Jewish-Christians readily interpreted the life, ministry and sacrificial death of Jesus in agreement with accepted Jewish concepts: the trinity, the apostolic christology of the Messiah, meritorious suffering in behalf of all Israel, reconciliation of Israel to God through the death of the Messiah, refusal to participate in active rebellion against Rome, and willingness to dispute with other religious sects about many points. The fall of Jerusalem taught them to adjust their worship practices according to Jewish traditions which deemed the temple unnecessary, but they continued to mourn for it and hope for its restoration. Daily and weekly private and congregational worship attempted to fulfil needs formerly met by the function of priests in the temple. Baptism became still more important than before, assuming more responsibility for cleansing from sins, but it did not make circumcision unnecessary. There continued to be scripture reading and exhortation in congregational worship services. Some of them observed the same calendar of feasts as the majority of Jews and also the Jewish Sabbath, but they adhered to the Lord's Day and perhaps some of them even concurred with Gentile-Christians in their Christian adjustments to the old agricultural calendar. Jewish-Christians of the second century were in closer agreement with the theology of the NT and Jews of their day than they would have been with Catholic Christians who lived a few centuries later.

Das Markus-Evangehum unterscheidet sich von den anderen synoptischen Evangelien in auffälliger Weise dadurch, daß am Anfang und am Schluß Berichte fehlen, die Lukas und Matthäus offensichtlich als für den Inhalt ihrer Schriften wesentlich angesehen haben: Der zweite Evangelist berichtet nicht von Geburt und Kindheit Jesu; und sein Buch enthält - ausweislich der ältesten erhaltenen Handschriften - keine Erzählungen von Erscheinungen des Auferstandenen. Das Fehlen einer Geburtsgeschichte wird ver-mutlich damit zu erklären sein, daß Markus1 entsprechende Traditionen nicht gekannt hat. Das Fehlen der Erscheinungsgeschichten dagegen läßt sich nicht so ohne weiteres mit dieser Annahme begründen; denn Mark 14. 28 und 16. 7 scheinen jedenfalls anzudeuten, daß es im Umkreis des Evangelisten bzw. seiner Tradition entsprechende Erzählungen gegeben hat. Dann aber stellt sich die Frage, warum Markus in seinem Evangelium auf die Erscheinungen zwar ankündigend hinweist, gleichzeitig aber darauf verzichtet, von ihnen als von einem tatsächlich geschehenen Ereignis zu berichten.

Unter Jesu Worten haben zwei Gleichnispaare, das von den Talenten Mt 25. 14–30 mit der Parallele von den Minen Lk 19. 11–27 und das von der Hochzeit Mt 22. 2–10 mit der Parallele von großen Abendmahl Lk 14. 16–24, die bisher nie beachtete Eigenart, sich mit der Parallele zu einer einheitlich vollständigen Fassung zu ergänzen, aus der kein Bestandteil als entbehrlich hätte entfernt werden dürfen. Das geschah jedoch in Verkennung der Sachlage durch die Redaktoren; so ergab sich die Vieldeutigkeit der überlieferten Fassungen, die Siegfried Schulz in seiner Untersuchung über die Redenquelle an den bisherigen Auslegungen bis ins Einzelne aufgewiesen hat. Einverständnis besteht jedoch darüber, daß die Verse Lk 19.11–12 und 14–15a sowie 27 zusammengehören und herauszulösen sind. Und es fügt sich eigentümlich, da–7 gleichfalls ein Einschub ist. Dabei wurde bisher übersehen, daß er den Lk-Einschub abschließend ergänzt. Darum geht es im Folgenden um die Rekonstruktion der Urgestalt von drei Gleichnissen Jesu, die aus seinem letzten Aufenthalt in Jerusalem überliefert wurden.

The encounter between Jesus and the woman of Samaria is unique to the fourth gospel. Water symbolism and the true nature of worship constitute two major motifs that are woven into its narration. The meeting at the well touches off a discussion about water, and this discussion leads into one on worship. The connection between the two topics has not received hitherto a satisfactory solution, A. Guilding's work has the merit of recognizing the problem but her structural solution is unsatisfactory because it fails to make any connection in sense between the two.1 A matter that arouses curiosity concerns the subject of water common to the discussion Jesus and the woman have and the preceding section of material about purification and baptism by water as discussed by a Jew,2 the disciples of John the Baptist, and the Baptist himself. The fact that the incidents in question are set down in proximity invites scrutiny. Attention to the above two problems results in an interesting interpretation of the encounter.

Paul's own behaviour is not as open to scrutiny as that of some of his congregations. Comparisons are possible, with limited success, between the reports of his actions in Acts and what he himself says in his letters. Certain kinds of behaviour can be guessed at through a careful analysis of his letters. Rarely, however, do we have in his letters a passage that is as pregnant with implications – particularly for an understanding of his behaviour – as I Corinthians 9. 19–23. The purpose of what follows is to explore an inconsistency between what Paul says about his own behaviour in that passage and what he says with regard to Peter's behaviour in Galatians 2. 11–14. Attention will be focused on ethics, apostolic accommodation, and the relation between Paul and Peter as primitive Christian missionaries.

With a view to shedding more light on the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews' attitude to the Old Testament this article seeks to investigate the modifications which he makes to the text of his quotations from the Old Testament. Many such investigations have been undertaken in the past, but they have been hampered by the incomplete state of Septuagintal research. They failed to take into account the multiplicity of Septuagintal manuscripts at the time of the writing of the Epistle to the Hebrews. As a result the text of the Old Testament quotations in Hebrews was usually compared with that of only two or three of the very well known codices (especially Codex Alexandrinus and Vaticanus) and the many divergences in Hebrews from these codices were attributed to the hand of the author of Hebrews.

Dans la première édition de La structure littéraire de l' Epître aux Hébreux (Paris, 1962), A. Vanhoye notait au terme de son étude d'Héb 3, 1–6: ‘Nous n'oserions pas prétendre que cette interprétation s'impose en tout point avec la clarté de l'éVidence’ (p. 91), et dans la deuxième édition (Paris, 1976) il ajoute: ‘Cette discussion reste fort problématique. Le raisonnement de l'auteur n'est pas assez explicite pour qu'on puisse en saisir avec certitude toutes les étapes’ (p. 265). Cette dernière affirmation nous semble contestable, et c'est ce que le présent travail voudrait s'efforcer de montrer. Sans revenir sur les critiques adressées à juste titre par Vanhoye (pp. 88–9) aux lectures de C. Spicq, O. Michel, J. Héring et J. Moffatt, et sans négliger l'apport des deux éditions du livre, mais non plus celui de l'article de J. Swetnam, ‘Form and Content in Hebrews 1–6’,1 nous proposerons d'abord une traduction servile du texte, puis nous en étudierons la structure littéraire, et enfin nous essaierons de saisir les étapes du raisonnement de l'auteur. L'étude du rapport aux premiers chapitres sera notre conclusion.

‘With this limited area, and although surrounded by such powerful foreign nations, the two Galilees have always resisted any hostile invasion, for the inhabitants are from infancy inured to war, and have at all times been numerous; never did the men lack courage or the country men’ (War 3:41 f.). It is surprising how this general characterization of the Galileans by Josephus has so often found its way into modern writings about Galilee without any detailed study of the Vita, the one work of his where the Galileans occur more frequently than in all the others together.