Gospel research has drawn upon studies of folklore from time to time. An initial impetus from J. G. Herder was followed up by the work of the form critics. More recently, W. H. Kelber introduced to the debate a model based on modern folklore studies and linguistic theory known as ‘oral culture’ or ‘orality’. He stressed the differences between oral ways of thinking, speaking, and transmitting tradition and the thought and communication characteristic of a modern, print-dominated culture: exegesis and hermenutics, he insisted, must be attuned to the former. Drawing largely on Kelber, J. D. G. Dunn has developed this program in a rather radical form in his new book, Jesus Remembered. Through a series of comparisons between Dunn's approach and the author's own, this article argues that the orality model, even in this latest form, fails to provide an adequate solution to the mystery of the oral gospel tradition.

Matthew's five great discourses move from addressing the story's audience to direct engagement with the reader. The first section of the paper demonstrates that this rhetorical function of the discourses has found widespread agreement among scholars employing such diverse methodologies as redaction, narrative, rhetorical, feminist, and reader-response criticisms, as well as structuralism and post-structuralism. The paper's second section analyzes the means by which Matthew's reader is more directly addressed in the discourses than in the narrative portions of the Gospel. The rhetorical devices explored include plot devices in the narrative surrounding the discourses; discourse structural devices; and linguistic, topical, and generic techniques used within the discourses.

Ματθαιος μεν εγραψεν Εβραιοις θαυματα Χριστου,

Μαρκος δ Ιταλιη,

Λουκας Αχαιαδι,

Πασι δ Ιωαννης,

κηρυξ μεγας, ουρανοϕοιτης.

(Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina dogmatica 1.12.6–9)

Richard Bauckham has called on scholars to abandon the reading strategy of redaction criticism that had risen to prominence especially in the 1960s, and return to the way the gospels had always been understood before that – as having been written ‘for all Christians’. The present essay resituates this debate as actually yet another instance of a very old and enduring hermeneutical problem in the exegesis of Christian literature: the relationship between the particularity and universality of the gospels. Study of patristic gospel exegesis reveals no author who says the gospels were written ‘for all Christians’, and, even more importantly, shows that early Christian readers – through evangelist biographies, localizing narratives, audience request traditions, and heresiological accounts of the composition of individual gospels, as well as in their theological reflections on the fourfold gospel – engaged in a sustained and deliberate dialectic between the local and universal audiences of the gospels which defies any simple dichotomy between ‘specific’ and ‘indefinite’ readers.

In Col 2.14, the metaphor of the remission of debts appears to be somewhat unmotivated. Because of the reference to the cross in 2.14b, it is hard to understand. The article shows that the verse applies a common profane motif to Christology. In light of the ancient practice of debt register and discharge of debts, the unusual metaphor becomes more plausible. Given the background of the ancient practice of debt discharging, Col 2.14 interprets the death of Jesus as a deputy death, by which God grants universal discharge of sins, which is being applied to every human through baptism.

In 1 Thess 1 äußert Paulus seine Freude über die Hinwendung der Thessalonicher zum lebendigen Gott unter gleichzeitiger Abwendung von den Götzen. Die VV. 9b–10 werden in den meisten Kommentaren als Anknüpfungspunkt für die Bestimmung des Adressatenkreises von 1 Thess herangezogen. In dem vorliegenden Aufsatz wird der Versuch unternommen zu zeigen, dass dieser Adressatenkreis sowohl Heiden als auch Gottesfürchtige umfasst. Dazu soll vor allem der Frage nachgegangen werden, ob Gottesfürchtige vor ihrer Konfrontation mit der paulinischen Predigt nur einen Gott verehrten und somit in dieser Hinsicht von der heidnischen Umwelt zu trennen sind.

A close analysis of the report of 2 Pet 3.4, paying attention to its precise wording, and a careful reading of the author's response to it in the verses that follow show that the prevailing interpretation of the scoffers' eschatological mockery is unsound. The target of the scoffers' criticism was not so much the parousia of Jesus as the OT promise of a final, eschatological irruption underlying it. Their scepticism was founded neither on the failure of Jesus to come back within a generation, nor on a denial of divine intervention. Rather, it was based on the long period of time that had elapsed since the promise was originally made and the assumption that the eschatological promise involved the prospect of cosmic destruction, which the scoffers rejected on philosophical grounds.

Various passages in the Paralipomena Jeremiae, a writing largely neglected by NT scholarship so far, may shed further light on the background in early Judaism of the theological terminology of the NT. This is exemplified below: ευαγγελιζεσθαι is seen to stand for the preaching of eschatological salvation, κατηχειν for catechetical instruction, αναπαυσις for the quiet between death and resurrection, the ‘Jerusalem above’ for the eventual place of salvation, ‘tent’ and ‘fleshly house’ for the mortal body. ‘Steward’ is employed metaphorically; the metaphor of fragance and light symbolism are used. A certain interpretation of the site mentioned at Mk 15.21 is confirmed also.

The Bodmer miscellaneous codex contains not only P72 (Jude, 1–2 Peter), but eight other biblical and Christian writings as well. Three independent sections (I–II–III) of the codex have been identified, and a different sequence from the traditional is suggested as original. There are strong connections between sections I and III and they probably followed in sequence. The most significant connection is P72, copied by one single scribe who displays both a liturgical and a theological tendency. This scribe may have been the final collector of the codex, a miscellany of an apologetic character, bearing the marks of incipient orthodoxy.