Investigation into the origins of the rare compound δίψυχος and cognate forms has been dominated by intertextual methodologies. With a sole focus upon issues of literary dependency, previous scholarship has attempted to trace the neologism to a specific text or author. Such an approach is misguided, given the inherent methodological difficulties of establishing the direction of borrowing between texts of uncertain dates, as well as the tenuous historical record for the attestation of the lexeme. Moving away from intertextuality, in this article it is suggested that recent advances in the study of lexical formation, including translational compounding and prototype lexical semantics, present themselves as a more productive avenue of enquiry.

There has been much discussion in recent articles on the significance of the Spirit's ‘groaning’ in Rom 8.26. What has not been adequately treated is the OT background to v. 22. That verse reads as follows: οΪδαμεν γ⋯ρ ἵτι π⋯σα ⋯ κτ⋯στε σƲσΤεƲάζει κα⋯ συνωδ⋯νει ἄχρι το⋯ ν⋯ν and can be translated literally as follows:

We know that the whole creation groans together and travails together until now.

Die formgeschichtliche Arbeit an den Evangeien hat zur analytischen Auflösung des Evangelienrahmens und zur Erfassung der dem Evangeium vorgelagerten Überlieferungseinheiten geführt.

The Tol'doth Yeshu is a medieval Jewish antigospel which exists in various forms. Basically it says that Jesus was born illegitimate, learned the Name of God in the temple, performed miracles by pronouncing the Divine Name and finally was executed by the Jews. His body was stolen from the tomb by Yehuda the gardener, an act which led to the assertion by the disciples that he had arisen from the dead and had ascended into heaven.

The date of the Tol'doth Yeshu is assigned by Krauss to c. 500 CE; it is assigned by Klausner to the tenth century. Some of the traditions it draws upon are much older since they are reflected in such writings as the Talmud and Origen's Contra Celsum.

The relationship between the New Testament and the Qumran Literature is much more basic and fundamental than occasional words and phrases reminiscent of one another; for the messianic motifs of the Qumran Community are combined, modified, and adapted in the New Testament portrayal of Jesus the Christ. As we here use the term Messianic, we intend to include all that relates to the great eschatological figures of the sect, the Teacher of Righteousness, the coming prophet like unto Moses, and the two Messiahs of Aaron and Israel.

In a meeting of the Fourth Gospel Task Force at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1972 I made an incidental remark to the effect that everyone agreed that Peter was depreciated in the Fourth Gospel. Immediately I was taken to task by other members of the Task Force! Since I had for years assumed that this was one of the few agreed upon conclusions of Fourth Gospel Research, I decided that it was time to research this area again and see what, in fact, the role of Peter actually is in this Gospel. In the intervening months the significant book coming out of the National Dialogue between Lutheran and Roman Catholic theologians entitled Peter in the New Testament, edited by Raymond E. Brown, Karl P. Donfried and John Reumann has appeared, with a chapter on ‘Peter in the Gospel of John’, which is especially relevant to this study.

There are several references in the gospels of John and Matthew which indicate that members of the Pharisaic sect associated with the Jewish chief priests in a quasi-authoritative way to work for common religious or political purposes. Where these references have occurred, they have attracted attention – and indeed suspicion – as being historically inaccurate and the result of a retrojection of the role of the Pharisees in the later first century into the earlier periods of that century.

The paper provides a study of the disciples and family of Jesus in Mark 3.13–35. It argues, against the prevailing interpretations, that (1) Mark 3.13–35 should be viewed as a subsection of 3.13–6.13, thus 3.20–35 should not be read in isolation from 3.13–19. (2) Recognising the connection of 3.13–19 to 3.22–35 by 3.20–21 points the way to identifying the twelve as those who sought to restrain Jesus. (3) On this basis an outline reading of 3.20–35 is given. Four groups fall under critique here: the twelve, the crowd, the scribes from Jerusalem and the family, the last of these less severely than the other three groups. (4) Family is redefined in terms of discipleship and discipleship in terms of family. (5) The study also argues that, according to Mark, the households of supporters were the strategic centres of the Jesus movement. These are contrasted with synagogues and Temple, which are places of opposition to the Jesus movement.

This article will presend evidence to demonstrate that Romanos, ‘the Melodist’, is a witness to the Diatessaron of Tatian. six new Diatessaronic readings, Present in both Romanos and other Diatessaronic witnesses, are adduced as evidence for this conclusion. These new readings are significant not only for their Diatessaronic status, but also for their textual, theolgical and historical import.

It is a curious fact that very often the official and administrative language of foreign rulers, even where they were seen as oppressors, keeps being used by their former subjects for a long period after these rulers themselves have gone, however unwelcome their rule otherwise may have been. In our own time and age we have witnessed, for instance, how English until 1980 has been India's second official language after Hindi, in accordance with the Official Language Act of 1963, how English was chosen as the official language of the state of Ghana, rather than one of the fifty languages and dialects spoken there, how French was maintained in the same function in Togo, Benin, Cameroon and several other countries, and Portuguese stayed in use in Angola after the factual repatriation of the former colonizers. And all this happens for obvious reasons.

David Friedrich Strauss died on 8 February 1874. His Leben Jesu of 1835 was said by Albert Schweitzer to be ‘no mere destroyer of untenable solutions, but also the prophet of a coming advance in knowledge’, namely eschatology. The claims that it ‘has a different significance for modern theology from that which it had for his contemporaries’ and that it ‘marked out the ground which is now occupied by modern critical study’ appear even more true in the light of subsequent history of religions and form-critical research than Schweitzer himself realized. But as well as marking an epoch in the historical critical study of the New Testament, this book, and with it the fate of its author, remains a symbol of something else: the tension between historical research and the formation of a systematic or doctrinal theological position. Ecclesiastical authorities have in the meantime learned to live with theological pluralism and become more tolerant, but the problem itself has not disappeared. The investigation and development of Strauss' generally unappreciated contribution is perhaps an appropriate centenary celebration.

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.

There can be no doubt that Paul considered himself an apostle at the point of his conversion. In the words of Ferdinand Hahn, Paul's ‘concept of apostleship is characterized by the fact of his being simultaneously converted, entrusted with the gospel, and sent out to the Gentiles’ When we say that Paul considered himself an ‘apostle’ we must clarify at the beginning what is meant by this term since it is susceptible of two interpretations. It could be used loosely to refer to any missionary who was ‘sent out’, as it is commonly used in the Didache. Indeed Paul occasionally used the word in this sense (e.g. 2 Cor 8. 23). However as John Knox observes, Paul's customary use of the term ‘apostle’ means ‘one who saw the Lord and was commissioned directly by him. Certainly when Paul saw himself as an “apostle”, he invariably has this higher meaning in mind.’