Die Frage nach dem religionsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der Perikope von der Hochzeit zu Kana ist noch immer nicht zufriedenstellend beantwortet.

In dem Aussendungsbericht, mit dem Matthäus seine Evangelienschrift abschließt (28. 16–20), erhalten die elf Jünger den Befehl, alle Völker zu Jüngern zu machen, indem sie sie taufen und indem sie sie lehren. Damit hat die Notwendigkeit der Taufe eine hervorragende Stellung erhalten. Der Taufbefehl wird von dem Auferstanderien erteilt, nachdem er alle Macht im Himmel und auf Erden erhalten hat, und er ist, zusammen mit der An-kündigung, daß er bei ihnen sein wird alle Tage, das letzte Wort, das er seinen Jüngern gesagt hat. Der Umstand, daß Matthäus als einziger Jesus die Taufe befehlen läßt, ist ein wichtiger Hinweis darauf, daß die Taufe in der Kirche als bedeutsam angesehen wird, zu der der betreffende Evangelist gehörte und für deren theologische Haltung er als Exponent steht.

Not surprisingly, the thought of the Apostle Paul is being given fresh consideration in our time.1 Old problems, particularly the relation of Paul to Judaism and his view of the law, continue to vex New Testament studies. A subject which deserves more attention in this reconsideration of Paul is his belief that judgment is according to works. Those who take such statements seriously end up with a quite different picture of Paul from those who soft-pedal the issue. For example, Karl Donfried asserts that it is the obedient Christian who remains in Christ who will be saved on the last day, and that Paul expects a final judgment for Christians which can result in salvation or in wrath.2 Even though such language sounds like ‘heresy’ to ears accustomed to the usual explanations of Paul, Donfried's argument must be given serious attention for it attempts to treat seriously statements in Paul that are too frequently neglected.

The present essay offers a fresh contribution to the long-standing debate regarding the nature of the resurrection of Christ within the pre-Pauline formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5. The article first provides an analysis of the current state of the discussion, offering new observations and lines of evidence which suggest that a number of common arguments on both sides of the debate are lacking or inconclusive. The essay then offers a new proposal regarding the verb used within the formula for the resurrection event. The article presents previously neglected evidence significant for the debate regarding Jesus' resurrection within this primitive confession.

When people living in Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece and Rome in the first century A.D. were given reports of events which had happened in the past, were they concerned to ask the question: ‘Did it happen in this way?’

Kaum ein Papyrusfund hat in diesem Jahrhundert so Furore gemacht wie der des P. Lond. Christ. I, oder, unter seiner bekannteren Inventarnummer, Papyrus Egerton 2. 1934 von einem ägyptischen Händler an das British Museum London verkauft, gilt er seit seiner Erstedition 1935 als eine der ältesten christlichen Handschriften auf Papyrus, paläographisch zu datieren um 200P. Keine Frage, daβ das Schriftstück das Interesse der neutestamentlichen Forschung auf sich zog, waren doch aus ihm möglicherweise neue Erkenntnisse über die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition zu erwarten. Die Grundfrage, die seit seiner Entdeckung an das Evangelienfragment gestellt wird und weiterhin zu stellen ist, ist dementsprechend die nach dem literarischen Verhältnis zu den kanonischen Evangelien. Die Alternative heiβt: Entweder ist Egerton diesen gegenüber sekundär und ohne groβen Wert für den Historiker, oder er bietet eine von den Evangelien unabhängige, ja möglicherweise sogar ältere Überlieferung.

In Acts 4.13 Peter and John are designated as αγραμματoι... και ιδιωται. Is that phrase meant as a harsh disparagement of the two apostles by the members of the Sanhedrin? On the basis of lexical, contextual, and social-historical evidence this study argues against an evaluation of the double qualification through the eyes of modern people with their usual disregard for illiterates (and non-specialists). The documentary papyri especially present a different, unbiased picture without any social or negative impact of illiteracy and non-specialism. They help to clarify Acts 4.13 and make the terms ‘illiterate people’ and ‘laymen’ acceptable.

This article explores the origins of the conjectural emendation on 1 Cor 14.33b–35, first made in 1863 by Jan Willem Straatman. It shows that Straatman attributes the instruction on women's silence to Jewish influence and bases his view on a reconstruction of early Christianity in which Paul and his Gentile message were opposed by Jewish adversaries. This anti-Jewish tendency persisted in subsequent scholarship and has continued to characterise the understanding of this passage into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The Veronese manuscript LI (49) includes twenty-four homilies by the Arian Bishop Maximinus. Most of these were furnished with marginal notes in Gothic, said to be contemporary with the Latin text of the fifth/sixth century, giving a brief indication of the subject of the homily. Twelve of these marginals are still more or less legible.

In a previous article, ‘Synoptic Parousia Parables and the Apocalypse’, I discussed certain features of the tradition-history of three parousia parables: the Thief (Matt. 24. 43 f. par. Luke 12. 39 f.; Gosp. Thomas 21 b, 103), the Watching Servants (Luke 12. 35–38; cf. Matt. 24. 42; Mark 13. 33–37;Gosp. Thomas 21 b, 103), and the Servant in Authority (Matt. 24. 45–51 par. Luke 12. 42–48). In the cases of the Thief and the Watching Servants, there is remarkably good evidence outside the Gospels for the popularity of these parables in the early church (1 Thess. 5. 2; 2 Pet. 3. 10; Rev. 3. 3, 20; 16. 15; Did. 16. 1), and on the basis of this evidence, as well as the Gospels, I suggested that the forms in which these parables and allusions to them occur can best be explained by a process of ‘deparabolization’, in which the narrative form of a parable is partly or wholly replaced by more direct application of the imagery of the parable to the hearers or readers, as metaphor or simile. Both because of their extensive use in early Christian paraenesis and because of their amenable subject-matter, the parables of 130 the Thief and, especially, the Watching Servants were subject to considerable deparabolization.

The short study by G. J. Cuming in the January, 1981, issue of New Testament Studies, pp. 283–5, has raised again the question of the interpretation of the verb iiroriadrjuev in 1 Cor. 12. 13. Along with most modern commentators Cuming rejects a reference to the Lord's Supper and finds instead a reference to the rite of baptism administered by affusion

Over the years textual critics have given great attention to the New Testament text of the Acts of the Apostles. Like all New Testament texts, it merits particular attention, but especially because its textual tradition is enriched by the principal representative of the so-called ‘Western’ text, the Greek Acts of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. The presence of this defining element of the ‘Western’ text has made the Acts of the Apostles an exceptionally fertile environment for the production, evaluation, and refinement of theories about the history of the Greek New Testament text. The favoured status of the Greek Acts extends to the ancient versions as well. Even the Old Georgian version of Acts has been grouped with ‘Western’ witnesses – F. C. Conybeare studied a few chapters of one manuscript of the Georgian Acts and concluded that it had many ‘Western’ readings.

Many scholars employ a different kind of criterion of coherence from the standard, i.e., the criterion that Jesus’ authentic sayings hold together in a coherent whole; yet Jesus scholars differ regarding the nature of this coherence. When we then understand that Jesus was a charismatic leader of a new religious movement, and when we examine how such persons in general behave, we see the importance of randomness for charismatic leadership, and we understand that we cannot expect systematic coherence among the sayings of Jesus. Jesus may have said things that appear contradictory, but they will have enhanced his charismatic authority.

Hebrews was written to dissuade certain Jewish-Christian members of the community from lapsing; it proclaims a Pauline-type faith, the incarnation and the atonement. Our earliest account of Jewish Christians is of Irenaeus's Ebionites: they thought Christ to be an angelic power who possessed the human Jesus from his baptism to before his passion. Such a creed would explain Hebrews' deprecation of angels and insistence on Christ's humanity through his passion. This then gives sense to the widely mistranslated 6.1, and gives context and force to the paraenesis in chapter 13: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, before his incarnation, and today – not as the Jewish Christians claim, in a temporary possession by an angel.

Paulus wird mehrheitlich als weiterer Exponent einer frühchristlichen Tempel- oder Tempelkultkritik neben Jesus und dem Stephanuskreis betrachtet, obwohl er in seinen Briefen niemals eine direkte Kritik formuliert. In der Forschung verbindet sich mit dieser Annahme die These einer Opposition, weitergehend auch die einer Substitution des Herodianischen Tempels durch Christus oder durch die Gemeinde. Demgegenüber möchte dieser Beitrag aufzeigen, dass Paulus auch als Apostel, etwa in der Ablegung eines Nasiräats, Möglichkeiten der Tempelfrömmigkeit wahrnimmt und dass er angefangen von der Verwendung der Tempelmetapher in der Korintherkorrespondenz (1 Kor 3.16; 6.19; 2 Kor 6.16) bis hin zum Missionskonzept des Römerbriefs (Röm 15.16) eine positive Zuordnung auch der Heidenchristen zum Tempel sucht.

This paper inquires into the situation of small children during the Hellenistic-Roman era, including NT texts and later Christian writings in the first two or three centuries. There was an early form of ‘Christian education’, and probably, children of baptized parents belonged to the Christian communities. In 1 Cor 7.14, Paul indirectly argues in favour of a ‘Christian influence’ on the ‘holy children’ by the ‘believing’ father or mother. In Eph 6.4, the author, speaking about παιδϵία καὶ νουθϵσία κυρίου, argues that in a Christian household children should have instruction in the Christian faith. The question of the baptism of small children might be answered by the interpretation of 1 Cor 1.14–16, where Paul precisely distinguishes between baptism of individuals (1.14) and baptism of the ‘house of Stephanas’. Mark 10.13–16 is a mirror of a discussion between those who ‘rebuke’ people for bringing children to Jesus, and Jesus himself who interprets their action as a ‘prevention’, thus escalating the conflict to a fundamental one, which probably refers to the question of baptism of children. During the last century, we have learned (again?) to see childhood not only as a transitional period of human life but one to be protected by society. Possibly similar ideas existed during the times when our texts were written.

This article argues that John 7.15 claims neither literacy nor illiteracy for Jesus, but rather that Jesus was able to confuse his opponents with regards to his scribal literacy. According to the Johannine narrator, Jesus' opponents assumed he did not ‘know letters’, but also acknowledged that he taught as if he did. This article also suggests that the claim of John 7.15 is historically plausible in light of first-century Christianity's corporate memory(ies) of Jesus' literacy.

The second half of the Akhmîm fragment of the Gospel of Peter distinguishes the recalcitrant Jewish leaders, who suppress the truth of Jesus’ resurrection, from the Jewish people, who regret their murder of Jesus the moment he dies – a distinction best explained by the thesis that the document was produced by and for Jewish Christians living in second-century Syria. Other Christian documents related to the Gospel of Peter and written or influenced by second- and third-century Jewish Christians, especially the Didascalia Apostolorum, show a similar combination of philo- and anti-Judaism. The Gospel's reference to the disciples fasting during the interim between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection may refer to the practice, attested in the Didascalia and elsewhere, of liturgical fasting for the Jews. Apocalypse of Peter 2, which was probably an original part of the Gospel, holds out hope for Israel's restoration. As the Akhmîm scribe excised this hopeful chapter from the Apocalypse, so he probably excised the hopeful ending of the Gospel, in which the risen Jesus commissioned the disciples to continue the work of separating the people from their recalcitrant leaders and thereby converting them to faith in the one they had crucified.