The following article is the result of frequent conversations between the two authors about the fragments of a scroll from the 11th Cave at Qumran, recently published by A. S. van der Woude. At a later stage the fragments as well as the material for this article were discussed in a number of meetings of the Qumran seminar in the University of Groningen. The authors wish to thank the members of that seminar (and others) for stimulating comments and suggestions and hope that their article in turn will stimulate others to further research on this interesting new document.

L'affirmation de l'Epître aux Colossiens (i. 16a) selon laquelle toutes choses ont été créées dans le Christ embarrasse fort les exégètes: si curieux que cela puisse paraître, nous n'en avons trouvé nulle part une explication pleinement satisfaisante. Tout n'a pas été dit, pas plus en exégèse que dans les autres domianes.

You may be surprised at the first term in my topic: ontology. Should a biblical interpreter deal with such a topic? Is he obliged to clarif the ontological assertions and assumptions of the biblical writers? From our colleagues in other disciplines we hear differing answers to this question. Some philosophers demand from us greater concern with ontology. Others warn us against such concern. Still other philosophers, absorbed in the discoveries of linguistic analysis, repudiate even for themselves the legitimacy of ontological statements. Whether it is encouragement or discouragement that we receive from our academic colleagues, it must be admitted that few biblical scholars are willing to venture into this realm.

(12) Die letzte Fortsetzung dieses Berichtes brachte im wesentlichen die langen Kollationen von $75. So soll jetzt von grundsätzlichen Fragen gesprochen werden, wie schon das vorige Mal angekündigt. Davor muß jedoch eine Mitteilung zum Bestand der neutestamentlichen Papyri gestellt werden, die nicht nur den Fachmann überraschen wird; und zwar—das ist die Pointe daran—in Fortsetzung des in N.T.S. ix, 309 unter Nr. 3 dieses Berichtes Ausgeführten. Damals hatte ich mitzuteilen, daß; P67 in Barcelona und p64 in Oxford zusammengehörten, eine Identifikation, die C. H. Roberts zu verdanken war. Die Ursache für die Doppelnumerierung war, daß die Fotos der Fragmente mit verschiedenen Maßstäben und unter anderen Bedingungen aufgenommen worden waren. Zwar schrieb ich damals: ‘Die Zahl wie der Umfang der uns inzwischen bekannt gewordenen Papyri und Papyrus-Fragmente ist inzwischen so groß geworden, daß die Wahrscheinlichkeit zunimmt, daß neu auftauchende neutestamentliche Papyri nur eine Ergänzung schon vorhandener bekannter bedeuten.’ Aber auch ich hielt es doch nicht für möglich, daß dieser Fall auch für die schon in der Liste befindlichen gelten könnte. Aber es scheint doch so und betrifft dazu ausgerechnet den schon einmal zusammengefügten $64+67! Wenn nicht alle Anzeichen trügen,1 gehört nämlich dieser Doppelpapyrus zum seit 1892 bekannten $4 in Paris. Letzte Gewißheit wird sich nur beim Vergleich der Originale ergeben. Denn zumindest beim Fragment in Oxford, das ich in der Hand gehabt habe, dem Foto nach aber auch bei den Fragmenten in Barcelona, ist der Papyrus von heller Farbe.

In recent years there appeared to have developed a general consensus of opinion in the English-speaking world about the use of the term ‘Son of man’ in the Synoptic Gospels which may be summed up as follows: Jesus adopted the title ‘Son of man’ from Daniel vii, where it signifies one who was destined to receive kingship from God, and used it with reference to himself in three types of saying, namely group A with reference to his present activity in his earthly ministry; group B with reference to his suffering, death and resurrection; and group C with reference to his future coming, exaltation and function at the last judgement. Genuine sayings of Jesus are to be found in each of these three categories, and together they give us a picture of Jesus as One destined for triumph and sovereignty but achieving this destiny by the path of humiliation, rejection and suffering which was prophesied for the Servant of Yahweh. It is often held that Jesus' use of the title may have had a certain ‘collective’ nuance; just as in Daniel vii it indicated a representative or symbol of the saints of the Most High, so in the Gospels it may refer to the people of God whose head Jesus conceived himself to be.

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?’

First of all, the title of this paper needs justification. Why should we assume that anyone ever made interpolations in the text of Acts? Ropes, who is still the most considerable authority on this subject, spoke of the ‘Western’ text all through his work on the Text of Acts in The Beginnings of Christianity as if it gave evidence of the work of a reviser of the text, not of an interpolator, and many scholars before him had the same opinion. On the other hand, very recent scholarship has tended to the opposite view, that it is wrong to hold that ‘Western’ readings in the New Testament necessarily represent a single continuous revision done at one particular moment in the history of the text. Professor G. D. Kilpatrick, for instance, in a recent article suggests that every reading in Acts has to be considered on its merits, independently of speculation about whether it represents a revision or a recension or a ‘good’ MS tradition. He believes that the ‘Western’ readings often do not represent a revision or recension, but are single examples of original, correct readings preserved in this particular MS tradition. In his view, word order, orthography, and grammatical, syntactical and philological considerations applied de novo to each reading should be paramount in attempting to discover correct readings. The wisdom of this approach has been confirmed by the careful scholarship applied to the subject by M. Wilcox in his book The Semitisms of Acts (1965).

Everybody knows that the relation between Paul's beliefs and expectations about life beyond death and those of his contemporaries is obscure and hotly disputed. Everybody knows, too, about the debate over the origins of gnosticism and the extent to which Paul shared its dualism; and I am not so simple as to imagine that I can provide clarity and precision where great scholars, past and present, have confessed to bewilderment. In discussing Paul's attitude to the material world, all that I shall attempt is, after defining certain areas of the problem, to defend Paul's basic consistency on certain particular issues; and, in this connexion, to suggest an interpretation of certain parts of II Cor. v which, as I believe, throws light on his degree of consistency.

Professor W. G. Kümmel's Promise and Fulfilment marked a permanent advance in the understanding of the eschatological teaching of Jesus. Going beyond the ‘realized’ eschatology of C. H. Dodd and the ‘futurist’ eschatology of J. Weiss and A. Schweitzer, Kümmel demonstrated that for Jesus the kingdom of God was both a present reality and an imminent future expectation. The present study examines several texts in Luke in which the present and future manifestations of the kingdom are set in juxtaposition. It is hoped that this will illuminate the Evangelist's understanding of an important theme as it is related to other Gospel traditions and to the proclamation of Jesus.

It is widely assumed that Mark's introduction consists of i. 1–13 and that these verses ‘introduce’ what Mark has to say. At the same time, there is little agreement about what it is that Mark wants to say. For example, Bultmann has contended that it was Mark's aim to combine the Hellenistic kerygma with the traditions about Jesus; at the same time, he agrees with Wrede that the ‘Messianic secret’ is designed to explain why faith arose only after Easter. More recently, Schille has held that Mark answers the question, How is one to grasp more precisely the nature of Jesus' work, since he not only suffered but appeared as Son of God? Eduard Schweizer, on the other hand, emphasizes Mark's interest in discipleship and the way of the cross as the meaning of the kerygma, and sees this as a polemic against a Gnosticism in which Jesus is in danger of becoming a mere symbol of the kerygma. T. A. Burkill claims that Mark is concerned with ‘the exposition of two central themes, namely, the secret fact of the messianic status of Jesus and the mysterious meaning of that fact’, the first controlling the first half, the second the latter half of the gospel. We need not present an exhaustive catalogue of suggested aims for Mark in order to make the point that unless Mark is haphazard, each of these alleged aims is probably reflected in the introduction—both in its scope and content. Yet almost never does the introduction figure in discussions of Mark' purpose. This same phenomenon doubtless lies behind the fact that there is relatively little discussion about what constitutes the introduction. It is the purpose of this article to analyse the introduction in the light of these two questions and their bearing on each other: the extent of the introduction and the intent of the author. This investigation is based squarely on what is obvious—that Mark assumed his contemporary readers (in contrast with modern scholars) did not have the whole of his work in mind when they began, and that therefore the opening paragraph was his opportunity to orient them to what he wanted to say and to how he wanted to say it.

En 1514, le premier N.T. grec imprimé sortait des presses à Alcala. En 1516, Froben et Erasme publiaient, à Bâle, le second N.T. grec imprimé. La critique textuelle moderne et contemporaine du N.T. est donc une personne vénérable qui célèbre son quatre-cent-cinquantième anniversaire. A cette occasion, je voudrais vous proposer, à la lumière d'un bref bilan du passé, quelques réflexions sur la situation actuelle de la critique du texte et sur certains des problèmes qui sont posés par cette situation.

Es soil nicht nur die allgemeine, religionsgeschichtliche Frage gestellt werden, wie weit Paulus faktisch in der Tradition der jüdischen Weisheit steht. Die Frage soil präzisiert werden: Wie geht Paulus aktiv mit dieser Weisheit um, indem er ihre Methoden verwendet, ihre Gedanken verarbeitet, im Stil der Weisheit literarisch gestaltet? Vielleicht ergeben sich aus dieser Fragestellung Gesichtspunkte für ein Urteil in dem immer noch offenen Streit darüber, wie das sachliche Zentrum seiner Theologie zu bestimmen sei: Ist er der Theologe der Rechtfertigung, hellenistischer Mystiker, apokalyptischer Pneumatiker oder in einem allgemeineren Sinne theologischer Weisheitslehrer? Umstritten sind: die Struktur seiner Eschatologie, das Verhältnis von Eschatologie und Heilsgeschichte, Eschatologie und Ethik, Soteriologie und Ethik usw. Vor allem: 1st seine Theologie wirklich als ‘Anthropologie’ zu bestimmen (Bultmann) oder ist sie primär Entwurf eines (eschatologisch bestimmten) Weltbildes bzw. Geschichtsbildes?

Seit R. H. Charles' großer Ausgabe der Testamente der zwölf Patriarchen, die alle seinerzeit bekannten griechischen Handschriften benutzte (ohne Tochterabschriften neun, sigliert a−i), ist nur ein neuer griechischer Textzeuge veröffentlicht worden: die Venediger Exzerpte (k). Nun weist M. de Jonge in seiner neuen Ausgabe der Haupthandschrift der Testamente (b) darauf hin, daß zwei weitere Handschriften seit 40 Jahren unbeachtet im gedruckten Katalog der Athos-Laura stehen: 148 (1132) und K116 (1403). Erfreulicherweise hat die Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Mass., Photographien von I 48; der neue Textzeuge (im folgenden) ist also ohne Mühe zugänglich.