The phrase ‘Peace and security’ in 1 Thess 5.3 has traditionally been understood as an echo of the OT prophetic warnings (Jer 6.14; Ezek 13.10; Mic 3.5) against false claims of peace. Stronger evidence exists, however, that the apostle is making use of a popular theme of the imperial Roman propaganda machine. The Romans vigorously promoted themselves through various public media as those who provided not only ‘peace’ but also ‘security’, thereby providing a closer parallel to Paul's statement in 5.3 than any OT text. This essay reviews four kinds of evidence—numismatic, monumental, inscriptional and literary—in order to demonstrate in a decisive fashion that the phrase ‘peace and security’ involves an allusion not to prophetic warning but to Roman political propaganda.

This article argues two major theses: (1) Paul was trying to teach the Corinthian church to think eschatologically; (2) Paul was trying to teach the Corinthian church to reshape its identity in light of Israel's Scripture. These theses entail two important corollaries: (1) the Corinthians did not have an ‘overrealized eschatology’; (2) scholars who contend that Paul engaged in OT interpretation only when his hand was forced by Judaizing opponents cannot explain Paul's rich and varied use of Scripture in 1 Cor. These theses are explained and defended with reference to 1 Cor 10.1–22; 1.18–31 and 5.1–13.

In recent years much literature has been devoted to this topic. If still another discussion can be justified, it is on the grounds that many of the best insights have not been brought together and that perhaps now we may be in a position to draw a larger picture that will represent a certain consensus.

This article identifies two previously unnoticed items of textual evidence that support the view that 1 Cor 14.34–5 (‘Let women keep silence in the churches …’) was an interpolation. I conclude that Bishop Victor ordered the rewriting of 1 Cor 14.34–40 in the margin of Codex Fuldensis (see photograph on page 261) with w. 34–5 omitted and that there is a text-critical siglum that indicates the scribe's awareness of a textual variant at the beginning of 1 Cor 14.34 in Codex Vaticanus (see photograph on page 262). This text-critical evidence, plus the evidence from the non-Western Greek ms. 88* and Vulgate ms. Reginensis with w. 34–5 transposed after v. 40, makes an already strong case for interpolation even stronger. The text-critical sigla in Vaticanus open a new window onto the early history of the NT text. While tangential to the main argument of this article, this may well be its most important contribution.

This paper takes its cue from L. Hartman's study of ‘Scriptural Exegesis in the Gospel of Matthew and the Problem of Communication’,1 and more specifically from two comments on that paper made by Professor M. D. Hooker.2 The first was to the effect that the title of Hartman's study involved a promise which was not fulfilled, in that he did not in fact deal significantly with ‘communication’, in the sense of discussing what the ordinary reader might have been expected to get out of Matthew's scriptural quotations and allusions. The second was the related question whether the ordinary Jew of New Testament times, as opposed to the professional theologians or the exegetes of Qumran, could be expected to have as full an acquaintance with the Old Testament as Hartman assumed. This last point reminded me of a principle set out in a recent article by Humphrey Palmer, which neatly articulated a persistent doubt which I have felt when reading suggestions of sophisticated midrashic developments in the Gospels: ‘The complexity of allusion intelligible to a modern scholar with lots of books and little else to do is much greater than that accessible to any member of Jesus' audience.’3 A civilization based on the printed book may be in danger of forgetting that a scroll of even one Old Testament book was in the first century an inconvenient and expensive luxury, and so of assuming an ease of reference which is more appropriate to the age of the ‘pocket Bible’ than to primitive Christianity.

Im Neuen Testament findet sich eine Reihe von Schriften, die man als die johanneischen zu bezeichnen pflegt. Dabei ist nicht so sehr die ‘Offenbarung des Johannes’ gemeint, die als einzige dieser Werke sich ausdrücklich auf einen Verfasser mit Namen ‘Johannes’ bezieht, vielmehr das Johannesevangelium und die drei Johannesbriefe. Die Bedeutung dieser Literatur für das Verständnis der urchristlichen Theologiegeschichte ist kaum zu überschätzen. Im folgenden soll der Versuch unternommen werden, die Frage nach ihrer Entstehung und Geschichte in der Form eines Überblicks zu beantworten. Der an dieser Stelle zu begründenden Auffassung kommt selbstverständlich nur die größere oder geringere Wahrscheinlichkeit zu, wie sie allgemein für historisch-kritische Urteile festzustellen ist. Doch wird sich zeigen, daß auch der verbreitete Konsens, der heute für die Forschung zur johanneischen Frage charakteristisch ist, sich im Bereich von Hypothesen bewegt.

No other passage of scripture recurs so frequently in allusion or quotation in the christological expressions of NT times as Ps. cx. I. In this expression we stand in continuity with christological thought from the very early beginnings of its development. The purpose of the following study is to investigate the use of Ps. cx. 1 in relationship to this development, and to examine the function and significance of its motifs at various points within the complex variety of NT christological traditions.

The authorship of the Pastorals must have been among the first instances inviting the application of quantitative methods in literature. Schleiermacher's [1] critical campaign against the authenticity of I Timothy uses a great array of hapax legomena for establishing the linguistic peculiarity of that Epistle. The controversy continued on these lines, subsequent workers using linguistic criteria to a greater or lesser extent according to the value they attributed to them. This continued until 1921 when Harrison's book on The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles [2] appeared, in which he presented such overwhelming linguistic evidence against Paul's authorship that most workers regarded the controversy as closed. However, this was not so, and Harrison's procedure has been subjected from time to time to a certain amount of criticism, for example, by W. Michaelis [3, 4], F. R. M. Hitchcock [5, 6], D. Guthrie [7] and B. M. Metzger [8].

The ever-increasing volume of scholarly publications dealing with Johannine problems encourages the hope that a solution of what Harnack called the Johannine riddle is at last in sight. Yet a survey of the literature may leave the impression that scholars, like so many proverbial horsemen, are riding off in different directions through a trackless morass. Such an impression is not entirely accurate, however, for significant patterns and points of coincidence areemerging from what at first appears to be a complex and rather confused picture. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to point to several well-trodden pathways through the wildernessof Johannine problems which others have hewn out, and by clarification, summary and assessmentof some of the more important evidences bearing upon Johannine origins to suggest why these paths are well chosen and where they may be leading us.

A frequent source of consolation among Christians is that, while they do not have the same attitudes towards creeds, liturgies, or church structures, they all share the same canon of the NT. That common heritage might seem to be reinforced by B. S. Childs' recent insistence, or even hyper-insistence, on canonical dimensions in studying NT text questions, in interpreting individual NT books, and in evaluating the whole collection. In point of fact, despite Childs's emphasis (which, while exaggerated, makes some very important points), scholarship has gone in the opposite direction. For various reasons and from various vantage points, the validity and value of the NT canon are being seriously questioned.

During the last thirty years significant advances have been made in the study of early Christian miracle stories. The story of the woman who touched Jesus' garment has been especially well analyzed by Heinz Joachim Held and Gerd Theissen, and recently Manfred Hutter has brought additional information to bear on the Matthean version. It is my goal to look at each version of the story from the perspective of ‘comparative social-rhetorical’ analysis and interpretation. The rhetorical observations are informed especially by Kenneth Burke's chapter entitled ‘Lexicon Rhetoricae’ in Counterstatement and by Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative. The comparative and social observations are stimulated by various interpreters' use of Hellenistic-Roman data as well as Jewish data for analysis of New Testament literature.

Stimulated by the work of D. Boyarin, the topic of circumcision is examined in Philo (Spec. Leg. 1.1–11; Migr. Abr. 89–93) and Paul (Rom 2.25–9). Philo limits his allegorizing tendencies in view of the conservative instincts of the Jewish community. Paul is far more radical in relation to Jewish opinion: Rom 2.29 indicates his willingness to dispense with human praise in such matters. On the other hand, his intellectual framework is far less acculturated than that of Philo; pace Boyarin, none of the contrasts in Rom 2.28–9 reflect Hellenizing influence. Paul's hermeneutical revolution matched no contemporary form of Judaism.

For much of this century the notion of a Menschensohn, or Son of Man figure, loomed large in scholarly reconstructions of Jewish eschatological expectations in the time of Jesus. The primary Jewish attestation of this figure was found, of course, in Dan 7.13, with complementary appearances in the Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra 13. There was considerable diversity of opinion about the origin and precise nature of this figure. More imaginative scholars, like Sigmund Mowinckel, held that ‘Conceptions of a more or less divine Primordial Man were widespread in the ancient east. Apparently there is a historical connexion between the varying figures of this type, which seem to be derived, directly or indirectly, from Iranian or Indo-Iranian myths.’1 The Jewish conception of ‘the Son of Man’ was ‘a Jewish variant of this oriental, cosmological, eschatological myth of Anthropos’,2 influenced by a syncretistic fusion of Iranian and Mesopotamian concepts. At the least, the phrase ‘Son of Man’ was thought to be a well-known, readily recognizable title for a messiah of a heavenly type, in contrast to the national, earthly, Davidic messiah. As recently as 1974 Norman Perrin could claim that all the recent studies of the ‘Son of Man Problem’ he had reviewed agreed on one point: ‘there existed in ancient Judaism a defined concept of the apocalyptic Son of Man, the concept of a heavenly redeemer figure whose coming to earth as judge would be a feature of the drama of the End time.’

The problem which I offer for your discussion may be raised in the following terms: if one assumes that the Golden Rule constitutes the basic moral rule about which the wisest may agree, what happens to this rule when it is put within a religious perspective, more precisely, within the perspective delineated by the symbolic network characteristic of the Jewish-Christian scriptures?

In an elegant discussion of the roles of women in the Pauline congregations, Wayne Meeks has drawn attention to Paul's apparently deliberate attempt to make parallel statements about the respective obligations of males and females in 1 Cor 7 and in 1 Cor 11. 2–16. In the same study, Meeks makes a second observation about 1 Cor 11. 2–16: ‘If the passage places most emphasis on the female, that must be because in Corinth it is the charismatic women who are donning the attire of the opposite sex’. There is indeed a fairly wide consensus that the problem underlying the instructions about head attire in 1 Cor 11 is with women. Is there a connection between the antics of the women of 1 Cor 11 and Paul's exhortations in 1 Cor 7? Are we to conclude that 1 Cor 7 also responds to a situation instigated by females? Or, does the fact that the parallelism in 1 Cor 7 is even more extensive than in 1 Cor 11 imply that, in his discussion of marriage and celibacy, Paul was equally concerned with the practices of men and women?

The interpretation of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16. 19–31) shows both how misleading extra-biblical parallels to biblical motifs can be when misused, and also how enlightening they can be when correctly used. The parable makes use of two major narrative motifs which can be paralleled in other ancient literature: (1) a reversal of fortunes experienced by a rich man and a poor man after death; (2) a dead person's return from the dead with a message for the living. Since Gressmann's monograph drew attention to one important example of (1) – the Egyptian story of Setme and Si-Osiris (together with later Jewish stories derived from it) – much discussion of the parable has been dominated by this one parallel. Both the way in which this parallel has been used in the interpretation of the parable and the restriction of interest to this one parallel have had unfortunate consequences.

The article addresses the problem of the reception of Paul: how does the construction of the image of Paul in the Deuteropauline letters (Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians), the Pastoral letters, the Acts of the Apostles and the apocryphal Acts of Paul relate together? The difficult question of the relationship between Paul in his letters and Paul in Acts is treated first. A typology of the reception of Paul is proposed following three poles: documentary (his letters), biographical (his life) and doctoral (his permanent authority for the Church). The conception that Paul's letters were the only regulation for the memory of Paul in the first century is denied. This three poles typology is applied to some topics of the Pauline tradition: the status of the apostle, the suffering of the apostle, and his teaching. It is possible to observe finally how the writings which honor the memory of the apostle have interpreted these topics by working out a feature present in the writings of the apostle.

This is still an unresolved problem. Our aim is to investigate the question to see whether Paul's opponents are one group or more than one, and to ascertain the nature of their views.

Five assumptions are made; they are taken as axiomatic, so a case for them in detail is not argued. First, the integrity of Phil. has been successfully defended against attempts to analyse it as containing three originally separate letters to the Philippians, especially by P. Schubert, V. Furnish, R. Jewett and T. E. Pollard, and supported by R. P. Martin. This does make it somewhat easier to maintain a single-front hypothesis, but only marginally makes it more probable. The principle of Occam's razor (entia non sint multiplicanda praeter necessitatem), tends to favour the assumption of a uniform view, but only if evidence for multiple opponents appears weak.