Approaches to ancient texts that focus exclusively on speech are inherently imbalanced. Far from simply an innocuous absence of language, silence can carry thundering significances. Yet, these meanings are not always obvious, and they can be especially difficult to interpret in texts, without attendant non-verbal cues such as facial expressions or gestures. How can New Testament interpreters best discern and describe the interwoven words, whispers, silences and subtexts of ancient narratives? In this article, I seek to build on my earlier narratological study of speech and silence, Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke. There, I demonstrate how focusing on silences as well as speech enriches our understanding of the narratological dimensions of Luke's Gospel, including Lukan plot, characterisation, theme(s) and readerly experience(s). The obvious next step is to extend this work to the Lukan sequel. The guiding question of this article is therefore: how do speech and silence contribute to the narrative rhetoric of the Acts of the Apostles?

Building on the works of Richard Bauckham and Tal Ilan, this paper argues that the name Cleophas in Luke 24.18 (Gk Κλεοπᾶς) and Clopas (Gk Κλωπᾶς) in John 19.25 points to the same historical person, the father of a key leader of the Jerusalem church at the end of the first century. By making anew this assumption we have a possible access to Luke's redactional and theological work in the Emmaus narrative. Even if the whole passage is governed by Luke's literary skills and theological interests, it does have traditional support in the legitimation story that Jesus had indeed appeared to Cleophas. Luke's choice of that name is doubly smart: it highlights the respect the Pauline churches have for the Judean churches in the spirit of Rom 9–11 and establishes the legitimacy of his own sophisticated narrative through a known Judean Christian.

The combination of two seemingly simple and commonly used words causes problems of understanding in a specific syntactic unit. The precise meaning of the phrase σὺ λέγεις appears to be unclear. A detailed semantic analysis indicates a certain and clear meaning of this phrase. It occurs in all four canonical Gospels as Jesus’ answer within the judicial proceedings leading up to his crucifixion. Consequently, it is of fundamental importance to understanding Jesus’ trial. The semantic analysis of the phrase σὺ λέγεις presented in this article offers a new basis for the discussion of the question whether Jesus may be seen as confessus according to Roman law.

This article argues that one of the central theses of the counter-imperial reading of Paul has been more asserted than proved – namely, the thesis that Paul disguised anti-imperial sentiments in his letters specifically because speaking out against imperial authorities was too dangerous. This claim is the basic assumption behind the search in Paul's letters for ‘hidden’ or ‘coded’ transcripts. Such an approach can be found in the works of Warren Carter, N. T. Wright, and Richard Horsley, among others. But how likely is it that Paul would have felt the need to encode his anti-imperial sentiments? Was there really a risk that Roman soldiers would have intercepted Paul's mail or prosecuted him for its contents? Is the ‘hidden transcript’ idea an anachronistic concept based on modern surveillance states and transposed into the ancient world? This paper questions how likely it is that Rome's provincial governments would have had the inclination or ability to police private correspondence for seditious sentiments. From there, we can determine whether Paul is speaking as openly as he wants or is in fact protecting himself using ‘hidden transcripts’.

The Acts narrative's characterisation of Julius evokes the circumstances of Socrates, specifically the end of his life, at which point his prison guard – who exhibits a fondness for Socrates – allows his friends to visit and care for him. The credibility of this reading is strengthened by situating Acts 27 amid other Socratic characterisations of Paul in Acts 17–26, 28. By understanding Julius’ characterisation in this way, readers can regard Paul as a Socratic figure even during his sea voyage and shipwreck. This reading is more credible than others that attribute the characterisation of Julius to the narrative's positive disposition towards centurions.

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.

The scholarly trope that ancient Jews commonly referred to gentiles as ‘dogs’ has coloured exegesis of Phil 3.2 for centuries. This view gave rise to the interpretation that when Paul calls his opponents ‘dogs’, he is ironically inverting the epithet and using it to identify them as Jews. The present article provides a critical assessment of this interpretation and evaluates the data that has been used to justify this claim. I then provide a new interpretation of how Paul is employing the term ‘dog’ in Phil 3.2. On the basis of its broader usage in the Greek-speaking world and the context related to circumcision in Phil 3.2, I propose that Paul is using ‘dog’ as a vulgar, phallic epithet for his opponents.

For many years, scholars have noted striking similarities between the account of Paul's visit to Athens in Acts and ancient accounts of the trial of Socrates. There have been at least five distinct proposals about the significance of these similarities, but each has substantial shortcomings. In this article, I argue that Luke's purpose is to place Paul's Areopagus speech in dialogue with the thought of Socrates as it is represented in traditions about his trial, especially Plato's Euthyphro and Apology.

The ‘Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament’, formerly called ‘The Meyer’, was established more than 180 year ago. As the KEK is the oldest commentary series in German (and not only in German) still existing today, it is an important subject of research and the analysis of the development of the series reveals many significant insights in the history of New Testament scholarship in the last two centuries. Last but not least, recent investigations shed light on the relations between the German and the English-speaking scholarship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.