Mark vi. I–6a is a story told with a fullness of vivid detail, and it is devoid of any edificatory ending. These two facts give the ‘impression of uninventable authenticity’, The result has been—and it is one that is still with us—that in the history of research interpreters have been all too prone to look at it only from the perspective of its historical value. In Mark vi. I–6a we seem to find ourselves ‘on the soil of the best tradition’, just because there is a series of concrete individual points which are indeed very likely to give confidence in their historical credibility. In v. 3 ‘personal details are given, which can have no other origin than old Galilean tradition’. Verse 5a and v. 6a draw features of such human truth into the picture of Jesus that the reader must be convinced of their authenticity.4 But—granted all these points— what is won for the historical facts from our pericope? Well, there are mentioned the origin and profession of Jesus, the names of his mother and of four of his brothers, the existence of sisters and the fact of an unsuccessful visit to his native town. This is really quite a lot.

The following essay is an attempt to examine the manner in which the writer of the Epistle of James uses the concept of Wisdom; and to study the suggestion that the way in which he uses it is more or less interchangeable with that in which other writers of the New Testament use the concept of the Holy Spirit.

This study proposes a re-examination of the teaching of Jesus about showing love toward enemies, with a view to recovering if possible its historical background and original setting. As a first step to such recovery it appears necessary to consider numerous issues raised by form-critics and others regarding the present framework of the two compilations of sayings in which this teaching is preserved, namely the Matthean ‘Sermon on the Mount’ and its shorter Lukan counterpart, the ‘Sermon on the Plain’.