Pauline Anthropology has long been seen as the key to the quest for the human being in New Testament theology. But there are other concepts in ancient Roman and early Jewish religious-philosophical thinking that deserve our attention in this regard. Exegetical analyses of James 1.2–18 and 3.13–18 point to a view of the human being that traces the ability to do what is good back to God's working within and his bestowal of wisdom. Surveys of ethical passages in the Wisdom of Solomon and Epictetus indicate that the origin of ethical decisions can be understood in psychological as well as religious terms. In the light of such anthropological discourses the Pauline argument about the human being in Romans 5–8 can be seen from a new perspective.

This article examines the alterations that Luke makes to his citation of Joel 3.1–5 in Acts 2.17–21. It argues that Luke has chosen various Scriptural co-texts to shape the meaning of Joel's prophecy as it applies to the early church. Thus, the various changes that Luke makes to Joel's prophecy reflect Luke's theological vision for the way in which Israel's eschatological restoration is occurring within the community of the early church.

The last chapter of the gospel of Luke includes a story of the risen Christ meeting two of his disciples on their way from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus and chastising them with the poetic expression ὦ ἀνόητοι καὶ βραδεῖς τῇ καρδίᾳ ‘O foolish ones, and slow in heart’ (Luke 24.25). No commentator has ever observed that Jesus' expression occurs verbatim, in the same iambic trimeter metre, in two poetic versions of animal fables attributed to the famous Greek fabulist Aesop. It is plausible that Luke is here, as at least twice elsewhere in his gospel, tapping into the rich tradition of Aesopic fables and proverbs that were widely known throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century ce.

While embedded in contemporary letter-writing conventions, early Christian letters were also instrumental in the creation of a distinctive Christian world-view. Fundamental to letters of all types, ‘real’ and fictional, is that they respond to, and hence negotiate and seek to overcome, actual and imagined spatial and temporal distance between author and recipient(s). In practice and as cultural symbols, letters, sent and transmitted in new contexts, as well as letter collections, produced in the Christian imagination new trans-locational and cross-temporal dynamics of relationality that can be mapped onto the standard epistolary topoi – ‘absent as if present’, half a conversation, a mirror of the soul.

The goal of this essay is to reopen the unfortunately unrefined but still illuminating proposal of August Dell a century ago – a proposal to read the motif of ‘bind and unbind’ in Matt 16.19 against the backdrop of ancient magical conventions – and to corroborate this hypothesis with philological precision and contextualisation. The present study seeks to demonstrate how central the motif of ‘bind and unbind’ was to most binding spells and amulets, and how the verbs λύειν and δέειν and their cognates might have evoked the conventions of binding magic when heard in religious and ritual contexts. We see Matt 16.19 as a literary reappropriation of a typical binding spell, crafted to highlight Peter's authority to ‘bind’ and ‘break’ whatever entities he should choose. Jesus' guarantee that he/God will ‘unbind’ whatever target Peter ‘unties' is to be understood as a clear indication that Peter is endowed with an invincible potency over every other spiritual entity, symbolised by the power to break any ‘binding’ spell. The security of the church against malevolent and harmful spiritual entities is further guaranteed by Christ's promise, if read in ancient binding magical conventions: Christ will give Peter the key of the kingdom of heaven so that Peter as the key-bearer may become a figure who can channel the full potency of the keyed object.

Over the last several decades, performance criticism has made significant headway as an interpretive method. However, in a recent issue of this journal, Larry Hurtado argues that the key assumptions of the movement ignore various historical realities regarding the use of texts in the ancient world. The following discussion offers a brief response to what Hurtado suggests are several ‘oversimplifications’. The essay argues that rather than being a ‘fixation’ as Hurtado maintains, the renewed focus on orality and performance is a corrective that helps to provide a broader understanding of how biblical texts were typically experienced in the ancient world.

In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul addressed the occasion of deaths among Christians with stock arguments of the consolatory genre, without using the typical epistolary structure associated with consolation in ancient handbooks of letter-writing. It is demonstrated that three of Seneca the Younger's letters also employed stock arguments of consolation, but did not follow the usual structure for a letter of consolation. Using Seneca's letters as a test case for what constituted pagan ideas of consolation, we highlight some compelling reasons for reading First Thessalonians as a letter of consolation, a reading that offers some new insights into the passage on the right Christian attitude towards death in 1 Thess 4.13–5.11.

When Paul employs the motif of oneness in 1 Corinthians 12 and joins it to the metaphor of Christ's body, he is drawing not only on Greco-Roman political rhetoric, as argued by the majority of interpreters, but also, and at times more directly, from theological wells found within his Jewish theological heritage: the use of the phrase ‘one body’ in 1 Corinthians is an ecclesial application of the Shema. Paul's oneness language expresses not simply a call to internal unity or social harmony. Ultimately, the ecclesial designation ‘one’ is a succinct articulation of an ecclesiology of Christological monotheism.

The mainstream approaches to the Synoptic Problem all agree: there are no extant instances of Q. The shape of ‘Q’ changes, however, if, as proposed in the companion article, ‘Streeter's “Other” Synoptic Solution: The Matthew Conflator Hypothesis’, Matthew sometimes conflates Luke with Luke's own source. Where this happens Luke's source qualifies as an instance of ‘Q’ – inasmuch as it preserves sayings of Jesus used, ultimately, by both Luke and Matthew. This fresh conception of ‘Q’ opens up the possibility that examples of ‘Q’ are, after all, available. An extant text meeting this description is Didache 1.2–5a.

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.

This article describes how the writers of the Hodayot understand Gen 2.7 as describing an anthropological crisis: the human is formed from the dust and wasting away. Drawing on Ezekiel 37, the hymnists maintain that this crisis is overcome by God imparting his Spirit. This understanding of Gen 2.7 is used to illuminate Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul likewise reads Gen 2.7 as a description of an anthropological problem, and he finds the solution in Ezekiel 37. Yet, he introduces his own twist so that Gen 2.7 comes to express both the crisis and the solution.

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.

B. H. Streeter's Four Gospels has had a critical influence on the study of the Synoptic Problem. Unfortunately, this seminal work rests on two fundamental errors. When these are corrected, however, Streeter points to a fully satisfying solution to the Synoptic Problem: Mark wrote first, Luke used Mark and other sources and, at a later date, Matthew conflated Mark, Luke and other sources – including some also used by Luke.

At first glance, the apostles and the other messengers of the Gospel appear to be the protagonists in the plot of Acts. However, seen within the context of Greco-Roman modes of characterisation, their roles prove to be a subtle reference to the divine guidance. An analysis of how Peter, Paul and the other witnesses enter and leave the narrative stage, how they interact and how their appearance is depicted leads to the insight that their roles are meant to be relative, functional and transparent. They thus refer to the Risen Lord as the real protagonist of Acts.

Luke-Acts is strangely silent regarding the sacrificial significance of Jesus' crucifixion. Curiously, too, Acts more closely links the salvific benefits that Jesus provides with his resurrection and exaltation than with his death. Luke, many conclude, is not concerned with explaining Jesus' atoning work in terms of Jewish sacrificial categories. By way of contrast, this article argues that Luke's connecting of forgiveness and purification (i.e. key elements of sacrificial atonement) with Jesus' exaltation indicates that he is aware of the sacrificial aspects of Jesus' work. Jewish sacrifice consists of a hierarchically structured ritual process that cannot be reduced to the slaughter of the victim. In Leviticus, the culminating elements of this process occur as the priests convey the materials of the sacrifice into God's presence (i.e. offer the sacrifice) by approaching and serving at the various altars. Such a perspective on sacrifice is suggestive for interpreting Luke's emphasis on Jesus' exaltation in Acts. Luke has not stressed the sacrificial aspects of Jesus' death, but has highlighted the atoning benefits of Jesus' exaltation because he understands Jesus to have offered his atoning sacrifice as part of his exaltation to the right hand of God.

The prima facie sense of the assertion of Hebrews 9.23 that the heavenly things themselves needed to be cleansed is often rejected as fantastic or preposterous. Consequently, the verse is often read as describing the cleansing of conscience or the inauguration, not purification, of the heavenly tabernacle. Both interpretations are critiqued here. Positively, this essay argues that in Heb 9.23 Christ's sacrifice cleanses the tabernacle in heaven from antecedent defilement in order to inaugurate the new covenant cult. I argue that the structure of 9.23–8 and the manner in which Hebrews appropriates both cult inauguration and Yom Kippur support this conclusion.

This study surveys the numerous and diverse powers and authorities to which the gospel is addressed in Luke-Acts, including major Jewish institutions and officials, Herodian rulers, Roman military officers, Greco-Roman officials, diverse officials, and pagan cults and supernatural powers. Well over half the references to authorities in Luke-Acts occur nowhere else in the New Testament. The frequent and diverse references to powers defend Christianity in a preliminary and obvious way from charges of political sedition. In a broader and more important way, however, they redefine power itself according to the standard of the gospel.

In the discipline of New Testament studies there are particular reasons for critical vigilance concerning the ways in which historical reconstructions can be shaped by a sense of both religious and ethnic or racial superiority. This risk applies specifically to the contrasting depictions of Judaism and Christianity, and it is notable that, despite the changing phases of scholarship, the tendency to replicate a dichotomy between an ethnically particular Judaism and a universal, open, trans-ethnic Christianity persists. As one facet of a critical consideration of this dichotomy, this essay considers two specific texts that contribute to the ethnicisation of early Christian identity: 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Peter 3. In the former, Paul develops two principles that are significant in the ethnicisation process: endogamy as norm for the contraction of marriage (1 Cor 7.39) and the assumption that children with a Christian parent (even in a so-called ‘mixed marriage’) are part of the Christian community (1 Cor 7.14). The later household codes further develop this idea that the household is a place for the reproduction and generation of Christian identity. In 1 Pet 3.1–6, part of the letter's household code where mixed marriage is again an issue, two features of the text are of particular interest: its focus on a ‘way of life’ (ἀναστροφή) and the connections drawn between conduct and ancestry. In both of these respects, 1 Peter seems to be constructing a form of group-identity that shares features in common with Jewish notions of group-belonging in the period. The ‘ethnicising’ features of these texts raise questions about any categorical contrast between Jewish ethnicity and Christian inclusive trans-ethnicity. Why then is such a depiction of the Christian achievement – which in many ways parallels depictions of modern Western political liberalism – so enduring and appealing within the discipline? It is suggested that the answer must be sought in the religious and ethnic or racial location of that scholarly tradition.

This article reads Acts 27–28.10 as an ‘aquatic display’ that offers Christ-believers a spectacle of navigating the stormy imperial world. It argues that Pliny's Panegyricus similarly employs aquatic displays to instruct in negotiating the emperor Trajan's power. It identifies four means in Acts 27 that assert Rome's power – judicial, military, economic, and the sea as a contested site where the sovereignties of God and Rome compete and cooperate – and which Christ-believers must negotiate by various means including submission, awareness of danger, courage, social interaction, agency, contribution to well-being, and discernment of and contestive allegiance to God's greater sovereignty.