This article explores the relationships between memory, history and fiction in the Fourth Gospel. The first section is dedicated to the Johannine conception of the memory, taking into consideration recent research in the theory of social memory. The epilogue of the Gospel (John 21) considered as a paratext and the function attributed to the beloved disciple make it possible to specify the characteristics of this memory. The second section deals with the problem of the relationship between history and fiction in the context of ancient historiography. This includes observing how Johannine historiography follows the rules of ancient historiography, how it goes beyond them in its conception of space, time and characters, and how it offers a complete recomposition of the life of Jesus.

According to UBS5 and NA28, Mark 7.3 says that Pharisees and other Jews do not eat unless they rinse their hands ‘with a fist’ (πυγμῇ). This notorious crux interpretum has resisted all efforts to give it a plausible meaning. The present article reviews these efforts and suggests that it is time to abandon this reading in favour of the variant reading πυκνά in the sense ‘repeatedly’. This translation best fits the practice described in the Mishnah and other rabbinic literature, in which devout Jews rinsed their hands twice before the meal, twice after, and often twice or more during.

By means of a contextual analysis of Mark 12.41–4, a narrative analysis of ‘women’ in Mark and a social–historical analysis of the motif of the ‘poor widow’, this article argues that Mark 12.41–4 paves the way for Jesus’ eschatological speech (Mark 13): while the precise purpose of the widow's deposit (ritual, donation or saving) remains an open question, Jesus strengthens her dignity. Mark thus alludes to the ancient motif of respecting personae miserae and shows who Jesus is in light of God's pending judgement of Jerusalem. In its focus on the ‘widow’ motif, the analysis of Mark 12.41–4par. enriches previous studies on form- and redaction-criticism and Realgeschichte by revealing the Christological meaning of the Markan narrative.

This article focuses on the theological justification of the mission to the nations in the Gospel of Matthew. As a starting point, debates pro and contra are supposed in the community. The argument then takes two directions. The prophetic announcement concerning the eschatological salvation of the nations with special regard to the pilgrimage to Zion is assumed as a background for Matt 28.16–20 against the majority reference to Dan 7.13–14. Against the view that the Son of God is the christological category on which Matthew justifies the mission to the nations, the ecclesiological significance of this title is emphasised here. The title Son of God does indeed play a role in the mission, not, however, as an argumentative tool, but as the core content of the own group culture that is transmitted through mission. The eschatological horizon forms the justification of both the Israel and the nations’ mission. Finally, the question is asked whether the ideological support of the mission to the nations can be understood in the context of a generation change in the community.

This article challenges Mark Goodacre's contention that the distribution of editorial fatigue in Matthew and Luke points not only to Markan priority but also to Luke's dependence on Matthew. Goodacre's argument is criticised through questioning the assumptions that Matthew's handling of Q would have been analogous to his handling of Mark and to Luke's handling of Q, as well as the claim that no instances of editorial fatigue can be detected in Matthew's handling of the double tradition. The conclusion is that the argument from editorial fatigue cannot be used to establish that the existence of Q is improbable.

This article compares two first-century authors, Paul and Plutarch, on the mechanics of inspiration and the role of gender in the prophetic process. Paul's First Corinthians and Plutarch's Delphic Dialogues (De Pythiae oraculis and De defectu oraculorum) were written by men who were observers of and commentators on the religious phenomenon of prophecy – that is, the communication of divine messages through human speakers. They also make statements about women that indicate that gender influenced their perceptions of prophecy. When these authors discuss prophecy at the conceptual level, gender does not affect their arguments, but when they turn to actual women prophets, they introduce ideas about gender and sex that shape their views of the prophetic process and the women who prophesy.

Although interpreters refer to the association between blackness and evil in ancient texts as essentially universal, specific reference by Christians to the counter-divine with the colour epithet ὁ μέλας is new with the Epistle of Barnabas. Black is applied as an honorific to certain Egyptian deities, but it is never used in Egyptian religion with reference to the counter-divine. Furthermore, black demons proliferate in late third- and fourth-century Egyptian monastic texts, but these witnesses postdate Barnabas. The first explicit reference to the devil as black after Barnabas is in Didymus the Blind, who interprets the reference as ‘Ethiopian’. Exploring the origin and background of this nickname for the counter-divine, this essay argues that Didymus accurately apprehends Barnabas’ intention: namely, that ‘the Black One’ does not merely reflect the universal association of blackness and evil in Roman antiquity, but, rather it reflects the appropriation of an ethnic stereotype in an apocalyptic context with distinctly anti-imperial resonances.

1 Cor 14.34–5 appears to silence women in church. Philip Payne's recent paper attempts to add to the evidence that Paul did not write these verses. He claims that codex Vaticanus has an obelos at the start of 1 Cor 14.34 (as well as a distigme), indicating added text. However, the bar in Vaticanus at 1 Cor 14.34 is indistinguishable from paragraphoi and Payne's case that it is an obelos is based on systematic measurement errors.

There are serious problems with P. Payne's discussion of ‘distigmai’ in Codex Vaticanus, and more in particular with his identification and interpretation of so-called ‘distigme-obelos’ combinations. The ‘distigmai’ remain elusive and any ‘distigme-obelos’ is coincidental.