In both his Gospel and Acts, Luke places the ascension at the end of the day of Jesus' resurrection. There is no difference between Luke's dating of the ascension in his Gospel and that in Acts. The forty days mentioned in Acts 1.3 are viewed by Luke as subsequent to the ascension, not as previous to it. The forty days are not the term fixed for the ascension; they are not linked with the ascension at all. They are linked with the post-Easter, post-ascension appearances. The ascension ought to be regarded as preceding the forty days of Jesus' appearances rather than following them.

When Paul asks for the incestuous man at Corinth to be handed over to Satan is he calling for mere physical expulsion from the community or is he calling for something more? We argue in this paper that the nature of the man's offense—i.e., an ostentatious display of sexual immorality that also receives theological justification from the perpetrator—demanded a harsher sentence beyond mere physical exclusion. Drawing on the book of Job, we show that the disciplinary practice Paul advocates in 1 Corinthians 5 is a spiritual practice that aims to remove the spiritual protection enjoyed by the incestuous man while he remained in the body of Christ, thereby exposing him to Satan's attacks. Paul's hope was that the affliction suffered by the man at the hands of Satan as a result of this exposure would lead to his repentance and ultimate salvation.

That the ‘Church’ constitutes the main theme of the Epistle to the Ephesians is the opinio communis in exegesis. Going beyond the undisputed letters by Paul ἐκκλησία would thus no longer designate the local congregation but the universal Church instead. Yet it is still open to question whether ecclesiology becomes the theological centre, out of which Christology, too, enfolds, and the Church acquires a soteriological function. The paper argues for a re-examination of the term ἐκκλησία and the metaphors used in the epistle. It then emerges that Ephesians does indeed have an ecclesiological theme, but not yet the concept of one ‘Church’ as a transcendent entity. Of major importance are the various body metaphors, as they imply the unity of the assembled. Nevertheless, even the body metaphors do not presuppose an already developed concept of the ‘Church’ as the ‘realm of salvation’ or any other spatial metaphor. Instead, they demonstrate that soteriology and ecclesiology remain strictly related to Christology. With a view to the epistle's intention this means that Ephesians develops a vision of the unity and community of believers, not, however, as the theological construct of the Church, but rather as a paraenetic goal to integrate Christians of differing persuasions.

In his Church History, Eusebius quotes a passage from Hegesippus's lost Memories in which he relates the martyrdom of James the Just; according to this account, the latter was called ᾽Ωβλίας. This article proposes to examine this odd term whose precise meaning remains obscure. Beyond issues related to its signification, the analysis of this word is likely to shed new light on the milieu in which the tradition quoted by Hegesippus appeared. This study seeks to demonstrate through various examples that the figure of the ᾽Ωβλίας was particularly popular in Jewish literature following the destruction of the Second Temple.

This article explores the ways the story of the soul's present plight and its return to the divine realm is narrated in different Nag Hammadi treatises, and to what effect. The soul's condition is a central concern in two types of stories: there are (1) demiurgical myths, in which the soul's origin is ascribed to an inferior creator-god, and (2) plainer stories of the soul, which are solely focused on the soul, without a creation narrative. The main sources for the latter type are the Exegesis on the Soul (NHC II, 6) and Authoritative Teaching (Authentikos Logos, NHC VI, 3). In addition to these texts, three demiurgical myths from Nag Hammadi Codex II, are drawn into the discussion: The Secret Book of John, The Nature of the Rulers, and On the Origin of the World.

The soul pestered by emotions is one of the themes that connects these stories with the long-standing philosophical tradition, starting from Plato's dialogues. The portrayals of this theme become increasingly ‘demonic’, but even the soul's battle against demons is first and foremost a battle against emotions. A new element in these stories is the emphasis placed upon repentance as bringing about transformation in the soul. Although strong sexual imagery is used in these texts to describe both the mythic past and the soul's present plight, the analysis suggests that sexual lust is not the only moral concern in them. Some texts discussed in this article show far greater concern with wine, luxury, good looks, pride, and arrogance than with illicit sex.