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.

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.

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.

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.

The Synoptic Gospels contain a significant number of so-called doublets, i.e. sayings or narratives which appear twice in one and the same Gospel. Since the nineteenth century these doublets have functioned as a classical argument in favour of the existence of Q. Focusing on treatments of Luke's doublets within the contemporary rivalry between the Farrer hypothesis and the two-document hypothesis, the present article contributes to a not-Q-biased discussion of the evidence. While adherents of the two-document hypothesis should not overestimate the force of doublet-based arguments, defenders of the Farrer hypothesis should pay greater attention to the creation and elimination of doublets as part of Luke's alleged redactional activity.

Although it is widely recognised that οἱ πιστεύοντες was a self-designation of the early Christ groups, this is not reflected in scholarship on Romans and Galatians, where the participle is usually taken as a generic substantive. Such a rendering obscures the force of Paul's rhetoric, which presupposes the status of οἱ πιστεύοντες as a shared self-designation and mobilises it in an effort to naturalise Paul's claims regarding the exclusive justificatory value of his addressees’ πίστις. Accordingly, in Rom 3.22 and Gal 3.22, where οἱ πιστεύοντες appears in close connection with πίστις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, it is unlikely that the latter phrase designates Christ's own faithfulness.

It is a well-known fact that 1 Cor 2. 9, containing the famous and mysterious words about ‘things which eye never saw, and ear never heard, and never entered into the mind of man, (all the) things that God prepared for those who love him’, offers a set of various problems. Consequently, the verse has been carefully studied in many of its aspects.

Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus has been the neglected member of the family of great uncials. Photographic facsimiles have been produced of ℵ, A, B, D, and others, but only a sample page or two of the valuable palimpsest is available in textbooks. All the important codices have been studied and collated more than once. But as regards Codex C only Tischendorf has transcribed its text and edited it according to modern standards. In textbooks on textual criticism Codex C has been given—almost without excepdon—less than half the space of any of the other main uncials. To be sure, it is a difficult manuscript to read, and many lacunae exist. Yet because of its age and the quality of its text, as well as the fact that it contains portions of all the sections of the New Testament, every possible detail should be accurately extracted from this once beautiful codex. Owing to this unwarranted neglect of Codex C, especially the fact that no one had tested the accuracy of Tischendorf's work, a new study was undertaken and a new edition is being prepared. The present article will include (1) a brief history Of thern manuscript and its use by textual critics; (2) introductory items on which new light may be shed or on which previous statements need to be corrected; and finally, (3) a list of the more significant errors found in Tischendorf's edition.

The question of development in Paul's eschatology has long been debated. It is held, on the one hand, that his doctrine of the end underwent a gradual transformation: Paul's earlier works express belief in the imminent eschaton, and construe the future in terms of apocalyptic notions of the resurrection; his later writings are sensitive to the delay of the parousia and describe life after death in the language of Hellenistic anthropology. On the other hand, it is argued that Paul's eschatology has not undergone major modification: Paul never abandoned his conviction that the end was at hand nor his essentially Jewish understanding of the resurrection.

According to the general consensus of expert opinion the Gospel of Mark was composed sometime between the years A.D. 65–75. But most authorities find that they cannot leave this decade as just a convenient round figure; for it contains the cimacteric year 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman armies. Accordingly, they endeavour to define the date of the Gospel's composition more precisely in relation to this event. Those who elect for a pre-70 date usually give as their reason for so doing that fact, as they see it, that the Gospel contains no explicit reference to this signal event. Such a conclusion is rarely felt to need a detailed justification, it being apparently assumed that mention of the fact is reason enough; it has possibly been thought also that no vital issue turns upon establishing precisely a pre-70 date.

In a recent article, Martin Hengel argues that the early Christian interpretation of Ps 110.1 provided not only the most important impulse to the development of Christology in the nascent church, but also a blasphemous enormity to contemporary Jewish sensibilities: the idea that the crucified Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, was raised and seated ‘at the right hand’ of God that is, enthroned as a co-occupant of God's own ‘throne of glory’ (cf. Jer 17.12), located in the highest heaven. For in the OT, being seated on the throne in heaven is reserved for Yahweh alone, and in subsequent Jewish tradition it is rare to find any reference to someone sharing the throne of God.

Responding to assertions and evidence in a 1997 New Testament Studies article by R. F. Shedinger (and to George Howard, the editor of the text in question), this article demonstrates with fourteen textual examples and circumstantial evidence (Isaac Velasquez's Arabic gospel translation) that the Hebrew Matthew contained in Shem-Tob's Even Bohan (1) is part of the western harmonized gospel tradition, (2) is especially, often uniquely, related to the traditions which lie behind the Middle Dutch Liège Harmony, and (3) is translated from a medieval Latin Vorlage. In no way is it (pace Shedinger) related to 45 or (pace Howard) pre-Johannine.

‘Il y a beaucoup de raisons d'affirmer — constatait G. Kuhn il y a plusieurs années déjà — que le livre de la Sagesse jouissait d'une grande estime chez les auteurs du Nouveau Testament. On le lisait assidûment et ses traces se retrouvent aujourd'hui aussi bien chez saint Paul que dans l'Apocalypse, dans les Evangiles et, peut-être, dans I'Epître aux Hébreux et dans l'Epître de Jacques.’

Until the latter half of the eighteenth century, the apostolic authorship of ‘the Gospel according to Matthew’ seems to have been generally accepted. But questions and doubts began to arise from different points of view in the examination of what were regarded as the relevant documents; and it would be a reasonable assessment of the general opinion of current scholarship to say that, whilst it may be agreed that Matthew is probably in some sense behind the Gospel that bears his name, there are few, if any, who would claim for him complete responsibility for the work. Yet, in the second, third and fourth centuries of the Christian era, the authorship of Matthew was not merely unquestioned: it was repeatedly and positively affirmed. These affirmations, however, have been subjected to close scrutiny, and even the basic declaration of Papias of Hierapolis, a declaration that belongs to the earlier part of the second century, has been used to refute the claim to apostolic authorship. It is the purpose here to examine the early evidence again, in the hope of finding some solid ground in the critical morass where so many seekers are apt to lose their way.