Most modern commentaries and translations of the Gospel of John take John 6.52 to read: ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ There is, however, an important variant reading here that lacks the αὐτοῦ (thus: ‘How can this man give us flesh to eat?’), which has received very little attention. This article contends that the shorter reading creates yet another example of Johannine dramatic irony, as the contempt of οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι for Jesus’ teaching echoes the unbelief of the wilderness generation who were ‘given flesh to eat’ along with the manna. The article tentatively concludes that this intertextual reading advances the ‘internal probability’ of the shorter text.

While it has recently become a common assumption that the traditional understanding of the grammar of John 3.16 (‘For God so loved the world that …’) is misleading or simply inaccurate, this article demonstrates on the basis of parallel constructions from the ancient Greek corpus that οὕτως … ὥστε, when used with ἀγαπάω, functions as a correlative intensifier–result pair, exactly as it is presented in the traditional understanding.

The human capacity to sin and the location of evil are considered in James in light of ongoing research within the field of Qumran studies. This essay consists of two main parts. First, the association of ‘desire’ in Jas 1.14–15 with the Jewish concept of yēṣer is revisited by drawing upon occurrences of yēṣer from Cave 4 that had previously not been included in the assessment of James. Parallels from, especially, 4QInstruction provide new data suggesting that sapiential tradition may also reflect the apocalyptic view that human evil is provoked by spiritual beings, vis-à-vis an evil yēṣer, which opens up a more nuanced understanding of the self and how ‘desire’ may operate in Jas 1.14–15. Second, after arguing that the human capacity to sin cannot be relegated merely to a negative anthropology, the larger issue of evil beings (i.e. devil, demons) within James’ cosmology is considered. In conclusion, James’ sapiential discourse is seen to be located within a cosmological framework which includes active evil agents who lead human beings astray and cause suffering and death. Human responses to evil in James include petitioning God and asking for wisdom from above.

This article compares two first-century authors, Paul and Plutarch, on the mechanics of inspiration and the role of gender in the prophetic process. Paul's First Corinthians and Plutarch's Delphic Dialogues (De Pythiae oraculis and De defectu oraculorum) were written by men who were observers of and commentators on the religious phenomenon of prophecy – that is, the communication of divine messages through human speakers. They also make statements about women that indicate that gender influenced their perceptions of prophecy. When these authors discuss prophecy at the conceptual level, gender does not affect their arguments, but when they turn to actual women prophets, they introduce ideas about gender and sex that shape their views of the prophetic process and the women who prophesy.

Codex was by far the most widely attested book form among early Christian literary papyri. Nevertheless, the papyrological record does include several notable exceptions, two of which contain parts of the book of Revelation (18 and 98). Recently, the former's status as a roll has been disputed by Brent Nongbri, who suggested that, instead, 18 is more likely to be a miscellaneous codex. This article provides a fresh look at the extant evidence and critically reviews Nongbri's case. In closing, brief reflections on the manuscript's social setting are offered.

In early Christian literature the death of Judas is broadly understood as a fitting end to the life of the betrayer of Jesus. Papias’ description of Judas’ death can be illuminated by comparison with ancient biographical and medical literature, in which oedema and parasitic infections are a consequence of greed, and also apocalyptic texts, in which worms become an emblematic form of divine punishment after death. Viewed in this context the death of Judas serves a pedagogical function as a warning about the dangers of greed.

The title βασιλεὺς βασιλέων in the Apocalypse (Rev 17.14; 19.16) has generated a variety of interpretations in regard to its identification, symbolism and background. Commentators regularly note that joining a singular noun with its genitive plural is a common way to express the superlative in Hebrew. Others find special relevance of the phrase to the time of Domitian when it is said ‘he dictated the form of a letter to be used by his procurators, he began: “Our lord and god commands so and so”’ (Suetonius, Domitian, 13). The present analysis argues that inscriptions on relevant coinage confirm that the title was a clear allusion to the tradition of the Parthian kings, Rome's historic enemy. Within the context of the Apocalypse, the title is applied to Jesus Christ, presented triumphantly conquering Rome in the image of Rome's feared Parthian enemy. Included in the analysis is an extensive tabulation of relevant numismatic evidence.

Although interpreters refer to the association between blackness and evil in ancient texts as essentially universal, specific reference by Christians to the counter-divine with the colour epithet ὁ μέλας is new with the Epistle of Barnabas. Black is applied as an honorific to certain Egyptian deities, but it is never used in Egyptian religion with reference to the counter-divine. Furthermore, black demons proliferate in late third- and fourth-century Egyptian monastic texts, but these witnesses postdate Barnabas. The first explicit reference to the devil as black after Barnabas is in Didymus the Blind, who interprets the reference as ‘Ethiopian’. Exploring the origin and background of this nickname for the counter-divine, this essay argues that Didymus accurately apprehends Barnabas’ intention: namely, that ‘the Black One’ does not merely reflect the universal association of blackness and evil in Roman antiquity, but, rather it reflects the appropriation of an ethnic stereotype in an apocalyptic context with distinctly anti-imperial resonances.

A bilingual Greek–Latin glossary in the papyrus Chester Beatty AC 1499 (= New Testament P99, Vetus Latina AN glo Paul) contains numerous short extracts from the letters of Paul. New photographs and re-examination of the original have allowed substantial corrections to previous editions of the text, causing some rare or unique variant readings to disappear and others to appear for the first time. The history of the glossary can now be better understood: it was probably created not directly from a text of Paul, but from an early Christian work, now lost, that quoted extensively from Paul.

This article challenges the argument of John Moles that Luke's preface (1.1–4) resembles a Greek decree more than any other type of writing. Although Moles is not the first to recognise the supposed decree-like features in Luke's preface, he goes further by arguing that the preface is intentionally structured like a decree for the author's rhetorical aim. In this article, I demonstrate that Moles’ argument goes too far and that Luke's preface simply displays features conventional to prefaces of historiographical writing – despite common structural patterns of preface writing and decree formulae – and is not layered with additional rhetorical meaning.

In Gal 3.16 Paul asserts that Abraham's seed is the messiah. While some have suggested that the rationale for this assertion is Paul's identification of Abraham's seed with David's seed, few have identified evidence for this rationale in the immediate context of Galatians 3, and none have genuinely argued for it. Noting that the reappropriation of scriptural idioms is a common feature of ancient messiah discourse, I demonstrate that Gal 3.19 entails a reappropriation of the wording of Gen 49.10, an oracle often interpreted as Davidic-messianic, and thereby I elucidate the scriptural reasoning undergirding Gal 3.16.

1 Cor 14.34–5 appears to silence women in church. Philip Payne's recent paper attempts to add to the evidence that Paul did not write these verses. He claims that codex Vaticanus has an obelos at the start of 1 Cor 14.34 (as well as a distigme), indicating added text. However, the bar in Vaticanus at 1 Cor 14.34 is indistinguishable from paragraphoi and Payne's case that it is an obelos is based on systematic measurement errors.

The view expressed in BDAG that Hebrais refers not to Hebrew but to ‘the Aramaic spoken at that time in Palestine’ derives from a century-old argument that because Hebrais could mean either Aramaic or Hebrew, and since the average person could not understand Hebrew, Hebrais must mean Aramaic. This article challenges the view that Hebrais(ti) could mean Aramaic (1) by using an exhaustive list of all instances to show that Aramaic was consistently distinguished from Hebrew, and (2) by explaining the evidence to the contrary: Aramaic-looking words in John, Josephus and Philo that are said to be Hebraisti.

In 1 Cor 11.17–34, Paul attempts to correct the practice of a communal meal in Corinth. He notes that consumption of this meal without discernment of ‘the body’ has had disastrous consequences within the community of Christ-followers: ‘For this reason, many among you are weak and sick, and quite a few are dying’ (11.30). This essay offers a physical interpretation of 1 Cor 11.30, contending that Paul presents the bodies of both the ‘have-nots’ and those who shame them as suffering because of the practice of the Lord's Supper, the former from dietary deprivation and the latter from overconsumption.

There are serious problems with P. Payne's discussion of ‘distigmai’ in Codex Vaticanus, and more in particular with his identification and interpretation of so-called ‘distigme-obelos’ combinations. The ‘distigmai’ remain elusive and any ‘distigme-obelos’ is coincidental.

The archaeology of ancient coin hoards and some basic numismatic analysis help to understand certain cultural presuppositions informing Luke's tangled discourse in his Parable of the Minas. Stories of political unrest and stories of hidden treasure naturally belong together.