Early Christianity is often regarded as an entirely lower-class phenomenon, and thus characterised by a low educational and cultural level. This view is false for several reasons. (1) When dealing with the ancient world, inferences cannot be made from the social class to which one belongs to one's educational and cultural level. (2) We may confidently state that in the early Christian urban congregations more than 50 per cent of the members could read and write at an acceptable level. (3) Socialisation within the early congregations occurred mainly through education and literature. No religious figure before (or after) Jesus Christ became so quickly and comprehensively the subject of written texts! (4) The early Christians emerged as a creative and thoughtful literary movement. They read the Old Testament in a new context, they created new literary genres (gospels) and reformed existing genres (the Pauline letters, miracle stories, parables). (5) From the very beginning, the amazing literary production of early Christianity was based on a historic strategy that both made history and wrote history. (6) Moreover, early Christians were largely bilingual, and able to accept sophisticated texts, read them with understanding, and pass them along to others. (7) Even in its early stages, those who joined the new Christian movement entered an educated world of language and thought. (8) We should thus presuppose a relatively high intellectual level in the early Christian congregations, for a comparison with Greco-Roman religion, local cults, the mystery religions, and the Caesar cult indicates that early Christianity was a religion with a very high literary production that included critical reflection and refraction.

The narrow dating of some of the early New Testament papyri and the methodological approach that is used must be brought into question in the light of the acknowledged difficulties with palaeographical dating and especially the use of assigned dated literary papyri. The thesis of this paper is that the way forward in dating New Testament papyri, or for that matter any undated literary papyri, is first to locate the manuscript in its graphic stream and using, on the whole, dated documentary papyri belonging to the same stream, come to an approximate understanding of where in the history of the stream the manuscript lies. The following New Testament Papyri will be so treated: P52, P67+ and P46.

Traditional Protestant accounts of Paul's theology are often criticized for their inability to relate justification by faith and the participatory categories of Paul's thought. The two are driven apart by sharp distinctions between declaring and making righteous, between justification as a once for all external act and regeneration as an internal lifelong process. The way is left open for justification to be treated as a legal fiction. Contrary to popular misconceptions, these difficulties do not stem from Martin Luther. In his exegesis of Paul, Luther intimately connects justification by faith and participation in Christ, integrating the two effectively. This article explores the manner in which Luther does so, evaluating his exegetical conclusions and assessing their relevance for contemporary attempts to interpret Paul's theology.

When Paul employs the motif of oneness in 1 Corinthians 12 and joins it to the metaphor of Christ's body, he is drawing not only on Greco-Roman political rhetoric, as argued by the majority of interpreters, but also, and at times more directly, from theological wells found within his Jewish theological heritage: the use of the phrase ‘one body’ in 1 Corinthians is an ecclesial application of the Shema. Paul's oneness language expresses not simply a call to internal unity or social harmony. Ultimately, the ecclesial designation ‘one’ is a succinct articulation of an ecclesiology of Christological monotheism.

In recent years, a number of New Testament and early Christian scholars have begun to use cognitive science approaches in their work. In this paper, I situate those efforts within the larger framework of the changing humanities, and the increased interest among humanistic scholars and social scientists in drawing on the growing body of knowledge on the cognitive and evolutionary roots of human thinking and behaviour. I also suggest how cognitive historiography can be helpful in shedding new light on issues discussed by New Testament scholars, by elaborating a case study: an analysis of the rite introduced by John the Baptist.

Die größten Schwierigkeiten bei dem Versuch, 2 Kor als einheitlichen Brief zu lesen, bieten zum einen der Kontextbezug und die unpaulinischen Züge von 6.14–7.1, zum anderen der Anschluss der Kap. 10–13 an den vorangehenden Kontext. Getrennt haben diese beiden Fragen bisher keine überzeugende Lösung gefunden. Die hier vertretene These lautet: Die beiden Schwierigkeiten bedingen sich gegenseitig, denn der Textabschnitt 6.14–7.1 stellte ursprünglich die jetzt fehlende Verbindung zwischen den Kap. 1–9 und 10–13 her und wurde sekundär von dort an seine jetzige Stelle versetzt. Wird diese Versetzung rückgängig gemacht, der Text also zwischen Kap. 9 und 10 eingefügt, erhält er einen klaren Kontextbezug; andererseits entsteht ein sinnvoller Übergang von 1–9 zu 10–13. Es lässt sich plausibel erklären, wie und warum der Text aus seiner ursprünglichen Kontextstellung gelöst und an seiner jetzigen Stelle eingefügt wurde.

Es soil nicht nur die allgemeine, religionsgeschichtliche Frage gestellt werden, wie weit Paulus faktisch in der Tradition der jüdischen Weisheit steht. Die Frage soil präzisiert werden: Wie geht Paulus aktiv mit dieser Weisheit um, indem er ihre Methoden verwendet, ihre Gedanken verarbeitet, im Stil der Weisheit literarisch gestaltet? Vielleicht ergeben sich aus dieser Fragestellung Gesichtspunkte für ein Urteil in dem immer noch offenen Streit darüber, wie das sachliche Zentrum seiner Theologie zu bestimmen sei: Ist er der Theologe der Rechtfertigung, hellenistischer Mystiker, apokalyptischer Pneumatiker oder in einem allgemeineren Sinne theologischer Weisheitslehrer? Umstritten sind: die Struktur seiner Eschatologie, das Verhältnis von Eschatologie und Heilsgeschichte, Eschatologie und Ethik, Soteriologie und Ethik usw. Vor allem: 1st seine Theologie wirklich als ‘Anthropologie’ zu bestimmen (Bultmann) oder ist sie primär Entwurf eines (eschatologisch bestimmten) Weltbildes bzw. Geschichtsbildes?

In 1892 Adolf Harnack, writing on the relation of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, posed the question in these words: ‘What is the aim of the Gospel, what is the aim of the Prologue? Are these aims identical or is the Prologue really an introduction to the Gospel?… Is it the key to understanding the Gospel?’ My aim in this paper is to consider once again this question of the function of these opening verses. What did the author – or redactor – of the gospel aim to achieve by beginning his book in this way?

You may be surprised at the first term in my topic: ontology. Should a biblical interpreter deal with such a topic? Is he obliged to clarif the ontological assertions and assumptions of the biblical writers? From our colleagues in other disciplines we hear differing answers to this question. Some philosophers demand from us greater concern with ontology. Others warn us against such concern. Still other philosophers, absorbed in the discoveries of linguistic analysis, repudiate even for themselves the legitimacy of ontological statements. Whether it is encouragement or discouragement that we receive from our academic colleagues, it must be admitted that few biblical scholars are willing to venture into this realm.

Das traditionelle christliche Bild des Täufers ist geprägt durch religiöse Volkskunde und Feömmigkeitsgeschichte, die aufgrund der unseligen ‘Zergegnung’ zwischen Christen und Juden durch die Jahrhunderte hindurch bis zum Holocaust von antijüdischen Stereotypen bestimmt sind. Je ausgeprägter die Christologie, um so unmiβverständlicher ist die theologische Degradierung oder Enterbung in Form der Vereinnahmung, etwa wenn man Johannes den Täufer aufgrund von Mt 11.11 (‘Amen, das sage ich euch: Unter alien, die von einer Frau geboren sind, trat keiner auf, der gröβer ist als Johannes der Täufer’) als ersten überregionalen Heiligen der christlichen Kirche in Ost und West verehrte. Oder: Wer erinnert sich nicht an den Johannes auf dem Isenheimer Altar des Matthias Grünewald, wo der langgestreckte Zeigefinger des Täufers überdeutlich seine heilsgeschichtlich-hinweisende, unter-geordnete Rolle festlegt.

Das im vergangenen Jahr verstorbene Mitglied unserer Gesellschaft, der verehrte holländische Kollege Willem Cornelis van Unnik – mit meinem Lehrer Gerhard Delling in Halle verbunden durch das gemeinsame Projekt des Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti – hat es bei einer Gastvorlesung in Halle am 17. 11. 1966 als eine wichtige Aufgabe der Exegese beschrieben, ‘daß wir die Botschaft mit den Ohren eines Menschen des I. Jahrhunderts hören’ und dabei ‘dem Widerstand, den die christliche Predigt erregte, auf die Spur… kommen’. Man kann auch sagen, es gehe darum, das von Paulus gegebene Stichwort von der μωρία der Kreuzesbotschaft in den Ohren der ‘Heiden’ (I. Kor. 1. 23) mit dem seiner Zeit entsprechenden, also ‘synchronen’ Inhalt zu füllen. Wir dürfen den Prozeß der Ausbreitung des Evangeliums nicht ausschließlich von der Seite der Verkündigung und der Verkündigenden und ihrer Voraussetzungen her sehen, sondern müssen auch die andere Seite, die der Empfänger, in Betracht ziehen, etwa im Sinne der Fragestellung, die Wayne A. Meeks seinen soziologischen Erwägungen über die paulinischen Gemeinden zugrundelegt: ‘What was it like to become and to be an ordinary Christian in the first century?’ – wobei wir uns sofort dessen bewußt sein müssen, daß ‘this simplest of questions receives only vague and stammering replies’.

The recent interest in social memory theories among NT scholars promises a new framework for the study of the social dynamics reflected in the Gospels. This essay employs Eviatar Zerubavel's ‘sociomental typography’ of the ‘sociobiographical memory’ in order to conceptualize the contours of the Sitz im Leben of the Gospel of Matthew. The perspective of social memory as described by Zerubavel reveals the mnemonic character of the Sitz im Leben and discloses how those participating in it related to and used the Gospel of Mark, identified with the scribal traits of the Matthean disciples, cherished Peter, and situated themselves in history.

The much greater similarity of Colossians and Ephesians to each other than of either to any other Pauline letter has been recognized since the beginning of the historical critical movement, and been seen to require explanation. In this paper we shall be concerned to examine only the purely literary aspect of the problem of their relationship leaving aside their theological similarities and dissimilarities; nor shall we attempt to draw theological conclusions from our discussion of individual phrases or verses. To do this would require setting them in their context in Ephesians and vastly increase the length of the paper.

In recent research, the claim has been made that Paul's statements about the law in Galatians are often misread from the perspective of the post-reformation law/gospel debate. The thesis of this article is that Galatians has also suffered from a different kind of misreading, that is a reading from a specific perspective of the Corinthian correspondence and which mistakenly assumes that the main issue in Galatians is a defense of Paul's apostolic authority. It will be argued that the main focus is on the nature of Paul's gospel and, therefore, on the theological basis on which it rests. For this purpose, a number of arguments will be presented relating to the function of Gal 1. 10–11 and 2. 20, both critical transitions in the structure of the letter. These arguments are based on a pragmatic analysis of the letter as a whole, which cannot be discussed here in any detail. It should be stressed, however, that for the determining of the rhetorical function of any subsection of the letter, an analysis of the entire text as a communicative unity is essential. Therefore it is necessary to explain certain methodological implications of the approach which will be followed here.

Pauline studies have long dealt with the theology (and sometimes the ethics) of Paul and the career of the apostle to the Gentiles. Lesser attention has been given to the communities of Paul. When Victor Furnish's Forschungsbericht took up ‘the Pauline congregations’, as part of what he termed an ‘overdue refocusing’, the emphases were on (1) relations with Jewish Christianity; (2) Paul's opponents; and (3) social history. The first area still often reflects hypotheses of the Tübingen School; the second, conflicts with rampant Judaizers or Gnostics or both as the opposition. Social world research looks to accumulate descriptive data from antiquity or also to use some modern sociological theory, to interpret Pauline church life and structures.

Galatians 5.11 refers to Paul ‘proclaiming circumcision’—a proposition that he is concerned to refute because he constructs two compact but powerful inferences designed to falsify it. One argues from present persecution, the other from the cross. Following a precise reconstruction of these it can be shown that the three main previous interpretations of the reference of Paul's ‘proclamation of circumcision’ are dubious, whether in terms of a blatantly false charge by opponents, a phase in Paul's pre-Christian Jewish life, or an occasional apostolic mission to Jews. A fourth, embarrassing reading is more likely, especially when other comparable missionary work is considered. Early on Paul proclaimed a fully law-observant gospel to pagans that included circumcision, but then later revised his praxis.