Cambridge people, incorrigible as they are, like to sing the praises of Cambridge. Sharing this obligation I select a subject that may be in tune with this theme. As a New Testament man I do not have to compass land and sea in order to find an association. What may fairly be described as a unique challenge given by Cambridge to New Testament studies is to be found in the University library. It is what may be called the pericope Cantabrigiensis, the addition to Luke 6. 4 in the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, which runs as follows: On the same day he saw someone working on the Sabbath and said to him: man, if you know what you are doing, you are blessed, if you do not know, you are cursed and a law-breaker (τυτ ⋯μέρᾳ θεασάμενός, τιναᾳγαζόμενον τ σαββάτ επεναυτ ἅνθρωπε ε μįν οδας τί ποιεις, μακάριος ε ε δį μεοįδας, ᾳπικατάρατος κᾳι παραβάτης ε τοū νόμον).

Anyone who wants to say something about the earliest Christian use of Christos should start with the oldest written sources: the (genuine) letters of Paul.

1.1.1. Paul's use χριοτòς has been set out convincingly by N. A. Dahl1 and W. Kramer.2 The apostle uses the term very frequently: 270 out of the 531 occurrences of the word in the New Testament are found in the genuine letters of Paul.3 He also uses it in combinations with other words: Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ the Lord; but never in the combination κúρως χριτóς.4 Certain patterns can be recognized in the use of Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus and also in the use of the article with χριτóςbut nowhere with a clear difference in meaning.5 Dahl says: χριτóς is never a general term; the word is also never used as a predicate. Paul never feels the necessity to state ‘Jesus is the Christ’; a genitive is never added (Paul does not use χριτòς κυριου or related expressions) and also Ίηιοṽςò Χριιτóς is not found.6

The present paper originates from a conviction that the famous confession of the apostle Paul concerning his principles of evangelism in I Cor. ix has not been fully evaluated. In igio Johannes Weiss commented: ‘Für die Beurteilung der Persönlichkeit und religiösen Stellung des Paulus ist dies em (viel zu wenig gewürdigtes) Dokument ersten Ranges’, and his remark still holds good.

The words ⋯ βδελνσσóμενος τ⋯ εἴδωλα ἱεροσνλεῖς; have given constant trouble, as translations show. They appear in a subordinate passage but they deserve attention. The immediate context is clear. It appears that God will punish sinners of every race and culture, but those subject to the Law of Moses will be judged by that Law (Rom 2.12). It is not a nullity. Nevertheless the Judgment will apply a law of conscience to all, including them (Rom 2.15–16).

Die Täuferüberlieferung der Evangelien steht nicht am Rande. Das gilt sonderlich für Matthäus und Lukas, die über Markus hinaus eine breitere Wortüberlieferung kennen. Dabei handelt es sich vor allem urn zwei Komplexe: die Täuferreden Mt 3 par Lk 3 und das an die Johannesfrage anschließende Urteil Jesu über den Täufer Mt 11.2–19 par Lk 7.18–35. Die weitgehende Parallelität der Überlieferung wird gemeinhin damit begrüindet, daß beide Evange-listen aus Q schöpfen. Eher ist aber an literarische Abhangigkeit von Matthäus zu denken. Daß Lukas das Matthäusevangelium kennt und literarisch benutzt, habe ich schon an anderem Ort dargelegt. Da sich diese These nicht allgemeiner Anerkennung erfreut, soil sie am Beispiel der Täuferüberlieferung weiter erhärtet werden. Das Gewicht der Täuferüberlieferung im Lukasevangelium zeigen schon die Kindheitserzählungen in den ersten beiden Kapiteln. Hier werden Johannes und Jesus in überbietender Parallelität einander zugeordnet. Auf eine solche überbietende Paralellität stoßen wir auch in dem viel diskutierten Vers Lk 16. 16, mit dem wir die Untersuchung beginnen.

Among the materials utilised to reinforce the cover of Codex VII from Nag Hammadi there are three inscribed papyrus fragments containing definite dates: a receipt dated 341 A.D., another of 346, and a deed of surety dated to 348. This provides a clear and unambiguous terminus a quo for the manufacture of this codex, although the fixing of a more precise date remains problematical. We do not know how long a receipt would be retained before it was discarded for use as scrap. As it happens, there is one case among the fragments from the cover of this codex in which the recipient of a letter has used the verso for a letter of his own. Neither however is dated, so that we do not know the interval between them. They therefore provide no help in this respect.

In September 1945 members of the Museum of Jewish Antiquities of the Hebrew University excavated a burial chamber near the Talpioth suburb of Jerusalem. The tomb, which was cut in soft limestone, was furnished with five loculi (kokhim) or burial recesses together with a number of ossuaries, that is small stone boxes containing the bones of corpses which had first been laid within the loculi and then transferred to such a box once the flesh had decomposed. Early rumours concerning the nature of these ossuaries gave rise to sensational press-reports of ‘what is believed to be an eye-witness account of the death of Christ’ which ‘may give first hand testimony to the trial and death of Jesus’. But it was not until 1947 that a comprehensive account of the finds was published by Dr E. L. Sukenik, the director of the excavations and the greatest living authority on ossuaries.

This research was started with the desire to ascertain whether in the papyri of Didymus1, which were discovered at Toura in 1941, and whose regular publication began in 1962 and is still continuing2, it was possible to discover some fresh evidence for the existence of a later Alexandrian text of the Gospels.

The existence of this text is taken for granted by manuals of textual criticism today. B. M. Metzger, for instance, states that Alexandrian witnesses are to be divided into Proto-Alexandrian [466675 B Sahidic (in part), Clement of Alexandria, Origen (in part)] and Later Alexandrian [(C) L T W (in Luke I. 1–8, 12 and John) (X) Z Δ (in Mark) Ξ ψ (in Mark; partially in Luke and John) 33 579 892 1241 Bohairic]3.

The letter addressed to the Christian Chruch in Colossae speaks to a definite situation of Christianity in Asia Minor. This situation is not known to us from direct reports, but has to be inferred from hints and allusions within the letter. Though an absolutely certain result cannot be attained in every respect, nevertheless a sufficiently clear picture emerges. From the polemical argument carried on in the second chapter of the letter one can gather a whole series of catch-words and themes which were used by a group that worked their way into the congregation and offered it a new teaching. What sort of a teaching was it, and why does it present such a dangerous threat to a congregation which wants to remain true to the apostolic Gospel?

The story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11.1–44) is one of the most dramatic and impressive of the compositions in the Fourth Gospel. For this very reason it raises a host of problems for the biblical critic. There can be no dispute that it has a theological purpose which dominates the whole narrative. This is clearly set out in the first words attributed to Jesus: ‘This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it’ (v. 4). The same point is referred to again just before the climax of the narrative in v. 40. But the more prominent the theological aim, the more difficult it becomes to view the narrative simply in terms of history. It must surely be the case that John has based his composition on a source, which was probably much simpler and briefer than the splendid story which it has become in his hands. But the source must be reconstructed before we can begin to think of it in historical terms. The modern tendency is to give up such attempts as hopeless, and to concentrate on the meaning of the text as it stands. But even that presents pitfalls to the critic. All seems well until we come to v. 33: ‘Jesus…was deeply moved in spirit (ένεβριμήσατο τῷ πνεύματι) and troubled.’ Unfortunately the Greek words do not mean ‘deeply moved in spirit’ (RSV). In his recent commentary on John in the Word Biblical Commentary, G. R. Beasley-Murray marshalls a great array of evidence to show that the meaning must be ‘became angry in spirit’. But why should Jesus be represented by John as angry? The effort to answer this question affects the interpretation of the whole story.

It has become almost a commonplace in New Testament scholarship to attribute to Christian prophets in the early Church a creative role in respect of sayings which the Gospel tradition presents as dominical utterances. The authority, among modern scholars, for this view is to be found in the formcritical analyses and conclusions of Rudolf Bultmann. Christian tradition, he affirms, took over certian Jewish materials and put them on the lips of Jesus (e.g. the Marcan Apocalypse): the Christian community also revised or reworked elements from older traditions (e.g. the interpretation of the Sign of Jonah in connection with the person of Jesus, Matt. xii. 40) and even formed logia which reflect its own interests and concerns. Such logia are ‘inauthentic’ (in the sense that they are not genuine dominical sayings) and, according to Bultmann, they may originally have gained currency as utterances of the Spirit in the Church, without their ascription to Jesus being initially intended. Sayings like Rev. xvi. 5 (in which the risen Christ speaks) and Rev. iii. 20 show clearly the process of the creation (or, reformulation) of such logia (den Prozeβ der Neubildung solcher Herrenworte). These sayings would only gradually (erst allmählich) have been regarded as prophetic words of the historical Jesus. ‘The Church drew no distinction between such utterances by Christian prophets and the sayings of Jesus in the tradition, for the reason that even the dominical sayings in the tradition were not the pronouncements of a past authority, but sayings of the risen Lord who is always a contemporary for the Church.’

In the second volume of their ICC commentary on Matthew, as they comment on the parable of the sower, W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison state that yields of thirty-fold, sixty-fold, or one hundred-fold ‘do not seem obviously out of the ordinary. We therefore register our disagreement with Jeremias. The yield in our parable is not spectacularly overdone.’ Davies and Allison are not alone in saying this of the yield of the seed that fell on the good soil in the parable, although most commentators do interpret the passage in terms of the miraculous yield of the seed sown on the good soil. This matter is of some importance in the interpretation of the parable, though, because if Davies and Allison are correct, then the parable has quite a different focus than that generally understood. The parable would then only highlight the variation in fruitage, not the miraculous yield.

An den Problemkreis ‘Paulus und Jesus’ kann man mit verschieden akzentuierten Fragestellungen herangehen. Aus primär traditionsgeschichtlich orientiertem Interesse wird erörtert, welche Teile der Jesusüberlieferung bei Paulus als bekannt vorauszusetzen sind. Eine vor allem theologisch ausgerichtete Aufmerksamkeit wendet sich vergleichend dem Zentrum der Verkündigung Jesu und der Botschaft des Paulus zu. In der vorliegenden Studie soll ergänzend versucht werden, das Verhalten Jesu und Pauli gegenüberstellend zu betrachten, und zwar unter dem für beide charakteristischen Aspekt des dienenden Verzichts.

The translation of Heb 3.14 has been a matter of dispute. The problem lies in the ambiguity of the Greek μἐτοχοι τον χριστον. Some, like Spicq, render the clause ‘we are partners with Christ’ in the sense of companionship. The meaning would be like that of τοὺς μἐόχους σου (‘your companions’) in 1.9. Others, such as Westcott, prefer ‘partakers of Christ’ in the sense of ‘having part in him’ as in the ἔπepsilon;ις μἐρôς μἐ’ ὲμον of John 13.8. Finally others, such as O. Michel, see in it an inclusive sense encompassing both companionship with and participation in Christ.

Les rouleaux de la Mer Morte ont ramené l'attention sur la connaissance des secrets apocalyptiques. D'aprés W. D. Davies, ces documents fourniraient le milieu littéraire dans lequel il faudrait situer Matt. xi. 25–30; on se contente plus souvent de faire le rapprochement avec la sagesse en mystére de saint Paul. Pourquoi ne pas songer ègalement au logion de Matt. xiii. II ‘A vous il est donné de connaître les secrets du Royaume des cieux’ avec ses parallèles Luc viii. 10 et Marc iv. II? On pourrait tenter l'interprétation de cette parole du Christ dans l'atmosphère des révélations apocalyptiques.