Galatians 1–2 is a well-worn scholarly path, but Gal 1.10 is a suggestive marker that has been overlooked by many exegetical travellers:

‘For now do I seek the approval of humans or of God? Or do I seek to please people?

If I were still pleasing people, I would not be Christ's slave.’

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.

There has been a tendency among some exegetes to treat 2 Cor 8.1–15 as ‘merely’ an administrative and financial issue. Often this conclusion is based on Paul's use of ἐπιτελέω which, they argue, draws on the language of business and government. However, the distinction between ‘administrative’ and ‘religious’ is improper; one of the primary ways of demonstrating piety in antiquity was by the giving of money to a god. There is much inscriptional evidence for the use of ἐπιτελέω in contexts of religious duty.1 Given the social context of Paul and the Corinthians, these inscriptions provide helpful background for the way in which Paul's injunction to give generously would have been heard and understood.2

We do not find the word εἰδωλολατρία (idolatry) in the canonical Gospels. Persons appearing in the latter and representing non-Jewish religion are never denounced by Jesus as idolaters, not even Pontius Pilate, whose religiously provocative actions against the Jews are known through Philo and Josephus. In the word ‘dogs’ which Jesus uses in the dialogue with the woman near Tyre (Mark 7.27, cf. Matt 7.6) there may be an allusion to pagan religion, but this is not certain. The low profile towards non-Jewish religion in our Gospels stands in contrast to the New Testament writings which precede them, i.e. the letters of Paul, or which come after them, e.g. Acts and the Book of Revelation. In his confrontation with non-Jews and in his prophecies about the share of the peoples in the Kingdom of God Jesus seems to be indifferent towards non-Jewish religion, in contradistinction to many New Testament writers and also many Jewish contemporaries, such as the Qumran Essenes (1QS 2.11–12, 17; cf. Deut 29.17–20; CD 11.14, 12.6–11; lQpHab 12.12–14) and Philo. If the Gospels were written by persons with an interest in transmitting the Christian message to the non-Jewish world, it seems odd that explicit anti-pagan utterances in the mouth of Jesus are almost lacking.

Exegetes often cite the list in Gal 4.10 (⋯μέρας κα⋯ μ⋯νας κα⋯ καιροὺς κα⋯ ⋯νιαυτούς days and months and seasons and years) as parallel in content and function to the list in Col 2.16 (⋯ορτ⋯ς ἤ νεομηνίας ἤ σαββάτων a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths). J. B. Lightfoot provides the most extensive explanation of the content and function of these lists, and he reaches two conclusions that permeate the exegetical tradition of these two verses. First, he concludes that the content of the list in Galatians describes a Jewish timekeeping scheme since the list in Colossians clearly does so. His rationale is strengthened by Paul's polemic against the Judaizers in Galatians. Second, he deduces that the Colossian list functions to describe the non-Christian practices of the opponents since the list in Galatians is clearly a non-Christian temporal scheme that should be rejected.

Ulrich Luz schreibt in seinem kleinen, sehr anregenden Büchlein, Matthew in History: Interpretation, Influence and Effects: ‘Even Matthew himself seems to have completely forgotten what he had written in the Sermon of the Mount when he was writing his twenty-third chapter, with the harsh and unjust woes agains Pharisees and Scribes.’ Eines der hier angerissenen Probleme ist viel ausgeprägter in Lk 6 feststellbar, wo dem Gebot der Feindesliebe unmittelbar die Wehesprüche gegen die Reichen vorangestellt sind. Es begegnet aber schon in der Logienquelle und bei Paulus. Wie ist das Verhältnis dieser beiden Aussagen zu einander zu sehen? Das ist die Frage, der wir im folgenden nachgehen wollen

In Rom 16.18 we have a unique word, alongside another word which is used by Paul in a unique way. That is challenge enough to any student of the language of the Greek NT. ‘Faire speeches’ is the AV's rendering of εὐλογία. Elsewhere in the NT, where it occurs 16 times, εὐλογία is always used in an approving sense, of the human praise of God or of the divine bounty for which praise is due. The word is found nine times in the Pauline corpus; a little earlier in this same letter, Paul had spoken about his certainty that he will visit Rome ‘in the fullness of the blessing (εὐλογία) of Christ’ (15.29 RSV). After that and the other Pauline and the non-Pauline usage, the use at 16.18 grates on the ear.1 Its context shows that here εὐλογία is being used disparagingly, of men who flatter to deceive (ἐξαπατῶσιν) and work to mislead and divide the community. Today, we might call such men ‘smoothies’ who ‘turn on the charm’, ‘chat up’ the gullible, ‘talk up’ their policies and ‘sweet talk’ their way to success for their own selfish purposes.

Scholars have always found the series in Col 3.11b difficult to interpret gracefully. There it is stated that in Christ the distinction with βάρβαρος, Σκύθης ‘barbarian, Scythian’, has been abolished, along with that between the more comprehensible oppositions of ‘Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision … slave, free’. The increased sensitivity of contemporary NT scholars to the social dimension of texts, as well as to their rhetorical and stylistic deployment, however, may at last offer the possibility of unravelling this intriguing set of antitheses, particularly at its critical point, that is, the interpretation of Σκύθης.

George Kennedy affirms that Galatians rests on ethos, that Paul maintains the appearance of logical argument ‘perhaps more to seem to recognize the possibility of objections and to be prepared to answer them confidently than to provide a developed response’. Kraftchick concurs: ‘Since Paul's case is no more logical than his opponents’ the argument depends on non-logical factors: ethos and pathos.’ Rhetorical interpreters have difficulty tracing a logical argument throughout the letter: most bracket off the hortatory section of Galatians; Joop Smit has argued on rhetorical grounds that Galatians 5.13–6.10 is a later addition. That rhetorical interpreters dispute the species of rhetoric to which Galatians belongs also implies confusion over logical progression in the letter. Of course, the place of the hortatory material in Paul's argument has long been hotly debated; Paul's highly compressed arguments have long challenged interpreters. Yet because rhetorical critics claim to clarify the flow of argument in a text, their failure is especially striking. Does this difficulty in delineating a logical argument imply that Galatians contains irreconcilable contradictions as Smit argues, or that Paul offers an ethical rather than a logical argument as Kennedy and Kraftchick indicate, or that rhetoric is irrelevant to parenesis as Barclay concludes, or does it imply that rhetorical interpreters have yet to grasp the logical proof in the letter?

At 12.28 Mark speaks of a scribe who asked Jesus ‘What is the first commandment?’ The motive for the scribe's question is not expressed, but from the way the story unfolds (12.28–34), it seems that his question was sincere, straightforward and not devious. It is very unlikely that Luke (10.25–37) was influenced by Mark in details,1 but, if Mark be the principal Lucan source, Mark's story was known to Luke and was likely instrumental, we can say, in Luke's decision to incorporate his own story about a νομικός whose encounter with Jesus has certain affinities with that of Mark's γραμματεύς

Christ describes himself in Rev 3.14 as ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God’. Commentators have suggested a variety of backgrounds for the threefold title. The purpose of this study is to review these proposals and argue in support of one of them.

Pet 1.16–18 reflects on the transfiguration, an event narrated at greater length in the synoptic gospels (Mark 9.2–8; Matt 17.1–8; Luke 9.28–36). While it is theoretically possible that 2 Pet 1.16–18 refers to a story unknown to the gospel tradition, its obvious connections to the synoptic scene leave little doubt that 2 Peter alludes to the transfiguration, a judgment virtually unanimous among scholars. 2 Peter's description of the event differs in several ways from the synoptic scene and the former lacks some features that figure prominently in the latter. The author of 2 Peter does not give a full narration of the event, but rather assumes that his audience is familiar with it.

Sixteen years ago I published a brief study in NTS1 in which I ‘underscore[d] the “tackiness” of using rabbinic material in support of or against an interpretation of NT material’. The present article returns to that subject by means of an examination of the use of a passage in the Babylonian Talmud in the magisterial two volume work by Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah.2 It is not, however, intended to be a comment on anything in this massive work other than the discussion on pages 376–7. My attention to the passage was drawn by a comment on an enclosure that came with the volumes: ‘…No one concerned with Jewish-Christian relations should fail to study his deliberate, sensitive and nuanced treatment of the Trial of Jesus.’