This article argues that the social memory approach makes a significant contribution to the interpretation of the early gospel tradition. This approach helps to overcome an anachronistic distinction between ‘canonical’ and ‘non-canonical’ (or ‘apocryphal’) Gospels by highlighting the way Jesus was portrayed in various Gospels of the first and second century. Early Christian Gospels in general presuppose the post-Easter perspective on Jesus as a divine figure, but depict his activity and teaching in different ways. A closer look at the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter demonstrates how these Gospels take up and continue perspectives which can be observed already in the earlier Gospels in their own ways. Thereby they provide glimpses of different social and theological contexts of second-century Christianity.

The dispute ‘about purification’ between the disciples of John the Baptist and a Jew (John 3.25) has to do with the priority of ethical purity as effected through baptism over the ritual washing prescribed by the Torah, e.g. before entering the Jerusalem temple. This issue is referred to in John 13.10 and 15.3, and also in P.Oxy. 840. It is presupposed here that the circle of Jesus’ disciples received John's baptism of repentance either from John the Baptist or from Jesus (John 3.22, 26; 4.1). The Gospel of John thus engages with an ongoing debate within Jewish Christianity about the obligatory nature of ritual washing.

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.

Lukan scholarship has paid attention to the ambivalent attitude towards the temple found in Stephen's speech. However, a coherent explanation of this ambivalence is still needed from within the narrative of Stephen's retold history of Israel itself. This study points to a pattern of connection between God's salvation and Israel's worship space captured in the Song of Moses, particularly Exod 15.17, as a sub-structure of the Lukan Stephen's basic understanding of Heilsgeschichte within which he integrates the stories of Abraham, exodus and David. The nature of Israel's worship space revealed in this scheme elucidates Stephen's ambivalent critique of the temple.

The literary status of 1 Cor 5–7 is diversely considered in scholarly literature. Sometimes these chapters are seen as a stand-alone part of the letter, sometimes they are divided in separate blocks, chapters 5–6 on the one hand and chapter 7 on the other. However, an original approach that pays close attention to the structure of the text makes it possible to show the neat architecture of this larger textual unit. The concentric structure of the three chapters (A–B–A’) highlights their literary unity and stresses the significance of the central chapter, which correspondingly possesses the greatest theological density of the whole section.

This article asks how the New Comedy of Menander might have influenced Paul's theological rhetoric in 1 Cor 5–15. An intertextual reading of Paul's letter against the backdrop of Menander's Samia reveals a number of shared topics, ethical concerns and dramatic characteristics. Paul's citation of Menander's Thais in 1 Cor 15.33 is part of this larger strategy to frame the struggles in Corinth within the ambit of Greek household ‘situation comedy’. Like Menander, Paul hybridises tragic and comic motifs throughout his epistle, inflecting the comedy of the Christ narrative with tragic examples of human misapprehension in this plea for ecclesial reconciliation.

This article interacts with Peter J. Gurry's recent estimate of the total textual variants in the Greek New Testament (NTS 62 (2016)) by (i) employing a different (and complementary) method using data from the Editio Critica Maior and (ii) producing an estimate that is narrowly confined to the ‘key’ manuscript witnesses for Acts and the Catholic Letters (a mix of majuscules and minuscules, both Byzantine and non-Byzantine). The results prove more useful for framing the development and distribution of textual variants in this group of key witnesses.

This article addresses a debate over the proper interpretation of the phrase ἔχοντες χάριν πρὸς ὅλον τὸν λαόν in Acts 2.47. Several authors have been persuaded by T. David Andersen's argument that this expression means that the Jerusalem community was ‘showing favour towards all the people’ rather than ‘having favour with all the people’, as it has usually been translated. Andersen's evidence is much more ambiguous than he suggests, however, and I present three more precise parallels to the phrase in Acts 2.47 that strongly support the standard translation.