Although Jewish conversions to Christianity in the latter Middle Ages pose many unanswered questions, one can be dispensed with relatively easily: Were those converts who subsequently decided to abandon Christianity and return to Judaism required to undergo a special immersion (tebilâ in Hebrew) as part of a special “rejudaization rite”?

It seems singularly unfortunate that in the twentieth century Matthew's Gospel has so often been studied with more attention being given to the Marcan source than to the Matthean narrative.1 Nowhere is this tendency more evident than in the account of the visit of the women to the tomb of Jesus (Matt. 28. 1; Mark 16. 1–2; cf. Luke 24. 1). A survey of the commentaries on Matthew quickly reveals how pervasive this interest in the Marcan narrative is.2 But while it may well be a reasonable exegetical procedure to compare one Gospel with another, the way in which the perspective described above can also hinder an understanding of Matthew's Gospel is strikingly apparent in M. D. Goulder's treatment of this passage in a recent article in New Testament Studies. Goulder writes:

The motive for the women's visit to the tomb is coherent in Mark. Joseph has rolled Jesus' body in linen, but it is not said that he anointed it: the women come to supply this need – they see where he is laid (xv. 47), and come to anoint him (xvi. 1). Matthew's story is incoherent: he does not mention the ointments throughout, and the women, having sat opposite the tomb (xxvii. 61), come, weakly, to see the tomb (xxviii. 1). On Marcan priority this is easily understood: Matthew has introduced a guard on the tomb, so an anointing venture must seem impossible. But, on Matthaean priority, what would they want to come and see the tomb for at first light?3

In the Qumran scrolls there are two passages that talk about a future figure called Geber (= Man). In this article we relate this figure with the Spirit-Paraclete promised in the farewell discourses in the Gospel of John (14. 15–17, 25–6, 15. 26–7, 16. 7–15) but before discussing such a relationship we place before the reader the contents of the two passages about Geber, so that he may relate them with our subsequent considerations without having to turn to the scrolls or a translation of them.

When Jonathan Edwards was installed as assistant to his grandfather Solomon Stoddard at Northampton in 1727, he not only assumed the major pastoral responsibility for the largest congregation in western Massachusetts, but he also became coadministrator of the “lax” mode of admission to the sacraments that had prevailed at Northampton and throughout the Connecticut River Valley for some thirty years. This system granted both baptism and communion to all persons of age who had historical knowledge of the gospel and were of a “non-scandalous” life, on the grounds that all divinely established ordinances were capable of “begetting” faith. Although Stoddard did not originate the “lax” system, the practice was generally referred to as “Stoddardeanism” because from the time of his celebrated dispute with Increase Mather in 1700 (the so-called “Stoddardean controversy”) Stoddard had been its most systematic, persistent, and influential proponent in New England.

In the summer of 1801 a sharp, even bitter exchange of correspondence passed between the Court and Cathedral Preacher in Berlin, Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack, and his ministerial protégé Friedrich Schleiermacher. The points of contention were Schleiermacher's circle of Berlin friends, whom Sack considered inappropriate company for the young minister, and Schleiermacher's book of 1799, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, containing theological views judged by Sack to be irreconcilable with the Christian religion Schleiermacher had been ordained to preach. This candid exchange was Schleiermacher's first official encounter with rising tensions between his theological liberalism and the orthodoxy of his Reformed Church background. Indeed these two letters argue theological issues that plagued Schleiermacher throughout his career and have haunted his theology to our own day, the most central of these being Schleiermacher's refusal to apply terms of personality to God. Yet these seminal letters have received scant attention in German secondary literature, and to the English reader they have remained all but inaccessible.

Die Apokalypse des Johannes ist hinsichtlich ihrer theoiogischen Bedeutung seit der Frühzeit der Kirche bis in die Gegenwart hinein stark umstritten. Vor allem scheint sie einem Vergleich mit den Grundaussagen paulinischer Theologie nicht standhalten zu können und erfährt daher des öfteren eine Abwertung.1 Im Folgenden soll versucht werden, anhand eines Themenkomplexes, der für die Apokalypse des Johannes von zentraler Bedeutung ist, nämiich das Verhältnis zwischen Christus und seiner Gemeinde,2 einen wesentlichen theologischen Aspekt im letzten Buch der Bibel zu erfassen.

As the comparative study of religion has advanced in recent years, one of its most salutary effects has been the qualification, if not the removal, of old caricatures about other people's religions. It is increasingly recognized that only distance and ignorance make religious traditions seem homogeneous entities, and that the tensions they encompass within themselves are often at least as extreme as the gulfs that separate one tradition from another.

This paper draws attention to two features of the teaching about the kingdom of heaven in the first Gospel. Firstly that ή βασιλєία τῷν ούρανῷν is pictured as an imminent but entirely future reality, in distinction to the five occurrences of ή β⋯σιλєία το⋯ θєο⋯ which represent a present kingdom. Secondly, that ethics and faith are presented as conditions for entry into the kingdom of heaven and not as future possibilities realizable only when the kingdom of heaven is present. I shall examine all the sayings about the kingdom of heaven under a series of headings, following for the most part the order in which they appear in the Gospel, but occasionally linking later passages with earlier discussions to avoid repetition. The sayings about the kingdom of God will be examined as a group at the end.1

When Paul writes about the imparting of the holy Spirit, he normally uses quite ordinary verbs: God gives (δÍωμι, Rom. 5. 5), we receive (λαβάνω, Rom. 8. 15). But in I Cor. 12. 13 he uses an unusual, rather surprising word:

That one holy Spirit was poured out for all of us to drink (NEB).

In the course of an inquiry into the origins of Luke's understanding of the poor I was forced to ask the question how far Luke might have been influenced not only by certain texts in Isaiah but also by wider themes. In answer to this question one is often referred to C. H. Dodd's According to the Scriptures, where he concluded that when NT authors quoted small OT texts they often did so with knowledge of larger passages or collections of passages from which the text was drawn. This principle has become a commonplace and is frequently used illegitimately to find ideas in the NT which are not otherwise discernible.1 The recent study of B. Lindars (‘The Place of the Old Testament in the Formation of New Testament Theology: Prolegomena’, N. T. S. xxiii (1977), 59–66) argues that NT writers had no interest in the meaning of the OT for its own sake, but simply quarried texts to support and illustrate a pre-existing NT theology. Both these views need to be kept in mind. It may be that each is correct in different places. What is needed is a closer study of the practice of individual authors and their use of different parts of the OT. Only then will it be possible to give any confident judgement of how much an NT author may have carried in the way of related ideas, theology and contextual understanding when he quotes or alludes to the OT.2

Rudolf Bultmann in his magnum opus, Theology of the New Testament, tends to dismiss the Epistle to the Hebrews as ‘allegorical’,1 ‘legalistic’,2 exemplaristic',3 and ‘sacramentalistic’.4 This is overly negative. The Book of Hebrews may be a unique contribution to New Testament thought, and may possess its own peculiar logic and expression; nevertheless, it is a decidedly Christian document.5

Daß die Vokabel παρθένος im ‘Gleichnis von den zehn Jungfrauen’1 die ‘Gespielinnen der Braut’2 bezeichnet, die Brautjungfern also, und daß das Wort ἓλαιον (ebenda) nicht Olivenöl, sondern Butter3 meint, kann kaum noch zweifelhaft sein. Bei παρθένος ergibt sich dies aus dem Kontext und bei ἓλαιον aus der Tatsache, daß man als ‘Brennstoff für die Lampen’4 im Palästina der Tage Jesu hauptsächlich (ranzige) Butter verwendet hat, nicht das wertvollere Olivenöl.5

In the Greek ritual of animal sacrifice a rather unusual use was reserved for the tongue of the victim. While most of the animal was either burned in offering to the deity or enjoyed as a feast by the participants, the tongue was cut out and laid aside. Why the tongue was treated differently from the rest of the victim and what exactly was done with it are the questions which I propose to deal with in this paper. These problems have been dealwith before, but the evidence has never been fully consideredand all previous discussions have been inconclusive.

Amongst scholars who say that Paul's letters provide evidence of change and development in Paul's thinking,1 the major emphasis has been seeing this change taking place towards the later stages of Paul's writings, rather than in the earliest stages.2 However, the most significant change in Paul's thinking probably took place shortly before he wrote what are generally regarded as his earliest letters, the letters to the Thessalonians. An exegesis of these letters, together with established research revealing the stages behind the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians3 (though with modifications to certain conclusions about Paul's earliest eschatology), gives support to this suggestion. Whilst changing emphases appear in Paul's later letters, attention should be directed to the probability that the biggest change in his Christian eschatology took place with the surviving correspondence.

Über die Aufnahme der Jesus-Überlieferung im frühen Christentum ist schon viel nachgedacht und geschrieben worden. Dabei interessiert das Problem meist wegen des auffallenden Sachverhaltes, daß Pauls allenfalls dreimal ausdrücklich auf Herrenworte zurückgreift (I Kor 7, 10; 9, 14; vgl. I These 4, 15), wobei I These 4, 15 ohne erkennbare synoptische Parallele ist. Verschärft ist dieser Sachverhalt noch dadurch, daß Pauls speziell im I Kor offen zugeben kann, kein Jesuswort zur Regelung von Gemeindeverhält-nissen zu besitzen (7, 12. 25. 40).