Paul Tillich's theology is largely an attempt to interpret or at least illuminate Christian concepts by using ontological or philosophical concepts. An important part of Tillich's system is his treatment of sin and the fall, a treatment that is in effect an analysis of existence. But this analysis is beset with ambiguities and difficulties. It is my purpose here to clarify and to defend Tillich's existential analysis.

So Aṇṭāḷ begins her poem Tiruppāvai, portraying in thirty verses one episode in the life of Krishna and his cowherd lovers, but one highly significant for the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas of South India. In this poem, they believe, is embedded the essence of the Upanishads, and through it the Lord Vishnu will bathe his devotees with grace and unending delight. The purpose of this study is to consider what Śrī Vaiṣṇavas believe the essential teaching of the Upanishads to be and how it is found in the text. To do so we will focus on the theme of bathing as it is portrayed in the poem itself, in the traditional account of the poet's life, and in the earliest complete commentary on the poem.

In a recent analysis of Acts 27–28, Miles and Trompf have emphasized the strategic position of these sections in the text and their value as a kind of witness for Lukan theology. Luke's statement that “everyone escaped to land” after the shipwreck (27:44), they argue, is in fact a “long-forgotten theological punch line.” To an ancient reader, the assertion that all escaped with their lives would, they contend, be prima facie evidence of Paul's innocence. Drawing on pagan concepts of divine retribution, pollution, and shipwreck, they attempt to reconstruct the attitude of this reader on his first encounter with these passages. If Paul had been guilty, such a reader, according to their reconstruction, would have believed that his pollution should have resulted in death for himself and/or fellow passengers. The fact that no one died, however, would amount to “decisive confirmation of Paul's innocence.” There was no need, therefore, to relate the outcome of Paul's appeal to Caesar since he had already been put to the test “by forces and exigencies far more dreaded than the requirements of a human law court.”

Der Begriff ‘christliche Exegese’ ist in mancherlei Hinsicht problematisch, nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil er suggerieren könnte, die wissenschaftliche Disziplin der Exegese sei methodologisch differenzierbar in eine christliche und eine nicht- bzw. unchristliche Spielform. Eine derartige Annahme wird in den folgenden Überlegungen nicht gemacht.

To the men and women of the Middle Ages the figure of Constantine loomed large over the fourth century. Born a pagan, he converted to Christianity and became the first Christian emperor, the convenor of councils, the defender of orthodoxy, the builder of churches, the herald of a new age, the founder of Christian Europe. But to the men and women of the later fourth century, the generation of John Chrysostom, it was not Constantine, but Julian, raised a Christian only to forsake his “hereditary piety,” Julian the pagan emperor, Julianus Apostata, whose deeds were alive in their memory. The age of Constantine was part of past history, but Julian's actions, abortive as they may have appeared to later generations, were still remembered not only by the old, says John Chrysostom, but also by the “young people” of our day.

When Paul R. McReynolds and Frederik Wisse developed the Claremont Profile Method, they used as a point of departure the manuscript groups that had been formed in previous text critical studies, primarily the groups of Hermann von Soden. Although they were not satisfied with this approach, they saw no alternative. In an earlier study on the Greek text of I John, however, I showed that the use of predetermined groups proved to be a methodological weakness in the Claremont Profile Method (CPM) so far as I John is concerned, in that the ability of the method to correct von Soden's groupings was only partial. In the study on I John I used quantitative analysis to form tentative gropings rather than depend on the group formations of others.

Studies on the essence and development of the concept of original sin abound. Not only has this fundamental tenet of Christian theology played an important role in the history of Western religious thought, but it continues to command the attention of scholars and theologians even today. Given this great interest, one is occasionally surprised at the narrowness of the historical and religious framework to which many have confined their discussions of original sin. All too often, scholars have overlooked the significance which events within the community they are examining or parallel developments in other religious communities might have for explicating a new direction in the history of this doctrine. While the present study can hope neither to reformulate the findings of the voluminous literature on original sin nor to compensate in large measure for this methodological shortcoming at times inherent in it, it will attempt to demonstrate by example how the notion of original sin did not evolve in a historical vacuum. It both drew from and contributed to prevalent philosophical and political theory, and it even interacted significantly with non-Christian religious concepts.

Scholars are gradually relinquishing the belief that the Corinthians were Gnostics. As a noted student of Gnosticism concludes, we find in Corinth ‘at most only the first tentative beginnings of what was later to develop into full-scale Gnosticism’. In fact, a kind of agnosticism has emerged with regard to the early Christian community in Corinth. ‘The position in Corinth cannot be reconstructed on the basis of the possibilities of the general history of religion.’ I suggest, however, that it is possible to determine with some degree of precision the nature and background of the ‘proto-Gnosticism’ in Corinth: Hellenistic Jewish religiosity focused on sophia and gnosis.

The prospect of writing anything further about the prologue of John reminds one of the verdict quoted by W. C. van Unnik in a similar context some twenty years ago: ‘the new things he said were not true and the true things were not new’. The prudent course may, therefore, be to refine an already established position with the hope of being able to say something true, even if it is not altogether new. The thesis of this article is that the prologue is a chiasm with verse 12 b at its centre. That the prologue is chiastic is not a new thesis; that its centre is v. 12 b is. The first part of this paper attempts to establish this thesis. The second part studies the key phrase in v. 12 b, τέκνα Θεοũ, and the implications of its position in the prologue.

On 10 November 1883, addressing his Göttingen colleagues and students in academic celebration of the quadricentennial of Luther's birth, Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89) delivered this remarkable verdict: “The genuine ideas of the Reformation were more concealed than disclosed in the theological works of Luther and Melanchthon.” The Wittenberg reformers themselves, not merely their epigones, had failed to systematize and safeguard those original epoch-making ideas by which they had effected their dramatic reform of religious life within the late medieval church.

In Laws 8.835b–842a Plato puzzles over the question of how the lawgiver is to inculcate proper behavior in matters of sexual activity. The problem is made more difficult by the fact that he would like to define proper sexual activity much more narrowly than any Greek legislator before him ever had. He would limit it to acts between man and wife which are capable of resulting in conception (838e–39a). Every other sexual manifestation, homosexual or heterosexual, is to be forbidden.

The rabbinic influence on Origen's exegesis of the Song of Songs has been the focus of three major studies.

There are two extant copies of the Old Syriac gospels, the evangelion da-mepharreshe. One, the Curetonian Codex (=C), was discovered by William Cureton and edited by him in 1858. It dates to the middle or later part of the fifth century. The other, the Sinaitic Codex (=S), was discovered by Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis and her sister Mrs. Margaret Dunlop Gibson at St. Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. It dates to the later part of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century. Both MSS have a number of lacunae. In combination, however, they preserve most of the text of the four gospels. Although they are not identical their agreements are sufficient to show that they belong to the same translation. S is generally thought to preserve the original text better than C. C, however, sometimes preserves older readings than S.

Die Interpretation der neutestamentlichen Haustafeln ist bis heute bestimmt durch die von Martin Dibelius begründete und von seinem Schüler Karl Weidinger ausgeführte These, die Haustafeln seien in der Tradition der Pflichtentafeln vor allem der stoischen Philosophie zu interpretieren. Der klassische Text, der seither in kaum einer Äußerung zum Thema fehlt, ist Epiktet, diss. 17, 31: ‘Ich will als Frommer und als Philosoph und als umsichtiger Mensch wissen, was meine Pflicht gegenüber den Göttern ist, was gegenüber den Eltern, was gegenüber den Brüdern, was gegenüber dem Vaterland, was gegenüber Fremden.’ Wichtig ist hier auch das von K. Praechter aus verschiedenen Stobaios-Exzerpten rekonstruierte Werk des Stoikers Hierokies – spätere Textfunde haben Praechters Rekonstruktion glänzend bestätigt. Die Aufnahme solchen traditionellen ethischen Guts geschah nach Dibelius unter Vermittlung durch das hellenistische Judentum, was er und Weidinger mit Josephus, Philo und PsPhokylides belegen.