Fifteen years ago, at the meeting in Gwatt, Switzerland (1967), when I read my first paper before the Society, I gave it the title: ‘Les femmes au tombeau. Etude de la rédaction matthéenne’. It was a redactional study of Mt. 28. 1–10, with a special concentration on the verses 9–10, the appearance of Jesus to the women, and its parallel in Jn. 20. 17. My paper today could be entitled: Fifteen years later. Many things have changed in the course of these years. An important exegetical contribution has been devoted to the empty tomb stories in the gospels and, more significantly, the scholarly discussion on ‘John and the Synoptics’ has been brought to the foreground. To mention only the Journal of our Society: July 1980, ‘John and the Synoptics: Some Dimensions of the Problem’, by D. M. Smith; April 1981, ‘John and the Synoptic Gospels: A Test Case’, by B. Lindars.

Where does the gospel of John fit into the picture of early Christianity? The present paper is an attempt to make a contribution towards the solution of this puzzle by focussing on the author's christology. It attempts a delineation of the central structure, then goes on to investigate its relationship with major clusters of Johannine christological tradition.

In seiner Studie ‘Jesu letzter Wille nach Johannes 17’ hat Ernst Käsemann ein Bild des Johannesevangeliums als das eines Dokuments einer Christo-logie des auf Erden schreitenden göttlichen Logos entworfen. Worte, die auf die Inkarnation hinweisen, wie 1. 14, deutet ernicht als Ausdruck der Selbsterniedrigung des Erlösers, sondern als ein Zeugnis seiner triumphie-renden Herrlichkeit, die die Barriere der Weltlichkeit überwindet und auch den sündigen Menschen erreicht.

The letter-spirit antithesis occurs in only three verses in the Pauline corpus: in Rom. 2. 29 (but note also v. 27), 7. 6, and 2 Cor. 3. 6. Nonetheless, it has traditionally been assigned a significance out of all proportion to its meagre textual base. Nor is this tendency difficult to account for: in terms so concise and memorable that they have passed into common speech, the antithesis captures a principle of manifest importance. Furthermore, those terms are sufficiently ambiguous (especially when separated from their original context) to allow thinkers of widely different views1 to see in them an expression of favourite themes of their own, and thus to lend to the latter the sanction of St Paul. Naturally, this leaves the exegete with the thankless task of remarking, ‘Very interesting – but not exactly what the apostle had in mind!’