According to the most generally accepted text, the angels of Lk 2. 11 announced the birth of Jesus to the Judean shepherds and designated him σωτηρ ος εοτω χριστος κυριος, commonly translated ‘a saviour, who is Christ the Lord’. Familiarity with these words as part of the Christmas story obscures the fact that the title χριστος κυριος is unique in the NT to Lk 2. 11. This title is not without precedent, however, and appears as a messianic title in the readings of the MSS of PsSol 17. 32. This paper will examine the use of χριστος κυριος in PsSol 17. 32, and will propose that it is one of several new messianic titles combining ‘messiah’ with a political honorific used as an appositional modifier.

These are perhaps the most important verses in the Synoptic Gospels. Discussing them in 1927, the late Claude Montefiore2 candidly confessed that, as a Jew, he would like to prove them spurious because, if it could be shown that Jesus had really uttered them, orthodox Christianity would have received notable encouragement. This however, he judged very unlikely, and he went on to predict that, as the years went by, the voices raised in defence of their authenticity would grow feebler and fewer.

It is by no means an exaggeration to claim that the tendency of modern textual critics and exegetes is to regard the long disputed text-critical issue of Luke's final pericope (Luke 24.50–3) as more or less settled in favour of the authenticity of the so-called ‘longer (non-Western) text’ (i.e. containing the phrases κα⋯ ⋯νεφέρετο εἰς τ⋯ν ούρανόν, v. 51 and προσκυνήσαντες αύτόν, v. 52). Typical of the scholarly consensus is the almost unanimous adoption of the disputed words by modern Greek text editions, translations and exegetical studies, a trend which is not least inspired by the fact that the disputed words are attested in the oldest surviving copy of the Gospel of Luke, Papyrus 75 ($$$ = Papyrus Bodmer XIV), an early third-century MS closely affiliated with Codex Vaticanus (B). In the opening chapter of Acts the Textual situation is not essentially different. Despite continuing scholarly debate concerning the antiquity and origin of the Western text tradition (infra), in general, contemporary scholarship supports the ‘Alexandrian’ text.

Le brusque changement de ton que l'on observe, dans l'épître aux Hébreux, entre les dernières phrases du ch. xii et les premières du ch. xiii a porté certains exégètes à contester l'authenticité du ch. xiii et à considérer celui-ci, en tout ou en partie, comme un morceau hétérogène, ajouté maladroitement au beau discours de Héb. i–xii. D'autres auteurs se sont mis en peine de défendre l'authenticité du chapitre, mais, comme il arrive dans les controverses, ils sont restés tributaires de la façon dont le problème avait été posé: le ch. xiii continue pour eux à constituer un morceau à part, que l'on peut étudier séparément. C'est ainsi que deux monographies récentes, dont les auteurs prennent position en faveur de l'authenticité d'Héb xiii, considèrent cependant ce chapitre comme une unité littéraire distincte et le prennent comme sujet d'étude.

Paul's thought forms a unity of a very peculiar kind. It certainly has a single focus: Christ, but this fact is not in itself sufficient to bring the many disparate elements in his thought together to form the unity that it manifestly has. Nor is that unity that of a system. The search for a Pauline ‘system’ of beliefs (δόγματα) with clearly defined relations between them is in vain – and even more so is the attempt to find a single formula supposed to express the whole of his thought. The immense diversity of his thinking should never be forgotten.

Das auf den Prolog folgende Fragment des Evangeliums nach Johannes spricht über Johannes den Täufer. Dieses Fragment besteht aus zwei Teilen. Der erste dessen Inhalt uns die Person Johannes des Täufers vorstellt, erzählt von seinem Zeugnis vor den Abgesandten des Hohen Rates. Der zweite Teil des Fragments enthält das Zeugnis seinen Schülern gegenüber, und den Bericht von der Berufung der Schüler Christi. Hier wird auch definiert, wer Christus eigentlich ist.

A study of the relationship between faith and reason in Paul's theology, such as we are now going to undertake, would seem to be a particularly fruitless investigation. We all know from the opening chapters of I Corinthians that the apostle, as a preacher of the message of the cross, fought just as bitterly against the wisdom of this world as against the attempt to achieve righteousness through works. The wisdom of this world and the righteousness based on works are both characteristic of the man who is seeking to assert himself before God and whose attempt miscarries. Just as Christ is the end of the law, it must apply in the same sense that he is the end of the wisdom of this world. God has destroyed it through the cross (I Cor. i. 18ff.). From now on the words ‘He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord’ hold good both for Jews and Greeks alike (I Cor. i. 31). One cannot seriously discount the significance of these passages by saying they contain nothing but exaggerated and casual utterances. Paul has expressed himself here in fundamental, comprehensive and consciously offensive terms, in order to demonstrate the contrast between the news of the Crucified, a σkáνδαλoν for the Jews and a μωία for the Greeks, and the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness in God's eyes. These words of the apostle have in fact given offence again and again. Since the days of Celsus and Porphyrius they have aroused the indignant protests of the opponents of Christianity. Goethe voiced them quite openly, ‘Living till seventy wouldn't be worth the trouble, if all the wisdom of the world were folly in the sight of God’ (Max. und Reflex. 2). We must certainly not forget that in I Cor. i–iii the apostle is speaking about the wisdom of the world and not directly about reason itself. But this distinction does not seem to help us much. The trenchant answer which Paul gives his opponents who contest his claim to be a true apostle and man of the Spirit forces us to ask whether he leaves man's reason any place at all: ‘Yes, we certainly walk in the flesh (έν σαρkί) but we do not wage our war in the manner of the flesh (kατα σαρkα)—for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God for the destruction of strongholds—as we destroy sophistries (λoγiσμoúς) and all arrogance, which exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bring every thought (νóημα) into captivity under the obedience of Christ’ (II Cor. x. 3–5).

In a recent edition of New Testament Studies D. B. Wallace has argued for a procedural change in New Testament textual criticism, namely that textual critics consider using the recently published The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text as a baseline for collation studies. The following study demonstrates the sound value of such a move for intra-Byzantine studies. It further shows that while the Majority Text is a valuable asset for the study of texttypes, the theory which motivated its editors does not stand up to the rigour of this ‘preliminary’ collation study.