This article explores the relationship of a minor variant in Hebrews 2.9 – Jesus dead ‘apart from God’ (χωρὶς θɛοῦ) – with the minor variant of Mark 15.34 and more broadly with Psalm 22.2, as suggested by Harnack, Michel, Zuntz, Elliott, Ehrman and Rodgers. First, it highlights new elements in the file of the evidence of Heb 2.9 and compares it with the case of Mark 15.34. Secondly, it demonstrates that paying attention to the minor variants of Heb 2.9 and Mark 15.34 allows one to grasp better the diversity of Jewish and early Christian readings of Ps 22.2 or Ps 21.2 LXX: these readings provide a plausible context to explain the emergence of these two minor variants.

Recognition of the parallels between Q material and the Epistle of James has developed in recent years, and has convincingly attested to James’ literary dependence upon Q. If James does constitute an independent witness to the Sayings Gospel, there indeed may be some merit to a limited deployment of the Jacobean epistle in studies of the Synoptic Problem. The present contribution considers the reconstruction of Q through comparison with several of its Jacobean parallels, surveying the extent to which James can be fruitfully deployed. While scholars should certainly exercise caution in using James to reconstruct Q, selective comparison may offer us some new insights, particularly in adjudicating discrepancies between Matthew and Luke. Although the Epistle’s utility is limited because of its lack of verbatim citation of Q, James may be particularly helpful in the contentious debate about the inclusion of the Lucan woes (Q/Luke 6.24–6) into Q and offers some force to the minority position that the woes constituted an original component of Q’s Beatitudes.

Ausgehend von der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung zu Familienalben und deren Gemeinsamkeiten mit dem Neuen Testament lädt dieser Beitrag dazu ein, darüber nachzudenken, was sich verändert, wenn wir die Fragen der Einführung in das Neue Testament durch die Brille der Theorie des sozialen Gedächtnisses betrachten. Aufbauend auf Forschungsergebnissen der Oral History und kulturwissenschaftlichen Gedächtnistheorie wird argumentiert, dass die allgemeine Einleitung in den Bereich des kulturellen Gedächtnisses und die spezielle Einleitung in den Bereich des sozialen/kollektiven Gedächtnisses fällt. Beide sind durch den Floating Gap getrennt, was die vielfach wahrgenommenen Veränderungen in der ersten Hälfte des zweiten Jahrhunderts erklärt. Im nächsten Schritt wird ein Modell, das auf dem Dreigenerationengedächtnis, der Generational Gap (nach einer Generation), der Floating Gap (nach 3-4 Generationen) und den ersten Generationen von Jesus-Anhängern aufbaut, mit Vorschlägen zur Datierung neutestamentlicher Bücher aus der Einleitungswissenschaft ins Gespräch gebracht. Es zeigt sich, dass die vor und nach dem Generational Gap verwendeten Genres je unterschiedliche Eigenschaften haben, die den Erwartungen an Medien des sozialen und kollektiven Gedächtnisses entsprechen. Der Beitrag schließt mit allgemeinen Fragen zu Medien und Medienwandel im Neuen Testament, d.h. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit, identische Texte und Textkritik, dem Kanon als primärem Kontext, der Ausweitung des Geltungsbereichs sowie fluiden Gattungen, und kommt zu dem Schluss, dass kulturwissenschaftliche Gedächtnistheorie in der Tat neue Perspektiven für die Einleitungswissenschaft bietet.

The paper re-examines the parable of the king pondering about engaging in war with a more powerful enemy (Luke 14.31–2), focusing on questions commonly asked in antiquity and still relevant today with respect to war and suing for peace. These regard the cause of the war and the reasons for fighting, the tension between bravery and wisdom, the circumstances that may contribute to the defeat of a superior army and the costs of peace making. I explore this parable in the context of other Lukan passages touching on the topic of war and peace. I challenge the assumption that Luke was a pacifist, and I argue that the parable cannot provide answers to contemporary questions about the ethics of peace and war.

The Markan Passion narrative alludes to Ps 22 (LXX Ps 21) in reverse, culminating with Jesus’ cry: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mark 15.34; cf. Ps 22.1). I argue that this ‘extended inverted allusion’ was an admired literary technique. Through select examples of this technique in the writings of the Hebrew Bible and Greco-Roman literature, I demonstrate its various functions—it can be employed to reverse meaning, to dissociate causation or to create new narrative trajectories. Reading Mark 15 in light of the literary functions of inverted allusion reveals new interpretive possibilities. In the Septuagint, Psalm 21 suggests that the psalmist's suffering was merited because of transgressions, but the inverted allusions to this Psalm in Mark 15 reinforce that Jesus’ suffering is unmerited (cf. Mark 15.10, 14) by decoupling the suffering from the transgressions. Additionally, in LXX Ps 21, the psalmist moves from forsakenness on account of transgressions toward divine deliverance. By alluding to this Psalm in reverse, Jesus travels the psalmist's journey in reverse. Rather than move from forsakenness toward divine deliverance, Mark's Jesus moves toward forsakenness, precisely to bring about divine deliverance.

In this paper, I examine several sources of authority to which Origen laid claim as he set about the task of interpreting scripture. On occasion, in both his commentaries and his homilies, Origen provided accounts of his access to three different, though connected sources of authority that contributed to his self-presentation as an expert interpreter. These sources are as follows: 1) participation in the lineage of the apostles, particularly his exegetical role model, Paul. The second source of authority is a result of the first: 2) direct communication from the Logos, whom he understands to be Christ himself, and 3) angelic assistance and engagement with his pastoral exegetical project. In some instances, Origen even claimed to be on par with two of these sources of authority; he can be found claiming to have exegetical abilities similar to Paul's and, on some rare occasions, to have reached the same epistemological level as the angels. This analysis provides us not only with a case study of the kind of self-fashioning and authorising strategies used by elite scriptural exegetes in the first few centuries of the common era, but it also allows us to shift our focus away from exegetical methods towards the figure, personality and social position of the exegete him or herself. From this shift of focus we gain a better appreciation of a topic to which exegetical authors themselves dedicated considerable energy: just who it was that could occupy the office of authoritative Christian exegete and why.

This article reconsiders the classed and gendered construction of the Author in the Roman Mediterranean, a construction that generates the intertwined notions of authorship and authenticity. Modern scholarly conversations about authorship and pseudepigraphy in the Roman Mediterranean often proceed from the uninterrogated assumptions that (a) ancient texts (including early Christian texts) were the monographic products of solitary authors and (b) everyone in antiquity, regardless of gender or class, had access to the status of being an ‘Author’. While conversations about (in)authentic textual production extend beyond the works that become part of the New Testament, these twin assumptions form the basis for modern debates about ‘forgery’ in New Testament literature. This article challenges both assumptions by first surveying the role of uncredited collaboration in Roman literary culture and then analysing ancient Christian discourses surrounding (a) illicit textual meddling and (b) inappropriate textual ascription. These two discursive categories reveal how the categories of class and gender are entangled with early Christian ideas of the Author. Ancient discourses of authenticity and authorship were not simply about who produced texts but about policing which acts of textual production count as ‘authoring’.

Eusebius’ much-discussed catalogue of ‘acknowledged’, ‘disputed’ and ‘spurious’ works (Historia Ecclesiastica 3.25) is a key passage in the history of New Testament canon formation, but it is often extracted from its literary context and consequently misunderstood. This passage is in fact a summary of conclusions that Eusebius has already reached in the contributions to apostolic biography with which he supplements the Book of Acts in HE 2.1–3.24. Biographical passages relating the conclusion of the apostolic lives of James, Peter, Paul and John are accompanied by statements about the texts they authored or authorised, or that have been falsely attributed to them. This biographical context for differentiating genuine works of prestigious figures from their pseudepigraphal counterparts has its roots in Greco-Roman literary culture, as exemplified in the Lives of the Philosophers of Diogenes Laertius. Eusebius’ crucial contribution to the formation of the New Testament canon is thus rooted not in exclusively Christian concerns but in the wider literary culture of Late Antiquity.

The article deals with two topics that are neglected in the Gospel of Luke: miracles and praise. In Luke 5 – 18, the acts of praise appear almost always in the miracle stories and most frequently in the mouth of the crowd – four times. These acclamations reveal the gradual recognition of Jesus’ identity. The crowd’s perception of Jesus as a miracle worker (5.26) and prophet (7.16) at the beginning has changed to seeing in him the Son of David and Messiah (18.38, 39, 43). This progression of the Jewish crowd in understanding Jesus’ identity is the thesis of this article.

This article examines the synoptic saying on serving two masters (Matt 6.24; Luke 16.13) in light of the evidence for jointly owned slaves in documentary papyri. The saying implies that the slave of two masters will inevitably be more loyal or exclusively loyal to one master. Scholars usually accept this as an accurate depiction of jointly owned slaves. However, the papyrological evidence shows that the relationship between jointly owned slaves and their owners varied in everyday life and that slaves had little control over their loyalty to each master. The saying is, therefore, not a fully realistic portrait of how jointly owned slaves served their masters in antiquity but is possibly a slave stereotype that contributes to the (un)faithful slave imageries in the Gospels.

On five occasions in Pauline literature, the author claims to write in their own hand. In three of the five instances, the autograph is reserved for the final greeting and the greeting alone. In Galatians 6.11 and Philemon 19, however, Paul writes more than the letter's greeting in his own hand, as the comment about his autograph appears well before the closing salutations. This article engages one of these texts, Philemon, and argues that it was written entirely in Paul's hand. The letter was a Pauline holograph. To make this argument, the article first assesses the ‘cheirographic rhetoric’ of Philemon 19. Paul alludes to a type of documentary writing, the cheirograph, that recorded various sorts of financial proceedings. Paul's autographic guarantee recalls validation statements that were integral to this genre of text. Comparanda from the non-literary papyri show that when an author of a cheirograph called specific attention to their own handwriting, the entire document was customarily written in their own hand. The article then turns to the personal nature of Philemon and the abundance of second-person singular forms, arguing that there was a strong preference that personal letters like Philemon be handwritten in Paul's context. Taken together, these two arguments demonstrate that Paul's short letter to Philemon was more likely to be handwritten than dictated.

First Corinthians 6.1–6 is consistently read as a Pauline criticism directed against members of the Pauline ekklēsia in Corinth, taking each other to Roman courts. I argue that this understanding of 1 Cor 6.1–6 is implausible in light of practices of Roman law in the provinces and in the colonies. Within a formal court procedure, the Corinthians would not have had the freedom to appoint their own judges, as Paul's language implies. I suggest instead that it is private arbitration which Paul criticises. Papyri dealing with private arbitration and mediation support this reading. Much of Paul's legal terminology in the passage is found in these papyri, making private arbitration a highly plausible suggestion. The suggested reading points to the community's good social ties with the pagan population in the city. It also depicts Paul as working within the framework of Roman law rather than against it. The article exemplifies the benefits of integrating up-to-date studies of Roman law in New Testament Studies.

Die Untersuchung der Schöpfungsthematik in der Didache ist ein Forschungsdesiderat. Daher werden Übersetzungen und Kommentare daraufhin überprüft, welche griechischen Wörter an welchen Stellen schöpfungstheologisch interpretiert werden. Dieses vorläufige Netz der Schöpfungsterminologie wird durch weitere Analysen verfeinert, um einen Gesamteindruck der Schöpfungstheologie zu gewinnen. Im schöpfungsethischen Ausblick wird die Frage herausgegriffen, wie es für die Didache zukünftig mit der Schöpfung weitergeht, was im Horizont gegenwärtiger Herausforderung besprochen wird. Die Didache hat weder ein vordergründig ökologisches Interesse noch eine pauschale Abwertung der gegenwärtigen Schöpfung. Dennoch steckt in der Didache ein ökotheologisches Potenzial.

This study offers a fresh explanation for the characterisation of the women in Luke 23.27 as mourning. It argues that the uniquely Lukan material of women mourning on the walk to Calvary subtly fashions that walk into a funeral procession. The phrase μὴ κλαίɛτɛ in the following verse, Luke 23.28, recalls accounts of Jesus bringing the dead to life earlier in the Gospel, thereby evoking the concept of resurrection. Luke 23.27-8 works in conjunction with material later in Chapter 23 about the ritual preparation of Jesus’ body, to portray funerary ritual for Jesus conducted in reverse (the funeral procession precedes rather than follows the preparation of the body). This inverted order of funeral allusions adds extra resonance to the endpoint of the Gospel, casting it as the logical culmination of a reverse funeral—the resurrection of Jesus from death to life. The interpretation in this paper highlights one way that lived ritual experiences among the Gospel's readers, in this case, the paradigm of funeral ritual, informed the narrative technique in the Gospel of Luke, complementing other well-recognised uses of Greco-Roman rhetorical devices and literary themes.

The meaning of the verb ἀλληγορέω stands at the heart of the debate concerning Paul's hermeneutic in Galatians 4.21–31. If by using the term Paul means ‘I am interpreting these things allegorically’, then the question of Paul's interpretive procedure would be all but answered – he would likely be allegorising as the Greeks did before him and the early church fathers did after. However, if he does not mean this, then the question remains open. This article argues that the phrase ἅτινά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμɛνα means ‘these things are symbolic’, which would indeed leave this question open. This rendering is best for two reasons: First, the majority of the uses of ἀλληγορέω available in the two hundred or so years surrounding the writing of Galatians mean ‘to speak symbolically’. Second, the contextual clues surrounding Paul's use of the term in Galatians itself, such as his call to hear the law in verse 21, strongly suggest such a reading. To prove this thesis, this article provides detailed exposition of the texts in which ἀλληγορέω occurred around the time Paul wrote Galatians before turning to Paul's own use of the term in Galatians 4.24.

This article evaluates a potential angelomorphic tradition in Acts 12.15c. It demonstrates that the most common interpretation of the phrase ὁ ἄγγελός ἐστιν αὐτοῦ (‘it is his angel’, 12.15c) as referring to Peter’s guardian angel fails to account adequately for the evidence. After surveying several different proposals for interpreting the phrase, it argues that angelomorphy/angelisation is the most plausible option available to Luke and his earliest readers. Finally, this article demonstrates how an angelomorphic interpretation of Acts 12.15c is congruent with both the broader concern for angelomorphy/angelisation throughout Luke-Acts, as well as the use of humour and irony in Acts 12.12–15.1

Scholars have long been aware of the close relationship between two ninth-century Greek-Latin bilingual manuscripts, Codex Boernerianus (GA 012, VL 77) and Codex Augiensis (GA 010, VL 78). However, assessments of the nature of this relationship differ. The present article seeks to resolve this question by comparing full electronic transcriptions of the Greek texts of these manuscripts in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and First Timothy. An examination of the points of divergence, including unique readings, word division, corrections and lacunae confirm that their Greek text was either copied from the same exemplar, or that one served as exemplar for the other. Close analysis of the types of errors and the way in which corrections in Codex Boernerianus are handled in Codex Augiensis proves that the latter was copied from the former. These findings indicate that, as a copy of an existing manuscript, Codex Augiensis should no longer be cited in the apparatus of the Greek New Testament.

Scholars generally agree that Moses and Elijah appear at the Transfiguration because they are connected to each other in some way, and that this connection informs the significance of the story as a whole. However, there is no consensus regarding how Moses and Elijah are related, and consequently there is significant disagreement about how their presence contributes to the Transfiguration. The present study, which focuses on Mark's account (Mark 9.2–8), argues that Moses and Elijah appear together because they received similar theophanies at Mount Sinai and, as a result, the Transfiguration should be read as a mountaintop theophany in which Jesus constitutes the personal presence of Israel's God.

Most commentators, as well as the editors of both the NA28 and UBS5, identify Acts 3.22–3 as a composite citation of Deut 18.15–19 and Lev 23.29. Problems arise, however, when they try to explain why Luke combines these two texts. Luke’s typical practice for composite citations is to combine texts which share a common theme or otherwise mutually interpret each other, but none of the suggested connections between Deut 18.15–19 and Lev 23.29 have proven convincing. This paper demonstrates that while scholars have correctly identified Deut 18.15–19 as one of the texts cited, the text with which Luke combines it ought to be identified as Num 15.30 rather than Lev 23.29. Both Deut 18.18–19 and Num 15.30–1 describe the consequences of deliberately rejecting the ‘word of the Lord’. Correctly identifying these texts confirms Luke’s general practice in composite citations and also clarifies the function of this citation in its context in Acts 3.12–26. Using this composite citation, Peter warns those who had previously acted in ignorance against now opposing God deliberately.

Forty years ago, Leander Keck criticised the ‘tyranny of titles’ in the study of New Testament Christology. While Keck rightly criticised early- to mid-twentieth approaches to titles for Jesus, there is no denying the importance of titles in New Testament texts. This article summarises classic twentieth-century approaches to christological titles and discusses the most important criticisms. The root issue of such approaches is the conflation of titles and concepts. A constructive proposal is offered for reading christological titles as literary strategies of characterisation. This approach begins by carefully defining what is meant by a title and how titles might be distinguished from common nouns and names. Six principles for the productive interpretation of titles are then discussed: 1) titles must be distinguished from other christological material like motifs, typologies, and references to biblical texts; 2) titles must be distinguished from each other; 3) titles are meaningful not because they refer to particular ideas but because of their relationship with biblical texts, religious life, and culture; 4) what a title does is more important than what a title means; 5) titles are flexible, polyvalent, and ambiguous; 6) titles must be read alongside other titles and non-titular material. Finally, it is demonstrated how this literary approach to titles will be fruitful for contemporary discussions in New Testament Christology and contribute to the renewal of New Testament Christology that Keck called for several decades ago.1