ignominious and shameful type of death. On the other hand, he made charges that were based, not so much on the disgrace of death by crucifixion as such, but on the way the story is told, on the character of Jesus as revealed by the narrative. As is well known, in part of his work entitled On the True Doctrine, he employed the device of a fictitious Jewish interlocutor. Alluding to the scene in Gethsemane, this critic challenged the teaching that Jesus was a god or the son of the most high God because he hid and tried to escape when the Jews decided that he was worthy of death. Further, this so-called god was betrayed by his own disciples, a criticism that applies to several scenes of the passion narrative. Returning to the Gethsemane story, the interlocutor attacks the theory that Jesus foreknew and intended his sufferings on the basis of his portrayal as mourning and lamenting and praying that this cup might pass from him.

In recent years an old problem has been reconsidered in four studies, apparently written independently of one another, which with similar arguments arrive at virtually the same conclusion:1 The Epistle to the Philippians is actually a composition of three Pauline Epistles or fragments thereof.2 According to this conclusion, Phil. iv. 10−20 was the first letter written by Paul to Philippi, i. 1−ii. 30 (or iii. 1) the second, and iii. 1 (or 2)−iv. 1 the third, while the distribution of iv. 2−9 and 21−3 remains uncertain.3

Die einzige Stelle, an der in den bis jetzt veröffentlichten Texten der neuen Höhlenfunde vom Toten Meer vom Messias gesprochen wird, ist Sekt. 9, 10–11. Es heißt da: ‘Und sie (die Mitglieder der essenischen Gemeinde) sollen sich richten lassen durch die fruheren Rechtssatzungen, durch die die Leute der Gemeinde (schon) von Anfang an sich zurechtweisen ließen, bis zum Kommen eines Prop heten und der Cesaib ten (Messias) Aarons und Israels’ () Über das ‘Kommen eines Propheten’ wird weiter unten noch zu sprechen sein. Das Auffälligste an diesem Satz ist aber, dαβ das (eindeutig lesbare) Wort im Plural cstr. ‘die Gesalbten’ erscheint. Einige Übersetzer haben diesen Plural einfach als Schreibfehler erklärt und durch Streichung des Jod zum Singular emendiert. Aber es ist natürlich höchst bedenklich, die lectio difficillima des Plural so in den geläufigen Begriff ‘des Messias’ im Singular zu verwandeln. Auch der Vorschlag, das Jod als sog. Jod compaginis zu erklären, wie es gelegentlich im A.T. vorkommt, und auf diese Weise das singularische Verständnis zu erreichen, ist sprachlich nicht moglich. Denn es gibt in den neu gefundenen Texten sonst keiner Beleg fur ein solches Jod compaginis. Die Lesung des Wortes als Plural ‘die Gesalbten Aarons und Israels’ ist sprachlich nicht zu umgehen.

The Pauline epistle known as Philemon is generally understood to be a letter written by Paul to a slaveowner on behalf of the runaway slave Onesimus requesting that the latter be allowed to return without penalty to the household in which he served. This article proposes a new interpretation of the letter that differs from the traditional in four major points: (1) the letter is written to a church, a congregation of which the individual addressed in the main body of the letter is a member; it is not a personal letter. (2) the slave Onesimus is with Paul in prison because he was sent there by the individual addressed in the main body of the letter (probably Archippus) on behalf of the Colossae church; Onesimus did not run away. (3) Paul writes to request that Onesimus be released from his obligations in Colossae in order that he might remain with Paul to work in the church in a Christian ministry. (4) Paul makes clear that Onesimus is no longer to be considered a slave within the Christian community, and separately suggests Onesimus be manumitted.