The importance of Paul's first extant letter to the study of early Christianity has clearly been demonstrated by the attention paid to just a small part of it, the ‘dreadful text’ of 1 Thessalonians 2.14–16, a ‘passionate, generalizing, hateful’ diatribe against the Jews for having killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and for interfering with Paul's mission to the Gentiles. Or so it has seemed to most historians, theologians, and exegetes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who have studied the passage. Those early, stunning verses of Paul, written probably in 50 or 51 C.E. from Corinth to his recently founded church in Thessalonica, have proved especially embarrassing to Jews and Christians who, in post-Holocaust self-examination and post-Vatican II ecumenical spirit, have been trying to exorcise the demons of antisemitism. How could Paul, a proud Jew and Pharisee, so categorically condemn his own people? And how can so early and sweeping a condemnation be explained by scholars who argue that such virulent antisemitism did not in fact develop until the latter part of the century, after the destruction of the Temple and the council at Jamnia?

This study's point of departure is the important article of H. D. Betz, ‘The literary composition and function of Paul's letter to the Galatians’, published in this journal in 1975. In that article the author suggests a new approach to the letter to the Galatians, by using the generative rules of Graeco-Roman rhetoric to analyse the structure of the letter. A rigorous examination leads him to the conclusion that the form of the various parts and the order in which they are arranged completely conform to the classical rules of rhetoric for a judicial speech (genus iudiciale). Paul is under accusation by opponents. The Galatians play the role of judges. The letter contains a speech in which Paul, following all the rules of the art, defends himself before the jury.

Modern translations of the New Testament are united in understanding the phrase πίστις Χριστοû to mean ‘faith in Christ’. In recent years, however, an increasing number of scholars have been advocating the interpretation of πίστις Χριστοû which takes it as a subjective rather than an objective genitive, and understands the phrase as a reference to Christ's own faith or faithfulness. Indeed, there has been so much support for this view in North America that one recent exponent wrote: ‘The correctness of the translation of πίστις Iησοû Χριστοû as the “ faith or faithfulness of Jesus Christ” has by now been too well established to need any further support.’ If he is right, then there is little need for this paper. But I suspect that there is still a large body of opinion, especially on this side of the Atlantic, which holds to the more traditional interpretation. Indeed, those commentators who mention the suggestion tend to dismiss it in a footnote. Thus it would be fairer to say that if any kind of conclusion has been reached, it is that the question is one which cannot be settled on the basis of appeals to grammatical construction alone. This issue can be settled only by exegesis, and because New Testament scholars approach the texts with widely differing presuppositions, they are likely to interpret the phrase in very different ways.

Discussions on the possibility that Mark's Gospel may have been modelled, either consciously or subconsciously, on Greek tragic drama have gathered momentum in recent years. It has also been shown that a most important feature of Greek tragedy is the repetitive device of ‘foreshadowing’, a technique which has rightly been seen as essential to the development of mnemonic structures in oral epic. The use of this device in the Bible, it may be argued, is no less pronounced than in Greek drama. C. H. Lohr, in particular, has argued strongly for the presence of foreshadowing in Matthew's Gospel, and it is our purpose here to enquire whether the writer of the Second Gospel, too, was aware of this dramatic device. Matthew achieved the desired effect by means of dream episodes (Matt 1. 20; 2. 12, 13, 19, 22; 27. 19) and the repetition of divine names, especially ‘Son of David’, at strategic points (Matt 9. 27; 12. 23; 15. 22; 20. 30, 31; 22. 43). There are certainly no dream narratives in Mark's Gospel, and even the references to divine titles may seem to have been arranged in a somewhat arbitrary fashion at first glance. On the other hand, it can hardly be denied that we find in Mark's vivid account an inexorable drift towards death: the inevitable shadow of the cross falls across the text even as early as Mark 2. 20 – the disciples may not fast until ‘that day’ when the bridegroom is taken from them. And there is the hint of opposition to Jesus even prior to that! There is little doubt in my mind that Mark was keenly aware of the effective use to which the device of foreshadowing could be put, but his technique differs from that which Lohr has ascribed to Matthew. In true tragic style he wants to emphasise the inevitability of the cross as the omega point of Jesus' destiny, and to do that he uses not dreams or prophecies, but actors who engage Jesus in controversy or conflict at strategic points within the gospel story. It matters to Mark who these actors are, what role they play, and precisely when and where they make their entrances on stage. We shall thus be concerned to show, in the remainder of this paper, how the Evangelist treats the various groups of Jewish opponents as a literary device for foreshadowing Jesus' crucifixion.

Ernst Käsemann's theory that the Christ hymn in Col 1. 15–20.is an adapted pre-Christian hymn about the Gnostic Urmensch-Erlöser, who had both a cosmological and a soteriological significance, has not fared well. Even with the deletion of the words δι⋯τοû αἴματος τοû σταυροû αύτοû in v. 20, the sentiment persists that the second part of the hymn – which is soteriological – cannot speak of anyone else than Christ. More importantly, evidence for the existence of a Gnostic Urmensch-Erlöser is lacking until Mani's time. As a matter of fact, even pre-Manichean Gnosticism, in which we find both various Urmensch figures and redeemers, cannot be proven to antedate Christianity.

The 1 Corinthians passage, in which Paul insists that a woman praying or prophesying in the Christian assembly should have her head covered (11.2–16), has been said to be ‘in its present form hardly one of Paul's happier compositions. The logic is obscure at best and contradictory at worst. The word choice is peculiar; the tone peevish.’ On an earlier occasion I addressed myself to the interpretation of one of the difficult phrases in this passage, and I now turn to another one in v. 3 because some recent discussion of this verse may be obscuring its basic thrust and because some evidence relevant to its meaning has not been considered. It has to do with the sense in which Paul uses κεφαλή in this verse, which reads:

In Joh 14. 12, der Rede von den gröβeren Werken, begegnet dem Leser eine Äuβerung, die ihn, liest er nicht flüchtig darüber hinweg, vor eine seltsam verschlossene Türe führt. Der johanneische Christus verheiβt den an ihn Glaubenden, daβ sie nach seinem Weggang dieselben Werke tun werden, die er getan hat – nein, diese Verheiβung genügt noch nicht: die Glaubenden werden gröβere Werke tun als er. Was wird hier bedacht? Welche Problematik verbirgt sich hinter dieser fast verwegenen Ankündigung: die Jünger werden Jesu Tun nicht nur erreichen, sie werden es übertreffen –? Gesteht man sich die Verlegenheit ein, in die dieser Satz zunächst führt, und verharrt man fragend in solcher Verlegenheit, dann wird die Rede von den gröβeren Werken zu einem Schlüssel, der die Tür zu einem weiten Raum aufschlieβt, zu einem Einblick in das Selbstverständnis und die geschichtliche Lage der johanneischen Gemeinde.

Hatte die Jesusbewegung revolutionäre Züge? Eine Antwort auf diese Frage hängt davon ab, was wir unter ‘Revolution’ verstehen. Der im folgenden verwandte übertragene Begriff von ‘Revolution’ setzt zwei allgemeine (etwas triviale) Annahmen über die Geschichte voraus:

This paper wants to address the question, why and how the term εỦαγγέλιον, originally a term for the early Christian proclamation, became the designation of a certain type of literature. Closely related problems have been discussed repeatedly in New Testament scholarship for several generations: (1) The origin of the term εỦαγγέλιον. (2) The consistency and uniformity of its meaning in its Christian usage. (3) The question of the literary genre of the writings which later became known as ‘gospels’. I shall comment on the second and third of these problems insofar as they concern the question addressed in this paper, but I shall leave aside the question of the background and origin of the term.

Die Beziehung zwischen Jesus von Nazareth und der Urchristenheit, nach E. Hoskyns/N. Davey das Rätsel des Neuen Testaments, wird meist von der Verkündigungsseite aus bestimmt, d.h., es wird gefragt: Was verkündigte Jesus? und: Was verkündigte die Urgemeinde? Die Lösung dieses Problems hängt stark von der Stellung des betreffenden Autors zur formgeschichtlichen Methode ab. So wird bei R. Bultmann eine Diastase postuliert: Die Verkündigung Jesu und das Kerygma der Urgemeinde sind recht verschiedene Größen und in der Weise einander zugeordnet, daß die Verkündigung Jesu eine der geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen des Kerygmas ist. Wer formgeschichtlich anders denkt als Bultmann, etwa H. Schürmann, kann hier hingegen eine viel größere Kontinuität feststellen.

Joseph Tyson's The Death of Jesus in Luke-Acts and Robert Tannehill's The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, published in 1986, are good examples of the interpretive wealth being mined by scholars who are adopting literary-critical methods for approaching the Lukan writings. What most distinguishes these critics' approaches from older, more familiar ones is the claim that the Bible's historical narratives are imaginative re-enactments of history – thus, in form, more akin to fiction than to theology, biography, or history. Robert Alter called the Biblical stories ‘historicized fiction’, meaning in our case that the author of Luke and Acts employed the artifices of fiction-writing, among others, supplying feeling and motives and creating speeches and dialogue for his characters. Professors Tyson and Tannehill, and other literary scholars like them, are helping us better discern how these techniques were used in Luke and Acts, thus opening new windows to the characters, the way that the author ascribes intentions to them, the plot, themes, nuances, points of view, uses of irony, and word-plays and associations in the writings.

1 Cor 15.50–57 is frequently cited as evidence that Paul expected to be alive at the parousia, chiefly on the basis of the distinction in v. 52 between ‘the dead’ who ‘will be raised imperishable’ and ‘we’ who ‘will be changed’. Paul ‘expects that at the parusia he himself will not be among the dead (of whom he speaks in the third person), but among the living (of whom he speaks in the first person)’. There are, however, a number of factors that persuade us to question this conclusion.

All scribes followed rules in general. That would be what they learnt from their masters during their apprenticeship: how to sit and hold the pen; how to attend to the manuscript they were copying whether by eye or by ear; how long to write, when to break, and for how long; the height of the letters, the length of the line, the number of lines to a page. There must have been rules about spelling, rules like ‘Correct spelling mistakes’, or ‘Copy the spelling of the manuscript and do not attempt uniformity.’

In a recently-published article, P. Stuhlmacher has outlined three major contemporary theories of the occasion of Paul's letter to the Romans: 1) Romans is addressed to a specific situation within the Roman community itself, 2) it is composed primarily with Paul's forthcoming delivery of the collection to Jerusalem in mind, and 3) it emerges from a convergence of the first two motivations. While not wishing to deny that the Jerusalem trip was a preoccupation of Paul as he composed Romans (see Romans 15. 25, 30–32), I intend in this study to strengthen the Roman side of the equation, first by surveying a range of arguments about the Roman situation as it relates to the letter, then by suggesting a new approach to the question.

Hebrews is the most accomplished writing in the New Testament. The unknown author's command of the art of rhetoric is universally recognized. He was evidently well educated by the standards of Hellenistic education of the time. His use of Greek is more cultivated than that of Paul, and he makes greater use of rhetorical devices than Luke. Spicq gives an impressive list of the stylistic features and rhetorical devices that are to be found in Hebrews. But every reader can appreciate the fine style and persuasive power of the author's writing.

According to John 6.52–59, participation in the eucharistic meal is necessary for ‘life’: ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’ (v 53). The manifest allusion here to the Lord's Supper, together with the insistence on its indispensability for Life, has led a majority of interpreters to conclude that this passage is ‘sacramentalist’. This conclusion has found reinforcement in what looks like a close parallel from Ignatius, whose writings are presumably contemporaneous with the Fourth Gospel:

Four variants are listed in the apparatus of the 3rd corrected edition of the Greek New Testament (UBS3) in 1 Cor 13. 3. They are:

κανχήσωμαı (P A B 048 pc)

κανθήσωμαı (K ψ majority text)

κανθήσομαı (C D F G L pc)

κανθήσεταı (1877 2492 pc)

Of these variants κανθσομαı seems to be the most popular, occurring in texts such as the 2nd edition of the British and Foreign Bible Societies, Vogels, Kilpatrick's Diglot, Von Soden, Tischendorf's 9th edition and the 25th edition of Nestle-Aland. It is also favoured by Elliott, De Boor, Grosheide, Godet, Morris, Bachmann, Billerbeck, Wolff, Weiss, Robertson and Plummer, Pop, Groenewald, Lietzmann, Barrett and Kieffer. Κανθήσωμαı seems to be the second most popular reading, occurring in amongst others the Textus Receptus, Alford, The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text, Souter and Scrivener.

At Gal 3. 2 and 3. 5 the apostle Paul sets ἔργα νόμου, ‘works of (the) Law’, over against ἁκοη πίστεως in two rhetorical questions with which he begins his attack against the position of his nomistic opponents in the Galatian churches. One hopes that this phrase άκοη πίστεως was less puzzling to the Galatian Christians than it has been to modern interpreters. The problem of interpretation is compounded by the fact that both words of the phrase can have quite different meanings. 'Ακοή can mean either the faculty or act of hearing or a message or report (that is, what is heard). Πίστις can name either a ‘subjective’ human act or attitude or the object of believing (that is, the Christian proclamation). Two important recent studies of Galatians have added their support to the view that by áκοη Paul means not ‘hearing’ but ‘proclamation’. In his Galatians commentary Hans Dieter Betz translates άκοη πίστεως as ‘[the] “proclamation of [the] faith”’. In The Faith of Jesus Christ, Richard B. Hays argues at some length that Paul means either ‘the message that evokes faith’ or ‘the message of faith (= the gospel-message)’.

Spécialistes du Nouveau Testament, nous ne pouvons nous désintéresser des efforts qui, dans nos diverses confessions, sont réalisés en vue de l'Unité chrétienne. Parmi les questions qui ont le plus long-temps opposé les chrétiens de la Réforme à leurs frères catholiques et orthodoxes il faut ranger le problème de la Tradition. Depuis quelques décennies un grand rapprochement se dessine, comme l'ont montré l'opuscule d' O. Cullmann sur la Tradition (1953) et de façon officielle l'Assemblée de Foi et Constitution à Montréal en 1963 puis la constitution Dei Verbum de Vatican II.

It is hardly necessary to emphasise the problematic nature of this passage. Its tragic misuse, in past and present, in the interests of supporting oppressive regimes and suppressing protest can neither be denied nor condoned. It is easy to lay the blame for such abusesat the door of non-contextual literalism, with its hidden agenda of endorsement of the status quo. Liberal interpreters, however, also work with a hidden agenda and cannot be allowed to assume that they know from the outset the ‘right’ interpretation of the passage.That is why we have described it as a test case for New Testament interpretation. It is not simply that the passage is being tested. Thetest is whether New Testament hermeneutics is able to handle acase as difficult and controversial as Rom 13. 1–7 while remaining true to its principles and without resorting to emergency procedures, such as drastic surgery!