Oscar Cullmanns Petrusbuch — es ist jüngst neu erschienen1 — verdient die Anerkennung, die es gefunden hat. Es liest sich glänzend. Der Aufbau ist durchsichtig, die Beweisführung eindrucksvoll, die Polemik vornehm. Aber auch in seiner vervollkommneten Gestalt läßt das Werk noch Raum für Fragen, die freilich zum Teil über seinen Bereich hinausragen. Wir beschränken uns hier auf den Abschnitt, welcher die überschrift trägt: ‘Petrus der Apostel’, und greifen Probleme heraus, die das Verhältnis zwischen Petrus und Paulus betreffen.

Our General Meeting this year is to concern itself with a subject of a highly technical and specialist character. Your President has been expressly absolved from the obligation of selecting a subject related to Qumran. And indeed it may be thought more fitting that a Presidential Address should deal with a subject of a more general interest and with a more immediate bearing upon the life and destiny of mankind.

La chronologie de la Passion plaçant au mardi soir la Cène de Jésus a suscité les réactions les plus diverses: de l'adhésion chaleureuse à l'opposition la plus vive. Le ton passionné de certaines ‘réfutations’ pourrait surprendre s'il ne s'expliquait précisément par la grande diffusion de la thèse.

Ces réflexions, qui furent d'abord proposées lors de la séance de clôture du Meeting de Ia S.N.T.S. à Aarhus (1960), ne prétendent pas explorer en détail les relations entre les écrits de Qumrân et le N.T., ce. qui serait une tâche immense, ni méme dresser le bilan des recherches entreprises et de leurs résultats actuels, ce qui engagerait des analyses et une bibliographic considérables.

Discussions of this chapter tend to show the need for background knowledge. Much as commentators disagree as to the meaning of the parable of the Steward,1 all are agreed as to the embarrassment it has caused.2 Attempts to connect the parable with earlier and subsequent matter have been few, and scarcely convincing. Because the parable has not been understood, keys to the connexion between the verses which complete the chapter, and indeed between the parable, them, and the first two verses of the next chapter, have been overlooked.

The message of Stephen and its relationship to flrst-century Judaism and early Christian theology has recently been the subject of several studies. It is, I suppose, universally agreed that Stephen was a hellenistic Jew of the Diaspora who came into acute conflict with other Diaspora Jews of a more conservative kind domiciled in Jerusalem and that these took the initiative in effecting his arrest and trial. But that is as far as agreement goes. The attempt to understand further Stephen's message and influence has produced the widest divergence of opinion. To some he is the originator of the mission to the Gentiles and Christian universalism whose conception of Christianity was adopted by later preachers and teachers with momentous consequences for Christian history. To others he remained in essence a Jew, albeit of a liberal kind, even after his conversion, whose aim was to propagate a type of Judaism which was strongly anti-Temple and anti-cultus. On this view Stephen stands in the line of Nathan, Hosea, Trito-Isaiah, the Rechabites, some Essene circles and the Ebionites, as pictured in the Pseudo-Clementine writings, in asserting a non-material form of worship, independent of the Temple cultus, as being authentic Judaism. Still others believe that Stephen cleverly preached Jesus in his interpretation of Joseph, Moses and Joshua; on this view he is a typologist whose aim is to show that Jesus' passion has been pre-figured in the persecutions which God's righteous servants have always had to endure. It is not our purpose here to examine and criticize these conflicting opinions in detail but to seek to answer two questions, namely (i) Was Stephen's position an isolated ine in first-century Judaism and in the early Church? (ii) And, if so, is it yet possible to trace his influence on Alexandrian Christianity when it comes into historical perspective in the early second century of our era?

Die synoptischen Evangelien führen übereinstimmend die im Gottesdienst der Gemeinde gefeierten Sakramente von Taufe und Abendmahl darauf zurück, daß diese durch Jesus selbst gestiftet und von ihm eingesetzt worden seien. Die Jünger sollen nach dem Befehl des Auferstandenen die Menschen, die sich auf ihre Predigt hin bekehren, taufen. Und die Gemeinde soll die Mahlgemeinschaft mit ihrem Herrn auch nach seinem Tode unter dem Genuß von Brot und Wein fortsetzen. Zum Gedächtnis Jesu wird das Sakrament des Abendmahls von den Seinen gefeiert. Und in der Taufe handelt der erhöhte Kyrios, indem neue Glieder in die eschatologische Heilsgemeinde aufgenommen werden.

The problem of the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament is a vast one, complicated by side-issues of textual variants and involved in the kindred problem of the relation or harmony of the two Testaments. It is also a problem which has been well worked over by many scholars. Books have been written on the subject, comparing the text of the Old Testament quotations with the existing Greek and Hebrew recensions or comparing the exegetical principles and methods of the New Testament writers with those of the rabbis.1

According to the general consensus of expert opinion the Gospel of Mark was composed sometime between the years A.D. 65–75. But most authorities find that they cannot leave this decade as just a convenient round figure; for it contains the cimacteric year 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman armies. Accordingly, they endeavour to define the date of the Gospel's composition more precisely in relation to this event. Those who elect for a pre-70 date usually give as their reason for so doing that fact, as they see it, that the Gospel contains no explicit reference to this signal event. Such a conclusion is rarely felt to need a detailed justification, it being apparently assumed that mention of the fact is reason enough; it has possibly been thought also that no vital issue turns upon establishing precisely a pre-70 date.

Nur an zwei Stellen der Apostelgeschichte ist der Wortlaut missionarischer Anreden an Menschen überliefert, die nicht Gott, sondern die Götter verehren. Die beiden Reden sind die Predigten auf dem Athener Areshügel (Apg. xvii) und in Lystra (Apg. xiv. 15–18).

However interesting ‘The Gospel According to Thomas’1 may be to students of the primitive Church, it seems at first sight highly improbable that this strange farrago of sayings will make any contribution to our knowledge of Jesus' teaching. And yet to the New Testament scholar the Gospel according to Thomas is perhaps the most interesting of all the manuscripts found near Nag Hammadi in 1945, inasmuch as some of its contents have affinities with the sayings and parables of Jesus which are found in the canonical gospels. A comparison of the parables and similitudes found in Thomas with parallel material in the synoptic gospels2 raises fascinating and fundamental problems of higher criticism.

Cette note ne prétend pas offrix une étude exhaustive du chiasme dans le quatriè, e évangile; elle veut, à l'aide de trois exemples, attirer l'attention des critiques sur cette figure de style. Elle s'en tient volontairement au texte actuel, refusant provisoirement d'examiner les sources utilisées et de développer les considerations exégétiques et théologiques qui découlent des constations littéraires.

In a previous article I argued that the fourth Gospel may best be understood as an evangelistic appeal addressed to Greek-speaking Diaspora Judaism to accept as the Christ him whom ‘the inhabitants ofJerusalem and their rulers’ (‘the Jews’ of this Gospel) refused to acknowledge. If this thesis is to establish itself it must be prepared to account for the evidence of the Johannine Epistles. For, whether or not they come from the same hand as the Gospel, the milieu they presuppose is so similar that any theory about the nature of the community for which the Gospel was written which will not fit the evidence of the Epistles is bound to be precarious.

Um unserem Thema gerecht zu werden, müssen wir die Auswahl der zu erörternden Probleme streng begrenzen. So beschränken wir uns allein auf den Epheserbrief und lassen den Kolosserbrief und das Problem des Verhaltnisses der beiden Briefe zueinander ganz beiseite. Auch die Frage paulinischer oder nichtpaulinischer Verfasserschaft des Briefes und das Problem der Briefadresse sind hier nicht zu berühren. Es geht allein urn die Frage, in weichem Umfange und in welchem Sinne der Epheserbrief in Sprache, Begriffen, Gedanken und Vorstellungen eine besondere Verwandtschaft zeigt mit den Qumrantexten, oh also em Traditionszusammenhang von der Sonderform des palästinischen Spätjudentums, die uns die Qumrantexte zeigen, zum Epheserbrief wahrscheinlich ist. Dabei braucht der Vergleich sich nicht allein auf die Qumrantexte zu beschränken, er muss vielmehr weitere Schriften des palästinischen Spätjudentums, besonders die Jubiläen, die Testamente der XII Patriarchen und die Henoch-Literatur, mit einbeziehen. Denn diese Schriften waren nicht nur in der Bibliothek von Qumran vorhanden, sondern sind höchstwahrscheinlich in dieser essenischen Gerneinde, die uns in Qumran entgegentritt, entstanden.

In a previous study in this journal we compared the Passion Narratives of the Fourth Gospel and of Mark, reaching the conclusion that John shows knowledge not of the Gospel according to St Mark, but of a Passion Story which Mark also knew, a narrative included in the B stratum of the Marcan Passion Account as analysed by Principal Vincent Taylor. Recently, Dr Peder Borgen has offered the criticism that we had taken into account only the agreements of John with Mark and had not considered the similarities with Luke and Matthew. The limitation was imposed by the nature of our inquiry at that stage. To widen the scope of our investigation by taking Matthew and Luke into account is the inevitable next step. Far from disproving the hypothesis we were led to advance, the examination of the passages involved tends to confirm it.

I think I should begin with an apology for my temerity in accepting your invitation to discuss the Dead Sea material as a whole. Such a discussion is certainly premature while the greater part of the material is still unpublished, and while certain basic studies of the documents have yet to be made, or, at least, made public. The question of the palaeographic dating of the manuscripts, for instance, which could have great consequences for the reconstruction of the history of the sect, must remain sub judice until we have the material fully before us.

ʿι πτπχοī τῷ πνΕύματι has been given a number of interpretations due to the number of different meanings that have been attached to the two terms in the phrase. No attempt is made here to give an exhaustive discussion of earlier work, but rather a new interpretation is tentatively suggested.