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.

‘Qui se ressemble s'assemble’: le proverbe exprime bien les forces d'attirance et de convenance mutuelles qui agglomèrent peuples, sociétés et communautés. Ces forces sont bien connues des sociologues dont la science consiste précisément à analyser les lois de cohésion ou de répulsion qui régissent les groupes, à identifier intérêts, idéaux, totems ou principes qui aimantent les assemblages. Sur ce point la Novi Testamenti Societas n'échappe pas à la règle.

While traditional Christian thought has honoured the disciples, they have since Wrede been increasingly regarded as bearing the brunt of Mark's animus. This paper is a new examination of the role they play in Mark's thought. It is not inappropriate to present it at a meeting of the Society in the U.S.A., where so much original and fascinating work on the place of Mark as author has been advanced in recent years. It may be that Mark did not conceive of the disciples as playing any particular role. In the tradition their lives were too closely intertwined with that of Jesus for Mark to have been able to omit them from his account. Given their necessary presence he might have regarded them purely as background, an ineradicable part of the scenery but of no importance in themselves and having no essential function in what he wrote. We will not dispute this now, but all that is argued later about the disciples indicates that they were not mere scenery; Mark gave them a definite role in his book. But what role? This is a legitimate question and needs to be asked once we abandon the view that Mark is writing pure biography.

The various questions which are raised by the opening chapters of I Corinthians have been extensively examined in recent years. Among the problems is that of Paul's reference to ‘the rulers of this age’ in relation to wisdom. It is with this phrase in its context that the present paper is concerned. Why did Paul insert it here? To whom does he refer? What does the mention of the archons contribute to the argument of these opening chapters of the letter?

The problems surrounding the integrity of II Corinthians vi. 14–vii. I are well known. In the first place, verses vi. 11–13 and vii. 2–4 flow together rather easily as a single piece of personal appeal. ‘My heart is opened wide toward you…In a like reciprocation, I speak as to children, you also open wide (your hearts toward me)…Make room for me.’ The parenesis of vi. 14–vii. I abruptly breaks this flow of thought. Moreover, vi. 14–vii. I is a self-contained unit, which begins with a concrete prohibition supported by five balanced rhetorical questions, which in turn is supported by a catena of Old Testament passages, and concludes with a general parenesis. Nothing within this passage seems even remotely related, either in language or concept, to the personal appeal within which it is embedded.

The subject presents one of those questions in New Testament criticism in which mental bent, apart from the bias of prejudgment, is chiefly influential in deter-mining the conclusions reached.

This statement with which I. T. Beckwith introduced in 1919 his discussion of the authorship of the Apocalypse (Apoc) still proves to be true today. It can be equally applied to the question whether the Apoc should be assigned to the same school or circle that was responsible for the Fourth Gospel (4G) and the Johannine Epistles. The judgement moreover also pertains to the historical and theological interpretation of either the Apoc or the 4G. Mental bent and systematic presuppositions determine the various reconstructions of the history of the Johannine community as well as the theological interpretations of its literary works.

David Friedrich Strauss died on 8 February 1874. His Leben Jesu of 1835 was said by Albert Schweitzer to be ‘no mere destroyer of untenable solutions, but also the prophet of a coming advance in knowledge’, namely eschatology. The claims that it ‘has a different significance for modern theology from that which it had for his contemporaries’ and that it ‘marked out the ground which is now occupied by modern critical study’ appear even more true in the light of subsequent history of religions and form-critical research than Schweitzer himself realized. But as well as marking an epoch in the historical critical study of the New Testament, this book, and with it the fate of its author, remains a symbol of something else: the tension between historical research and the formation of a systematic or doctrinal theological position. Ecclesiastical authorities have in the meantime learned to live with theological pluralism and become more tolerant, but the problem itself has not disappeared. The investigation and development of Strauss' generally unappreciated contribution is perhaps an appropriate centenary celebration.

La parution du second tome de la Synopse des Quatre Evangiles en 1972, après celle du premier tome en 1965, peut être considérée comme un événement remarquable dans le cadre de la recherche biblique actuelle. Après la Bible de Jérusalem cette Synopse constitue un second succès incontestable pour l'Ecole Biblique de Jérusalem.

o. Der Abschnitt Matth. xvi. 17–19 ist in der Exegese des NT überdurchschnittlich häufig behandelt worden. Selbst die zusammenfassenden Arbeiten gehen über das gute Dutzend weit hinaus. Auch innerhalb der neueren Untersuchungen zum Petruswort divergieren die sprachliche, die historische und die formgeschichtliche Einordnung so sehr, daß eine erneute Untersuchung lohnt.

In the continuing discussion of the possible role of Christian prophets in the formation of the tradition of the words of Jesus, reference continues to be made to the relevance or irrelevance of the words of the exalted Christ transmitted by the prophet John in the Apocalypse. They remain the only un-disputed example from the first century of prophetic utterances made in the name of Christ in the first person, and for advocates of the creative activity of the Christian prophets they are therefore invaluable evidence that such utterances could be made. Their use as evidence for the role of prophecy in the formation of the Synoptic tradition involves, admittedly, additional assumptions not easily demonstrable. We must suppose that John's prophecy is typical of the content of early Christian prophecy in general, and also that this late first-century work is faithfully representative of the earlier prophets whom alone we can suppose to have been responsible for originating logia which actually entered the Synoptic tradition. The uniqueness of John's prophetic status vis-à-vis that of the church prophets has been cogently argued by D. Hill, and it seems that at least we cannot infer otherwise un-attested characteristics of early Christian prophecy in general from the contents of the Apocalypse alone. In any case the Apocalypse is surely untypical in being a lengthy and closely integrated literary composition, with its own distinctive stylistic traits. Partly for this reason the words of Christ reported in it are for the most part quite unsuitable for transference to the lips of the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition, at least without substantial adaptation.

The problem of the original setting of the Apostolic decree (Acts xv. 20, 29, xxi. 25) is still with us, in spite of the epoch-making and powerfully influential work of M. Dibelius and E. Haenchen on Acts xv as a whole. After analysing that chapter in detail, Dibelius concluded that the Decree stemmed from pre-Lukan documentary tradition but denied that the events described by Paul in Gal. ii. 1–10 could be the setting for the creation of the tradition Haenchen went still further, endorsing Dibelius' reservations about source criticism and veering decisively towards the view that Luke himself, dependent no doubt upon a contemporary and non-literary tradition, was responsible for the material He too disputed any connection with Gal. ii. 1–10 and followed C. von Weizsäcker in tracing the Decree to an attempt to cement together Jewish/Gentile Christian relations, certainly later in time than the controversy in Antioch described in Gal. ii. 11–14. The history of research into this problem during the last few decades has shown a quite remarkable degree of unanimity in accepting two basic conclusions: (I) Lukan theology is quite sufficient to explain the presence of the Decree in the Acts narrative of the so-called Apostolic Council, i.e. Luke's view that Gentile converts participate in that true Judaism set out by Moses and fulfilled in Jesus, provided they respect the law. (2) The Decree is the product of a process of conciliation. While scholars disagree as to whether Jerusalem was involved in the process, it is widely agreed that the conciliation was in time later, not earlier, than the clash in Antioch.

To refer to ‘modern developments’ of Griesbach's hypothesis makes clear that the present revival of interest in Griesbach's work is not simply an uncritical return to the past. For example, Griesbach accepted the traditional view of Augustine that Luke used Matthew even as he broke with tradition in affirming that Mark came after Luke as well as after Matthew. To the extent that Griesbach assumed Luke's use of Matthew while never discussing the relationship between those two gospels, his solution to the synoptic problem, for over a century and a half, remained in what must be judged as a critically undeveloped condition. Contemporary advocates of the Griesbach hypothesis have been obliged to explain the relationship of Luke to Matthew and in other ways develop a more convincing explanation of this hypothesis. This essay gives an account of the progress that has been made during the past twelve years in clarifying the merits of Griesbach's solution to the synoptic problem. In answering some of the objections that have been raised against this solution, an effort has been made to advance the discussion even further toward a more adequate resolution of this important question. The Epilogue includes some clarifying statements on the argument(s) from order.

Les commentateurs de l'épître aux Hébreux sont unanimes à reconnaître l'importance particulière des dix premiers versets du chapitre v, texte qui présente d'abord une description du sacerdoce (v. 1–4) et en précise ensuite l'application au Christ (v. 5–10). L'attention des exégètes, cependant, ne s'attache guère à l'interprétation d'ensemble de ce passage, elle se concentre le plus souvent sur certains problèmes de détail, comme celui de l'exaucement de la prière du Christ, qui a suscité, on le sait, une conjecture célèbre de Harnack. Quant à l'interprétation d'ensemble, on estime apparemment qu'elle ne présente pas de difficulté, et cette opinion fait qu'on se dispense de traiter clairement certaines questions, qui, mériteraient pourtant d'être discutées.

In a recent article on the interpretation of the Old Testament in the New Testament Traugott Holtz takes as his point of departure the twice repeated kata tas graphas of I Cor. xv. 3, 5. C. H. Dodd took the same words for the title of his influential book, According to the Scriptures. So we may suitably start with this for our consideration of the place of the Old Testament in the formation of New Testament theology. Paul's use of this phrase in the credo of I Cor. xv is remarkable. For one thing, it is the clearest possible case in the New Testament of appeal to the scriptures in order to provide the basis of a theological interpretation of the Christ-event. This at once alerts us to expect the importance of the Old Testament for New Testament theology to be in the realm of christology, or rather of the person and work of Christ. It can be expected to be the most important factor in the primitive church's understanding of its own faith. But another point about I Cor. xv. 3, 5 is even more significant. In this instance Paul does not even consider it necessary to adduce the relevant texts. It is implied that he could do so, if he wished, and scholars have made various suggestions about which texts he actually had in mind. But the point is that he can presuppose that it is sufficient for his argument merely to allude to the possibility of adducing scriptures. And this implies that they are common ground between him and his readers. The scriptures are, then, an agreed basis for discussion. They have an authority which is unquestioned. Consequently it can be taken as axiomatic that they will play a most important, indeed indispensable, part in the formation of New Testament theology.