Professor Matthew Black, the first editor of New Testament Studies, died on October 2, 1994 at the age of 86. He had been in failing health for several months. A former Principal of St Mary's College in the University of St Andrews, he was widely recognised as one of the most distinguished New Testament scholars of his generation.

The Gospel expression ό υίὸς τοῦ άνθρώπου has been a major Christological title for centuries. There is however widespread agreement that it is a translation of the Aramaic term and this is a normal expression for ‘man’. One way of viewing the Son of man problem is to suppose that we must account for the transition from in the teaching of Jesus to the title ό υίὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου in the Gospels.

John J. Collins' recent study of the interpretation of Dan 7.13 in the extant Jewish literature in the first century CE has provided a needed survey and background for those interested in the interpretation of Dan 7.13 in Christian circles during the same period. Collins identifies four common features between the Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra 13. First, both books assume that the humanlike figure refers to an individual and is not a collective symbol. Secondly, both identify this figure as the messiah. Thirdly, in both the messiah is preexistent and both associate with the messiah prerogatives traditionally reserved for God in Jewish literature. Finally, the messiah takes a more active role in the defeat of the ungodly in the Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra than in Dan 7.13. He argues that these common features between two works which do not exhibit any direct literary or theological dependence indicate certain common assumptions in the first century CE concerning Dan 7.13, but he also states that it is difficult to ascertain how widespread these assumptions might have been.

Classical scholar T. J. Luce has highlighted an important question too often neglected by source critics:

Die Gewiβheit, mit den üblichen traditions- und redaktionsge-schichtlichen Methoden eine vorsynoptische Traditionsgeschichte objektiv rekonstruieren zu können, schwindet immer mehr (s.u. 3). So wird es erforderlich, unter Einbezug der gegenwartig herrschenden texttheoretischen Methoden ein offenes Methoden-Modell zu konstruieren, das eine Rekonstruktion der Tradition plausibel ermöglicht (s.u. 4). Allerdings stammen die gewählten texttheoretischen Methoden aus unterschiedlichen texttheoretischen Modellen wie dem Strukturalismus, der Erzähltextanalyse (narrative criticism) und der historischen Gattungsanalyse (rhetoric criticism). Diese Modelle schlieβen sich aber nicht gegenseitig aus, sondern konvergieren in vielen Punkten miteinander. So wird es möglich, die historisch-kritische Methode um einzelne Elemente aus diesen Modellen zu bereichern, zu verändern und auf diese Weise weiterzuentwickeln (s.u. 1–2).

This article identifies two previously unnoticed items of textual evidence that support the view that 1 Cor 14.34–5 (‘Let women keep silence in the churches …’) was an interpolation. I conclude that Bishop Victor ordered the rewriting of 1 Cor 14.34–40 in the margin of Codex Fuldensis (see photograph on page 261) with w. 34–5 omitted and that there is a text-critical siglum that indicates the scribe's awareness of a textual variant at the beginning of 1 Cor 14.34 in Codex Vaticanus (see photograph on page 262). This text-critical evidence, plus the evidence from the non-Western Greek ms. 88* and Vulgate ms. Reginensis with w. 34–5 transposed after v. 40, makes an already strong case for interpolation even stronger. The text-critical sigla in Vaticanus open a new window onto the early history of the NT text. While tangential to the main argument of this article, this may well be its most important contribution.

Recently, several New Testament scholars have examined the lists of hardships found in the Pauline epistles and their relation to similar lists in other ancient writings. For example, in Cracks in an Earthen Vessel, John Fitzgerald interprets several ‘catalogues of hardships’ in the Corinthian correspondence based upon his study of the ancient, Greco-Roman literary practice of compiling lists of hardships. Fitzgerald seeks ‘a clarification of the forms and functions of peristasis catalogues in general and Paul's in particular’. Similarly, Martin Ebner seeks an understanding of the forms, motifs, and functions of hardship lists throughout Paul's writings as his subtitle (Untersuchungen zu Form, Motivik und Funktion der Peristasenkataloge bei Paulus) indicates. Yet while adding to the span of knowledge of peristasis catalogues, both Fitzgerald and Ebner have largely ignored important aspects of the form and function of hardship lists in some ancient writings. Furthermore, a crucial connection between the ancient, Greco-Roman use of peristasis catalogues and Paul's apostleship of weakness as exemplified in 2 Cor 11.23b–33 has been insufficiently analyzed.