This article offers a new interpretation of καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα in Mark 7.19c. After reviewing and offering some nuance to an emerging non-antinomian interpretation of 7.15a/18b, I turn to Mark 7.19c and argue that the phrase καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα should be understood as a part of Jesus' speech in 7.18–19. Jesus’ argument, I suggest, is that ritually defiled food cannot defile humans through ingestion because humans purify all foods from ritual impurity through digestion. This reasoning depends on a widespread Jewish view that excrement is impervious to ritual impurity: because all excrement is pure, the stomach acts as a purifying agent that purifies all food from ritual impurity. I proffer that the common translation of Mark 7.19c – ‘Thus he declared all foods clean’ (NRSV) – should therefore be abandoned.

This article explores the relationship of a minor variant in Hebrews 2.9 – Jesus dead ‘apart from God’ (χωρὶς θɛοῦ) – with the minor variant of Mark 15.34 and more broadly with Psalm 22.2, as suggested by Harnack, Michel, Zuntz, Elliott, Ehrman and Rodgers. First, it highlights new elements in the file of the evidence of Heb 2.9 and compares it with the case of Mark 15.34. Secondly, it demonstrates that paying attention to the minor variants of Heb 2.9 and Mark 15.34 allows one to grasp better the diversity of Jewish and early Christian readings of Ps 22.2 or Ps 21.2 LXX: these readings provide a plausible context to explain the emergence of these two minor variants.

The editorial history of the two Pseudo-Clementine narratives known as the Recognitions and the Homilies is intricate, to say the least. From an ever-elusive “basic writing” spring two novelistic stories with extensive translation histories, subjected to significant editorial interventions, and anthologized alongside other late ancient and medieval texts. This article focuses on the addition of pseudonymous epistles as prefatory material for these Pseudo-Clementines and follows one of these letters in particular, the Epistula Clementis (Ep. Clem.). The Epistula Clementis accompanies the Latin Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions in a host of medieval anthologies concerned with Petrine hagiography and ecclesial succession, as well as histories, dialogues, and epistolary texts with anti-Judaic resonances. I argue that the Epistula Clementis, as a prefatory text, was integral to the success of the Recognitions in these later anthologies, highlighting the transformative power of the preface upon its associated text as well as the hermeneutical force of the anthology itself.

There is a wrinkle in the story of common features in West Syrian anaphoras, which John Fenwick called “the Missing Oblation.” In this article, I argue that the importance of the “missing oblation” highlighted by Fenwick, Robert Taft, Stefano Parenti and others needs to be balanced against the verbs of oblation that are present. The emphasis on the missing oblation, combined with the tendency to summarize the Antiochene structure with little reference to the importance of these verbs, results in an inaccurate and unbalanced sense of the degree to which the anaphora expresses the belief that the action of offering bread and wine is constitutive of the eucharistic action. This should lead to a caution with the unhelpful heuristic about the spiritualization of sacrifice in contemporary scholarship and the underemphasis of the belief in the materiality of the eucharistic sacrifice in writers such as John Chrysostom and earlier anaphoras.

Toward the end of the Noahide commandment pericope in the Talmud (b. Sanh. 56–60), we find a sugya (pericope) featuring the prohibition on meat consumption imposed on Adam and its permission to the Noahides. This unique sugya pieces together halakic and haggadic sources that reinterpret the Garden of Eden story and address the complex relationship between humans and animals. This article will examine this sugya, focusing on its closing story, which describes a pietist who merits a gift of heavenly flesh. I will demonstrate that the story has many levels of meaning, grounded in both its immediate and wider contexts, and claim that it conceals a polemic with a similar Christian story (Acts 10), which describes impure meat that descends from the sky, undermining the cultural and halakic divisions between Jews and non-Jews. The comparison between the two stories reveals opposing worldviews with regard to law and lawlessness, utopia and redemption.

Although biblical scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the question of God’s body, few clarify how precisely this “body” complicates the long-held claim that God is immaterial. The present article addresses this oversight by attending to the ways in which biblical accounts of God’s body intersect with wider tradents of thought on materiality and immateriality, including, above all, the recent cross-disciplinary “turn” known as new materialism. The article begins by discussing what biblical scholars mean when they say “God’s body” and how biblical theophanies in particular complicate the belief that God is immaterial. It then discusses new materialism and how key emphases in this scholarly shift similarly complicate the belief in God’s immateriality. Third and finally, the article returns to biblical theophanies by reading these accounts through a new materialist lens, focusing in particular on God’s manifestations in material, nonhuman forms. In the end, I suggest not only that biblical theophanies problematize traditional ways of conceiving God within the history of biblical interpretation but also that new materialism can better enable us to see how these accounts portray the relationship between God and embodied materialities.

John Malalas presents Hephaestus as a king of Egypt who was deified as an inventor who made weapons and so provided his subjects with nourishment and strength in war. In the context of the Greco-Roman discussion of the progress of civilization and the identification of inventors, this may seem innocuous, even a commendation. But this discourse does not unite war and hunting, as Hephaestus’s inventions do. This combination seems to allude by inversion to the biblical ideal of harmony among people and between people and beasts, and so makes Hephaestus an agent of human delinquency. This denigration is confirmed by the magical initiation of Hephaestus’s ironsmithing. It is, however, by implication and allusion, rather than outright denunciation, that Malalas achieves his critique of the traditional gods and their deification.

In the subsection “Grammar of Eros (The Language of Love)” in section 2 of book 2 of The Star of Redemption, the beating heart of the work, Franz Rosenzweig offers a peculiar portrait of the event of revelation. What is presented is a dramatization of the encounter between the loving God and the beloved human soul, a developing scene consisting of a series of utterances and experiences, many of which appear unwarranted. Why does Rosenzweig present revelation in this manner? This article seeks to explain the seemingly arbitrary twists and turns in the dramatized “plot” through which Rosenzweig depicts revelation by demonstrating that it follows in its main features the prevalent Protestant understanding of revelation as encompassing not only divine self-disclosure but also the discovery of sin, confession, forgiveness of sin, reconciliation, attainment of selfhood, and redemption, and is framed according to the directives of the Lutheran foundational principle of “at once a sinner and justified (Simul Justus et Peccator). In so doing, it exhibits Rosenzweig’s deep embeddedness in the Protestant theological discourse of his time and shows that The Star should be understood in light of the contemporary Protestant theology.

This article reconsiders the classed and gendered construction of the Author in the Roman Mediterranean, a construction that generates the intertwined notions of authorship and authenticity. Modern scholarly conversations about authorship and pseudepigraphy in the Roman Mediterranean often proceed from the uninterrogated assumptions that (a) ancient texts (including early Christian texts) were the monographic products of solitary authors and (b) everyone in antiquity, regardless of gender or class, had access to the status of being an ‘Author’. While conversations about (in)authentic textual production extend beyond the works that become part of the New Testament, these twin assumptions form the basis for modern debates about ‘forgery’ in New Testament literature. This article challenges both assumptions by first surveying the role of uncredited collaboration in Roman literary culture and then analysing ancient Christian discourses surrounding (a) illicit textual meddling and (b) inappropriate textual ascription. These two discursive categories reveal how the categories of class and gender are entangled with early Christian ideas of the Author. Ancient discourses of authenticity and authorship were not simply about who produced texts but about policing which acts of textual production count as ‘authoring’.

Uncertainty has attached to a medieval library catalogue entry mentioning Papias cum sermonibus diversis at Stams Abbey. Most recent editors of Papias have suspected that it refers to the medieval lexicographer rather than the second-century Christian author of the same name. This note calls attention to a marginal citation in a Stams manuscript from the lexicographer that helps put to rest the hypothesis of a full Latin manuscript of Papias of Hierapolis.

Jesus' response to the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7.27 is sometimes seen as sexist, racist, or abusive. The force of his response depends in part on the diminutive form κυναριον, which is often dismissed as a faded diminutive that lacks true force. But a statistical, semantic, and contextual analysis of the word indicates that it does, in fact, have diminutive force in Mark 7:27. Because of this, the pejorative force found in direct insults employing the word ‘dog’ is lacking in Jesus' response. In addition to failing to recognise the diminutive force of κυναριον, interpreters sometimes assume a social context in which Jews routinely referred to Gentiles as dogs. Finally, the analogy that Jesus makes is often read allegorically, assuming that ‘children’ and ‘dogs’ have direct counterparts in ‘Jews’ and ‘Gentiles’. These assumptions are found to be dubious. The point of Jesus' analogy is about the proper order of events: children eat before the puppies; Jews receive the benefits of his ministry before Gentiles. The Syrophoenician woman outwits Jesus by arguing that the puppies may eat simultaneously with the children. The interpretive upshot is that Jesus' saying is unlikely to be misogynistic or abusive, but simply asserts Jewish priority, a priority that admits of exceptions and change.

In light of a recent surge of interest in time across a range of disciplines, a case has been made that New Testament studies has experienced a “temporal turn.” This claim raises an important question about how one understands the relation of recent developments to earlier, long-held debates about time among New Testament scholars. This question is answered here by revisiting the “salvation history” debate between Oscar Cullmann and Rudolf Bultmann, with the help of Paul Ricoeur’s analysis in Time and Narrative and in the context of recent trends in work on “temporalities.” This article argues that, although in many respects recent work on time offers fresh language to describe the kinds of time at stake for New Testament scholarship, it is also true that attending to the earlier debates shows how parts of the temporal turn are in fact a return to questions long considered.

This article relates Chesterton’s theology, and that of other theologians, to existing theories of humor. It asks: With regard to the understanding of humor, what is offered by a theological perspective—especially by Chesterton’s theology—that cannot be supplied by philosophical and psychological theories? The article situates Chesterton’s work in relation to three theories of humor: the superiority theory, the release theory, and the incongruity theory. It then examines two important relationships: first, that between humor, worship, and joy; then, that between humor, cognition, and theology. While focusing on Chesterton’s writing, it also considers relevant aspects of the work of other thinkers, including Ian Ker, Duncan Reyburn, Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Rahner, Peter Berger, Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Terry Lindvall, and Brian Edgar. The article concludes by suggesting the beginnings of an outline of a theology of humor.

In this essay, I examine the intersection between the concepts of freedom, the self, God, and creativity in the works of one of the most prominent twentieth-century Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (1865–1935), exploring his use of these concepts through the lens of the Lebensphilosophie of the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941). I first draw a historical and thematic parallel between Bergson’s and Kook’s philosophies that to date has not been considered extensively. I then argue that five different interpretative puzzles related to the topic of freedom in Kook’s teachings can be explained against the background of Bergson’s thought. This Bergsonian interpretation enables the reader to appreciate in what way different aspects of Kook’s thought—the metaphysical, ethical, epistemological, and theological—are interconnected and can be understood as an organic whole. I thereby show that the Bergsonian philosophical and systematic models are an important, and yet unexplored, interpretative tool for the study of Kook’s theological and philosophical thought.

On five occasions in Pauline literature, the author claims to write in their own hand. In three of the five instances, the autograph is reserved for the final greeting and the greeting alone. In Galatians 6.11 and Philemon 19, however, Paul writes more than the letter's greeting in his own hand, as the comment about his autograph appears well before the closing salutations. This article engages one of these texts, Philemon, and argues that it was written entirely in Paul's hand. The letter was a Pauline holograph. To make this argument, the article first assesses the ‘cheirographic rhetoric’ of Philemon 19. Paul alludes to a type of documentary writing, the cheirograph, that recorded various sorts of financial proceedings. Paul's autographic guarantee recalls validation statements that were integral to this genre of text. Comparanda from the non-literary papyri show that when an author of a cheirograph called specific attention to their own handwriting, the entire document was customarily written in their own hand. The article then turns to the personal nature of Philemon and the abundance of second-person singular forms, arguing that there was a strong preference that personal letters like Philemon be handwritten in Paul's context. Taken together, these two arguments demonstrate that Paul's short letter to Philemon was more likely to be handwritten than dictated.

Markus nimmt seine Gegenwart als dunkle, düstere Zeit wahr und bearbeitet mit seiner Jesuserzählung die krisenbehaftete Gegenwart. Ein zentraler Baustein in seinem Krisenmanagement ist ein strategischer Einsatz literarisch-theologischer Mehrdeutigkeiten. Die vorliegenden Beobachtungen illustrieren diesen strategischen Einsatz am Beispiel der programmatischen Basileiaaussage in Mk 1,15. Unsere Kernthese lautet: Markus bändigt die Ambiguität der ἤγγικɛν-Aussage in 1,15 durch die ἤγγικɛν-Aussage in 14,42 und beansprucht damit Deutungshoheit inmitten einer existentiellen krisenhaften Zuspitzung in der erzählten Welt. Dieser Gewinn an Deutungshoheit marginalisiert weder die Krisenerfahrung am Vorabend des Todes Jesu noch die Krisenerfahrung in den 70er Jahren, sondern dient dazu, ein wenig festen Boden in all der verbleibenden Unklarheit und Ungewissheit unter die Füße zu bekommen.