The agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (as we usually describe it in English, in typically eclectic fashion, for the agony comes from Luke, the garden from John, and Gethsemane from Mark and Matthew) holds an important place within the Passion narrative. But what is that place? There are strong grounds for holding that the original Passion narrative which lies behind the Marcan and Matthean records began with the arrest of Jesus; the same is probably true of Luke, and very possibly of the Fourth Gospel also. The Gethsemane scene stands outside, or on the fringe of, such primitive Passion narratives, and in certain respects does not accord well with them; it may well be, as Bultmann,2 Kuhn3 and others have supposed, that it was adopted into the Passion narrative at a fairly late stage and inserted between the story of the Last Supper (itself not an integral part of the primitive Passion narrative) and the arrest, If this be so, we must ask to what extent, and in what way, the introduction of the Gethsemane scene into the Passion story and the handling of it within that context reflect the theologies of the evangelists of their immediate predecessors.

Bishop Butler, in the Advertisement to the first edition of his Analogy of Religion, says with reference to the subject of his book: ‘It is come to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious.’ It is with a similar awareness that I am going against the tide of general opinion that I embark upon my present theme, and I could only wish that the similarity which I presume to claim between myself and that acute and learned bishop went further than that. For this paper is designed, in the fond and partial judgement which every parent has for his offspring, to contribute to a reopening of the question of the historical truth of some of the narrative portions of the Fourth Gospel. Such a subject may well appear not only exhausted but (a far graver condemnation) old-fashioned, so as to be no longer ‘so much as a subject of inquiry’. This is why I wish I shared the robust confidence of Bishop Butler in the soundness of his thesis, and could go on to say with him, ‘On the contrary, thus much, at least, will be here found, not taken for granted, but proved, that any reasonable man, who will thoroughly consider the matter, may be as much assured, as he is of his own being, that it is not, however, so clear a case, that there is nothing in it. There is, I think, strong evidence of its truth; but it is certain no one can, upon principles of reason, be satisfied of the contrary.’ For my own part, I make no claim to proof, but nevertheless hope that I may at least put forward some considerations such as to induce some who are of the contrary opinion to reconsider the questions I shall put before you.

Während die lukanische Kindheitsgeschichte im ganzen recht zusammenhängend konzipiert erscheint, weist ihr matthäisches Gegenstück zahlreiche Widersprüche und Ungereimtheiten auf. Dies gilt besonders für die im zweiten Kapitel geschilderten Vorgänge. Ohne plausible Erklärung bleiben z.B. das verhängnisvolle Zusammentreffen der Magier mit Herodes und die merkwürdigen Himmelsbewegungen des Wundersterns. Engelserscheinungen im Traum dienen wiederholt dazu, entscheidende Handlungsmomente notdürftig zu motivieren. Doch in der Situation nach dem Tode des Herodes versagt selbst diese Erzählfigur. Nachdem ein ἃγγελος κυρίου Josef versichert hat, die Verfolger des Kindes seien gestorben (2. 20), verläßt die Hl. Familie Ägypten und kehrt zurück in das ‘Land Israel’. In Judäa aber stellt sich heraus, daß die tödliche Gefahr nach wie vor besteht, denn nunmehr regiert dort Archelaus, ein Sohn des Herodes (2. 22).

L'éude des traditions patristiques et liturgiques relatives à la date de la Cène amène à examiner les témoignages anciens qui se rattachent au mercredi saint. Cet inventaire a permis de retrouver des textes qui n'avaient pas été signalés auparavant; on ne peut naturellement assurer qu'il soit exhaustif.

This article seeks to explain Matthew's description of Joseph as righteous (δίκαιος) by investigating Matt 1.18–25 within its ancient context, especially Judean practices of marriage and divorce as illuminated by Judean legal papyri from the Dead Sea region in the first and second centuries ce and from the Judean politeuma of Herakleopolis in the mid-second century bce. The examination will demonstrate the importance of these papyri for understanding the narrative in Matt 1.18–25 in its original social setting where honour was a dominant value, especially the extent to which it reveals Joseph to be an exemplar of Matthean righteousness.

The Augustan laws criminalising adultery and stuprum and promoting marriage and childrearing not only intruded into the family lives of citizens (including freedpersons and their descendants) but also made marital probity central to moral and political discourse in the first century. This was true not only for imperial figures like Seneca and Musonius Rufus, but also for Jews and the earliest Christians. Considering Philo and Paul as interpreters of the sixth commandment (‘you shall not commit adultery’) illuminates the subtle but significant ways that the Roman matrix set the parameters within which they worked out their arguments. For Philo the ten commandments are heads or summaries of the legislation as whole; the sixth commandment (following the LXX) takes pride of place in the ‘second pentad’ because adultery is the greatest of injustices and is rooted in pleasure, the most fatal of passions. He reads the commandment expansively and through first-century constructions of sexuality. Comparison with Pseudo-Phocylides suggests that Philo did not originate these positions, but shares them with other first-century interpreters. Paul also is concerned with summarising the law; he cites the sixth commandment in Romans, where he grants it first place in the second pentad, and reads it as prohibiting all unions and acts that contravened good sexual mores. But for Paul, the sixth commandment is no longer a guide for the blind; it is never cited when he advises his communities on sexual morality. Instead it supports his argument for freedom from the law in Christ.

Les premiers chrétiens recoururent aux noms et aux nombres pour organiser leur pensée théologique. Ce faisant, ils poursuivaient une habitude ancrée aussi bien dans la réflexion philosophique grecque que dans les Écritures hébraïques. Sans développer une ontologie du langage, ils articulaient les mots et les chiffres sur la réalité, laissant à Dieu la responsabilité des équivalences. Le nom de Dieu et le nom de Jésus constituaient, à leurs yeux, le noyau de leur confession de foi.

This article discusses two characteristics of the Jewish-Christian source in Recognitions 1.27–71, namely its fierce opposition to sacrifices and its emphasis on the historical ties between the Jews and the land of Judea. There is reason to think that this document expresses the reaction of Jewish-Christians of Judaea to the disaster of the Bar-Kokhba uprising. On the one hand, they considered the military defeat and its consequences as a divine punishment for the rebels’ attempt to renew the sacrificial cult; and, on the other hand, they fought the paganisation of Judea by defending the historical right of the Jews to possess this land.

In an infamous passage in his Letter to the Galatians (2.11–14), Paul called out Peter as a ‘hypocrite’. This passage, especially when read in light of Paul's own appeal to himself as ‘all things to all people’ in 1 Cor 9.19–23, was to cause deep trouble for later Christian interpreters, who sought to defend their movement against charges from outsiders that it had a cracked and unstable foundation in dual ‘hypocrites’. This essay will introduce this ‘pagan’ critique and the cultural force it had, and the various solutions to the inherited dilemma from their scriptures that were offered by patristic authors (Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine). In light of this context, we turn to a sustained analysis of an untranslated homily by John Chrysostom, hom. in Gal 2.11 (In faciem ei restiti), which addresses not just the hypocrisy of Peter and Paul, but also the sticky problem of the hypocrisy of the Christian who reads this text approvingly as Paul's ‘in your face’ to Peter. Chrysostom does this by engaging in a convoluted pretence of his own.

The logion of Matt 11.27 (// Luke 10.22) – ‘All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ – has long been considered a ‘Johannine meteorite in the Synoptic sky’ and, after fierce exegetical battles, a sort of ‘foreign body’ in both Matthean and Lukan theological projects. This paper intends to question this assumption on the basis of recent works both on the historical Jesus and on Synoptic theology. It suggests that this verse not only fits very well with the theological and literary project of the Synoptics’ authors but can also shed some light on Jesus’ theology of creation. The way Jesus articulates his own special relationship to ‘his father’ with the human relationship of God's children to ‘their father’ is coherent with the theology implied by this logion.

The speeches in Acts continue to arouse a variety of opinions; however, there is almost universal agreement that the style of the speeches belongs to Luke rather than to the persons to whom the speeches are attributed. This seems like a reasonable enough position given the convention among ancient historians to provide a précis of speeches rather than a verbatim transcription. However, Dibelius in his seminal essay on the speeches took Lukan style to be an indication of his unreliability: ‘Admittedly the speeches do, on the whole, reflect his (Luke's) style as regards vocabulary and phraseology; and it is this very fact which must constantly lead us to doubt their authenticity.’

Matt 5. 27–32, from the Sermon on the Mount, and Mark 9. 42–10.12 are passages that contain similar material, although neither is directly dependent on the other. Both have sayings that deal with ‘offences’ caused by certain body members (the verb used is σκανδαλίζω), and both contain a version of Jesus' prohibition of divorce. Between these two passages and a third, b. Nid. 13b, from the Babylonian Talmud, there also exist several similarities. Despite this intriguing configuration of materials, which might indicate that all three passages are dependent on a common set of traditions, scholars have approached these texts from a very different perspective. Those who posit a connection between the synoptic and the rabbinic materials do so only with respect to Matt 5, never Mark 9; and several scholars have instead sought parallels to the synoptic passages in Hellenistic gnomic literature, disregarding or ignoring the rabbinic material altogether. In the present study I intend to challenge the validity of these approaches and propose that there is indeed a common set of traditions to which all three of these texts are indebted. I will begin my investigation by highlighting three peculiarities of Mark 9. 42–48, and then posit a relation between this passage and b. Nid. 13b. Following this I will bring the material from Matt 5. 27–32 and Mark 9. 49–10. 12 into consideration. One of the results of this study, as I shall explain more thoroughly in the conclusion, will be the identification of a discussion on male sexuality that took place in Jewish and Christian circles sometime in the middle of the first century C.E

A magisterial and highly critical review by T. W. Manson of S. C. E. Legg's edition of Matthew in the J.T.S. of 1942 became a significant factor in causing the proposed series of critical apparatuses that was intended to cover the entire New Testament to be abandoned after only two volumes had been issued. Legg's edition of Mark had appeared in 1935, Matthew was the second volume to appear: the third volume (on Luke) was prepared but was not accepted for publication largely as a result of Manson's article.