The saying about the birds and lilies presents a challenge to the expected domestic roles of men, in providing food, and women, in providing clothing, opening the possibility that these duties can be neglected because of a higher priority. This challenge is relevant to situations reflected in other Q texts. The challenge is a threat both to a family's livelihood and to honor status. Evidence is presented showing that spinning and weaving have special importance in cultural models of the ideal woman and contribute to a woman's honor. This evidence broadens our awareness of the potential conflict with social norms in the birds and lilies passage.

L’épître aux Laodicéens représente un défi aux théories habituelles sur la pseudépigraphie, tant elle paraît manquer d’intérêt. Pour lui rendre justice, il convient de l’analyser comme le moyen épistolaire de convoyer la présence de l’apôtre: en ce sens, elle prolonge la pratique épistolaire paulinienne et la dépasse puisqu’elle vaut plus en tant qu’objet-symbole de la présence apostolique (connotation), qu’en tant que support de message (dénotation).

Rom 4.17d is often read as referring to creation, perhaps even creatio ex nihilo. Others argue that this doctrine was not yet conceptually available. After exploring what ‘nothing’ means in similar phrases in Paul's ancient context (2 Macc 7.28 and Philo), the first conclusion is that if Rom 4.17d refers to creation then Paul's ‘nothings’ most likely do not refer to an absolute nihil. However, after exploring Rom 4.17 in the context of Paul's argument, the final conclusion is that in Rom 4.17d Paul does present absolute ‘nothings’, though in God's speech to Abraham, not at creation. Paul's theology encompasses God's authority and causation ex nihilo.

The title σωτήρ, ‘saviour’, is bestowed on Christ and God in the New Testament and rendered in the Latin translations by conseruator, saluificator, salutificator, salutaris and saluator. Although these terms convey the same meaning, they are not interchangeable: this study argues that conseruator, which is the most frequent word for saviour on imperial coins, is rarely attested in the Latin versions because of its association with the imperial cult. The predominant translation, saluator, was coined as an alternative rendering to the other words which had religious and political connotations.

The form-critical method found an English-speaking champion in R. H. Lightfoot of Oxford University. Through multiple publications he promoted the ideas of Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Dibelius and Ernst Lohmeyer. However, a close comparison of their texts reveals that Lightfoot sometimes simply translated the words of Dibelius and Lohmeyer, at times without appropriate attribution, and presented their ideas as his own. Recently discovered letters in the Lightfoot archive at Oxford University provide a more complete picture of Lightfoot's travels and interaction with German NT scholars. These discoveries call for a reassessment of Lightfoot's place in the history of NT scholarship.

In this paper, I examine several sources of authority to which Origen laid claim as he set about the task of interpreting scripture. On occasion, in both his commentaries and his homilies, Origen provided accounts of his access to three different, though connected sources of authority that contributed to his self-presentation as an expert interpreter. These sources are as follows: 1) participation in the lineage of the apostles, particularly his exegetical role model, Paul. The second source of authority is a result of the first: 2) direct communication from the Logos, whom he understands to be Christ himself, and 3) angelic assistance and engagement with his pastoral exegetical project. In some instances, Origen even claimed to be on par with two of these sources of authority; he can be found claiming to have exegetical abilities similar to Paul's and, on some rare occasions, to have reached the same epistemological level as the angels. This analysis provides us not only with a case study of the kind of self-fashioning and authorising strategies used by elite scriptural exegetes in the first few centuries of the common era, but it also allows us to shift our focus away from exegetical methods towards the figure, personality and social position of the exegete him or herself. From this shift of focus we gain a better appreciation of a topic to which exegetical authors themselves dedicated considerable energy: just who it was that could occupy the office of authoritative Christian exegete and why.

Onomastic congruence (a feature defined in this article) is characteristic of historiographic biographies from the Early Empire. The Synoptic Gospels display onomastic congruence, as well as conservatism in their treatment of names. The preservation of names, especially those centred around key roles and events, suggests that some names may have been preserved in the oral archives of early Christian communities to footnote living eyewitness sources, paralleling historiographical situations.

‘That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, concerning the word of life’ (1 John 1.1). However that claim to ear-, eye- and touch-witness is to be understood, there can be no dispute that for 1 John a claim to ‘that which was from the beginning’ is a linch-pin in the argument and in the theology of the letter. Yet the question of the use of Scripture in 1 John points further – to the relation between New Testament and Old, theologically and historically, but also to the origins and development of Johannine Christianity.

During the first and second centuries of the Common Era the Christ cult spread from rural Palestine to the large cities of the Empire. This article draws insights from social network theory and from epidemiology, arguing that the Christ cult was not a simple contagion, spread by simple contact, but a ‘complex contagion’ that required persuasion, especially because adherence to the Christ cult entailed potential social costs and demanded high signalling costs.

The curious resurrection account in the Gospel of Peter (10.39–42) is not simply the author's creative innovation, but is based on a Christocentric interpretation of LXX Ps 18.1–7. The Gospel of Peter’s unusual description of Jesus’ exit from the tomb, whereupon he expands gigantically so that his head enters heaven (GPet 10.39–40), derives from an early Christian interpretation of LXX Ps 18.5c–7. The following conversation between God and the glorified cosmic cross (GPet 10.41–2) derives from a Christocentric interpretation of LXX Ps 18.2. In addition, the cross's verbal affirmation that it had preached to the dead (GPet 10.42) follows from a literalising yet Christocentric reading of LXX Ps 18.2b.

Rome or Syria? This article addresses the issue of the provenance of Mark's Gospel by exploring affinities between the second Gospel and Jewish sectarian groups of the first centuries bce and ce. It is argued that Mark displays certain sectarian tendencies, and that these tendencies, most notably seen in the Gospel's negative evaluation of the Jerusalem temple and its priestly overseers, strongly suggest that the Gospel was written in close geographical proximity to Jerusalem and its temple. Accordingly, an area in the Syrian Decapolis is a much more likely place of origin for Mark's Gospel than that of Rome.

The present study of the oldest and most relevant extant manuscripts that contain 1 Cor 14.33b–35 shows that v. 33b (ὡς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῶν ἁγίων) is not connected with vv. 34–5. Scribes would consider 33b to be a part of 33a. Manuscripts א, A, B, Fuldensis, D, F, G, ms. 88* clearly read 1 Cor 14.34–5 as a separate paragraph. In these manuscripts, where vv. 34–5 are found after v. 40, v. 33b closely follows 33a. P46 and P123 are damaged and require reconstruction. Moreover, Greek New Testament editions that link v. 33b with v. 34 reflect exegetical decisions and are not based on external evidence.

Although the term ‘rewritten Bible’ has been used primarily of postbiblical Jewish retellings of the Hebrew Bible, the phenomenon which it describes extends to the present day, and pertains to the NT as well as the Hebrew Bible. This paper examines two examples of ‘rewritten Gospel’—Dorothy Sayers's play cycle, The Man Born to Be King (1941–2) and Sholem Asch's novel, The Nazarene (1939)—in order to argue that such postcanonical Jesus narratives should be of interest to NT scholarship just as ‘rewritten Bible’ is of interest to scholars of the Hebrew Bible.

An den Problemkreis ‘Paulus und Jesus’ kann man mit verschieden akzentuierten Fragestellungen herangehen. Aus primär traditionsgeschichtlich orientiertem Interesse wird erörtert, welche Teile der Jesusüberlieferung bei Paulus als bekannt vorauszusetzen sind. Eine vor allem theologisch ausgerichtete Aufmerksamkeit wendet sich vergleichend dem Zentrum der Verkündigung Jesu und der Botschaft des Paulus zu. In der vorliegenden Studie soll ergänzend versucht werden, das Verhalten Jesu und Pauli gegenüberstellend zu betrachten, und zwar unter dem für beide charakteristischen Aspekt des dienenden Verzichts.

In a previous study, the present writer has made an analysis of aspects of the Qumran baptismal doctrine, pointing to a distinction between the washing with water and the purification by Spirit. When a further examination of the stages and conditions of initiation at Qumran is added, a relevance may be seen to certain aspects of the history of baptism in Acts, suggesting a means of dealing with some recognized difficulties.

In seiner Manson Memorial Lecture von 1965 hat Henry Chadwick eine Lanze dafür gebrochen, die Literatur des hellenistischen Judentums bevorzugt zur Erhellung der Theologie des Neuen Testaments heranzuziehen und nicht von den neu entdeckten Qumran-Schriften verdrängen zu lassen.1 Sein Plädoyer scheint, was Philo betrifft, nicht allzu viel bewegt zu haben; jedenfalls nennt das Register der Philo-Bibliographie von Roberto Radice und David Runia nach 1966 nur eine einzige Untersuchung zum Thema ‘Paulus und Philo’ im ganzen.2 Anscheinend können sich Exegeten, die auf Paulus eingeschworen sind, nur wenig für Philo erwärmen3. Dafür gibt es sicher Gründe im unterschiedlichen Profil dieser beiden Theologen; aber es könnte auch damit zusammenhängen, daβ die Wirkungsgeschichte des einen und das Image des anderen unnötig weit auseinanderklaffen. Bei beiden hat die neuere Forschung dazu geführt, das jüdische Erbe höher zu veranschlagen als früher.4 Das Könnte sie auch einander näherbringen; erneute vergleichende Lektüre scheint also angezeigt.

In giving their appraisal of the host of then unexamined minuscule codices of the Greek New Testament, Westcott and Hort wrote these intriguing words: ‘Valuable texts may lie hidden among them; many of them are doubtless sprinkled with relics of valuable texts now destroyed.’. 1 Beside this supposition should be set a well-attested fact, that ‘the Precedence of manuscripts depends, not on their age, but on their Pedigree’. 2 These two statements kept on recurring to the writer's mind as she concentrated on a group of six minuscule codices in the area of the Catholic Epistles: MSS 69, 1243, 1319, 1424, 1739, and 1874. 3 The Leicester Codex, MS 69, has long been known to Preserve an ancient lineage even though it was actually copied in the fifteenth century. Might not others of this group, less well known, also Perpetuate a rich heritage? It is the opinion of this writer that one of them does.4