The debate over the meaning of πίστις Χριστοῦ has been continuing for some time and shows no signs of abating, yet one conclusion has remained constant: the Church Fathers, generally, did not understand πίστις Χριστοῦ in the Pauline materials in the subjective sense as the ‘faithfulness of Christ’. Furthermore, there has heretofore been no text that correlates Jesus' faithfulness with his death on the cross in patristic writings. In light of that, the aim of this study is (1) to offer a critique of recent work on πίστις Χριστοῦ in the Church Fathers, and (2) to break the longstanding silence by presenting overlooked evidence from Hippolytus's De Christo et Antichristo that unambiguously relates Jesus' faithfulness to his death on the cross.

Following the introduction of a ‘Quaestiones Disputatae’ session at the 69th General Meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in Szeged, Hungary in 2014, a second such session was held at the 70th General Meeting at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam on 29 July 2015. The theme was proposed by the President of the Society, Prof. Judith Lieu.

Acts states in 13.13–14a that Paul sailed on his outward journey from Paphos in Cyprus to Pergê in Pamphylia (Περγη), proceeding then to Pisidian Antioch – literally, Antioch-towards-Pisidia. (Pamphylia is the westernmost of two alluvial coastal shelves on the south coast of present-day Turkey; a relatively self-contained geographical area.) Acts states that John-Mark left for Jerusalem from this point after a disagreement, and also does not mention the coastal port of Attaleia (‘Ατταλεια), present-day Antalya. On the return journey, however, noted in 14.24–26a, the remaining missionaries are said to preach in Pergê and then proceed to Attaleia, from which point they sail on to Syrian Antioch, presumably actually disembarking at Seleucia. Now this all looks a little odd at first glance, especially since Pergê is some distance inland for any arrival on the first leg of this journey, and most interpreters have reacted accordingly. I want to suggest here, however, that the author's comments about these two traverses through Pamphylia, although brief and initially a little puzzling, are deliberately asymmetrical, and it is this that betrays their almost certain accuracy in historical terms.

In this article it is argued that in Rom 11.25–32 Paul starts from the situation of Israel that he has described in Rom 11.1–10: Israel is torn into two parts – a Christian minority and a non-Christian majority which has rejected the Gospel because it has been hardened. In these verses Paul develops an expectation according to which it is God himself who will take away the hardening of the non-Christian majority of Israel by leading them to faith in Christ. It is God himself whom Paul identifies as the ‘deliverer who comes from Zion’ (v. 26), although he does not expect a theophany but uses the quotations from Isa 59.20–1 and 27.9 as metaphorical circumscriptions for God's intervention in favour of the non-Christian part of his people. Although Paul is fully convinced that God will intervene in favour of the non-Christian Jews, he has no idea how this could happen. This discrepancy between Paul's assurance of the ‘that’ and his cluelessness regarding the ‘how’ is the reason why he presents his solution of the Israel problem in an apocalyptic mode as a revelation of a ‘mystery’ (v. 25).

Eine Reihe von μαρτυρεω-bzw. μαρτυρια-Belegen im vierten Evangelium rufen förmlich synoptische Zeugnisse auf. Das ist nicht verwunderlich, wenn man zur Kenntnis nimmt, dass es auch sonst johanneische Befunde der unzweideutigen Kenntnis, Verwendung und Umgestaltung synoptischer Vorlagen gibt. Dabei ist sorgfältig auf subtile unterschiedliche Tempusverwendung im Johannesevangelium, zumal den Gebrauch des Perfekts zum Ausdruck schriftlicher Textreferenz zu achten. Zu der fundamentalen Täufermartyria, die die Evangelienerzählung eröffnet, bildet Joh 19.35, der ursprünglich μαρτυρεω-Beleg, eine Inklusion, indem unter dem Kreuz anstelle des Bekenntnisses des römischen Centurio (Mk 15,39) ausdrücklich an die Verkündigung des ersten Christus-Zeugen (Jon 1.29–34) erinnert wird.

Mc (et, en partie, Mt et EvHe) montrent que le Jourdain a été le cadre d'une double scène au début de la vie de Jésus: son baptême par le Baptiste et une vision sans témoins qui l'aurait suivi. Le baptême de Jean, à l'eau, scèlle la conversion présente et prépare le pardon, le don eschatologique futur, comme le montre la formule ‘baptême de conversion pour le pardon des péchés’. De son côté, Jésus a accepté de recevoir ce signe, le ‘baptême de Jean’, parce qu'il l'a reconnu comme l'expression de l'arrivée du kairos. D'autre part, la vision de type prophétique qu'il a eu après son baptême l'a confirmé dans son choix.

According to the prevailing interpretation of 1 Cor 3.15, the phrase διὰ πυρός must be taken in the local sense, and the fire of vv. 13 and 15 plays no soteriological function. This article contests this reading, arguing that Paul's probable allusion to Mal 3 and his reference to the testing function of fire may imply refining as well. More importantly, it demonstrates that whereas the phrase διὰ πυρός is indeterminate and may take either the local or the instrumental sense, nearly every other instance of the construction σῴζω + διά + genitive in the relevant Greek literature has an instrumental sense.

As one of its rules, thoroughgoing eclecticism in New Testament textual criticism puts great store by an author's consistency of language, style and usage when assessing variation. This article examines the theoretical justification for such a rule and sets out a number of examples from throughout the New Testament to show how such an application works, even when the preferred solutions may go against traditional principles of text-critics such as the age, quality or quantity of witnesses in supporting a selected initial text. One section deals with conjectural emendation.

In 1 Tim 5.3–16 ist ein Konflikt erkennbar zwischen dem Idealbild der Witwe und dem Status quo. Gemäss Verfasser, dessen Ansicht christlicher Tradition entspricht, sollten ausschliesslich die ‘wirklichen Witwen’ und nicht alle Frauen, die zu seiner Zeit als Witwen bezeichnet wurden, Objekt der Versorgung sein. Unter diesen Witwen gab es auch jüngere Frauen, die gar nie verheiratet gewesen waren. Der Verfasser versucht nun, diese ‘jüngeren Witwen’ aus der Gruppe der Witwen auszuschliessen, indem er das traditionelle Witwenbild gegenüber dem Status quo stark macht. Seine Motivation ist wohl die Abwehr gegen eine asketisch orientierte Irrlehre, die besonders unter den ‘jüngeren Witwen’ grosse Resonanz gefunden hat.

In den vergangenen beiden Dezennien hat, wenn ich recht sehe, die Diskussion darüber, welcher literarischen Gattung das lukanische Geschichtswerk bzw. die Apostelgeschichte zuzurechnen seien, an Intensität zugenommen. Meist ging man davon aus, daß das lukanische Werk, besonders aber die Apostelgeschichte, in den Kontext der antiken Geschichtsschreibung gestellt werden müss-ten, etwa, indem man das Gesamtwerk als ‘popular “general history” written by an amateur Hellenistic historian with credentials in Greek rhetoric’ definierte oder die Apostelgeschichte als historische Monographie klassifizierte, ähnlich den Werken Sallusts und entsprechend dem von Cicero, Ep. ad fam. V 12.2–3 vorgetragenen Programm. Dieser Konsens – wenn er denn wirklich je bestanden haben sollte – wurde dann aber durchbrochen, zunächst von Charles H. Talbert, der das Doppelwerk in den Kontext der Biographie, insbesondere der Philosophenbiographie, stellen wollte, und neuerdings hat man wieder einmal gemeint, die Apostelgeschichte in die Nähe der apokryphen Akten rücken und in ihr so etwas wie einen historischen Roman entdecken zu sollen.

In his History of Dogma, Adolph Harnack wrote that the ‘Pseudo-Clementines contribute absolutely nothing to our knowledge of the origin of the Catholic Church and doctrine.’ Hans Lietzmann, Harnack's successor in Berlin, concluded similarly in his assessment of these writings. He wrote that the Clementines are ‘fictions without historical basis, and valueless for the study of the early Christian and Judaistic period’.

The prima facie sense of the assertion of Hebrews 9.23 that the heavenly things themselves needed to be cleansed is often rejected as fantastic or preposterous. Consequently, the verse is often read as describing the cleansing of conscience or the inauguration, not purification, of the heavenly tabernacle. Both interpretations are critiqued here. Positively, this essay argues that in Heb 9.23 Christ's sacrifice cleanses the tabernacle in heaven from antecedent defilement in order to inaugurate the new covenant cult. I argue that the structure of 9.23–8 and the manner in which Hebrews appropriates both cult inauguration and Yom Kippur support this conclusion.

This paper explores the meaning of ἐφ’ ἑλπίδι in Rom 8.20c. This phrase has been variously understood as denoting a hope exercised by the one who subjected creation or a hope inhering in creation despite its subjection. After surveying and evaluating the standard proposals, I argue for an alternative manner of punctuating vv. 19–21 that makes it possible to preserve the most common meaning of ἐπί with the dative, while also taking creation itself as the agent that acts ἐφ’ ἑλπίδι. This proposal obviates a number of difficulties with conventional readings, and highlights the parallels between Paul's statements about the hope of creation in vv. 19–21 and the hope of believers in vv. 24–5.

This paper focuses on the didactic function of the interpretation of Jesus' death in each of the Gospels as it is conveyed through the narrative's implicit commentary. It suggests that the evangelists tied the developing self-understanding of the emerging Christian communities to the death of Jesus. Mark interprets the church as a new ‘temple not made with hands’. Matthew relates the death of Jesus to the signs of the end-time and the hope of resurrection. Luke provides ethical instruction for the church, interpreting Jesus' martyrdom as a noble death, and John develops a rich portrait by which the church could define itself through the themes, images, and allusions of the Johannine passion narrative.

Leo Perdue has applied Victor Turner's anthropological model of separation, liminality, and reaggregation to elucidate the social function of ancient wisdom texts. Ancient wisdom texts project the rhetorical situation of liminality upon their recipients in the course of imparting instruction, the effect of which is to integrate recipients at a new level into social structure. Using Turner's model, correlated with Berger's and Luckmann's model of resocialization, this paper argues that John's threshold speech functions to throw Q's recipients into a state of liminality. It thus creates the conditions necessary for reception of Jesus’ wisdom which follows. These results are used to critique stratigraphies of Q which are based upon the notion that the juxtaposition of John's and Jesus’ speeches is anomalous.

Dans la perspective de la préparation d'une nouvelle édition annotée de l'Évangile selon Thomas, à paraître dans la collection « Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi » (Leuven, Peeters), cet article revient sur quelques-unes des questions qui ont été débattues à propos de cet écrit, à savoir son lieu et sa date de composition, ainsi que sa langue d'origine.

Several recent studies have proposed that according to Paul gentiles join Abraham's lineage in a quasi-physiological way by being infused with material πνɛῦμα. This article assesses that proposal, finding it to be an inaccurate description of Paul's language and rationale, and sets forth an alternative proposal based on Romans 4 and Paul's descriptions of baptism. This alternative proposal is that Paul understood the forging of an Abrahamic and divine pedigree for gentiles to be a divine act of creation from nothing, that is concomitant with believers’ proleptic death and resurrection in solidarity with the messiah.

Scholars have often explained discrepancies in evidence for women's participation in the early church by reference to the gendering of public and private spaces. Public spaces were coded male, and when churches moved into these spaces, women's leadership was disavowed. This article rejects the usefulness of the public/private dichotomy as an explanatory tool, arguing that the modern sense in which these terms are used was anachronistic to the New Testament period. The overlap between public functions and space that the modern concept of the ‘public sphere’ takes for granted did not exist in the ancient world. Public functions often occurred in household spaces, and functions considered private also took place outside homes. For these reasons, scholars should look for new language that better describes the ancient patterns.