The saying in Matthew 9.37–8 and Luke (Q) 10.2 reads as follows: ‘He said to his disciples: The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. So ask the Lord of the harvest to dispatch workers into his harvest’. The present study attempts to illuminate this logion by considering its setting in first-century Palestine. The focus here is not on the logion's possible metaphorical application, but on the literal saying, which involves ancient agriculture.

Onomastic congruence (a feature defined in this article) is characteristic of historiographic biographies from the Early Empire. The Synoptic Gospels display onomastic congruence, as well as conservatism in their treatment of names. The preservation of names, especially those centred around key roles and events, suggests that some names may have been preserved in the oral archives of early Christian communities to footnote living eyewitness sources, paralleling historiographical situations.

The title σωτήρ, ‘saviour’, is bestowed on Christ and God in the New Testament and rendered in the Latin translations by conseruator, saluificator, salutificator, salutaris and saluator. Although these terms convey the same meaning, they are not interchangeable: this study argues that conseruator, which is the most frequent word for saviour on imperial coins, is rarely attested in the Latin versions because of its association with the imperial cult. The predominant translation, saluator, was coined as an alternative rendering to the other words which had religious and political connotations.

Most scholars assume that 1 Timothy 3.16b is a hymn, or a fragment of a hymn, belonging to another context. However, Furley (1995) points out that even the ancients had difficulty categorising their poetic materials. 1 Timothy 3.16b has no metre and neither praises God nor asks him for benefits, which are the usual indicators of a hymn. This article argues that 1 Timothy 3.16b was written by the writer for insertion into the letter, and it was intended to be used in his congregation as a bulwark (1 Tim 3.15) against his opponents. 1 Timothy 3.16b more closely resembles an epigram, normally written to accompany an epiphany of a god.

In the course of the transmission of the text of the New Testament variants in the text emerged many times and in different ways. This article shows the importance of the study of corrections in the course of building theories about the emergence of specific variants. It presents some exemplary results of the examination of corrections of a few manuscripts of Acts. The article shows that examining all the corrections in a work in an individual manuscript can give important hints on the emergence of specific variants because it allows to make judgement about the character of the copying and the correcting.

Simon Magus is a key figure in the earliest apocryphal Acts of Peter. He is a sorcerer and confidant of the emperor who clashes with Peter and, in later apocryphal texts, with both Peter and Paul. However, this is not simply the villain of the Acts of the Apostles. In this article I will argue that the apocryphal Simon is a composite figure drawn substantially, but not necessarily wholly, from the Simon of Acts 8 and the Elymas/Bar-Jesus figure who opposes Paul in Acts 13.

The Johannine commandment of love aims not only in an ethical-ecclesial sense at the cohesion in the church, but in a mission-theological sense at the winning of new church members. Jn 15.1–17 explains how the mutual immanence of God, Jesus and his disciples enables his followers to gain new fruit in the sense of new church members through mutual love. This continues the christological-ecclesial interpretation of Jesus’ foot-washing from John 13. The symbolic action illustrates how Jesus’ mission leads to the foundation of a community of disciples as a community of love, which becomes the place where the love of God can be permanently experienced (13.1–20, 34–5). The disciples are commissioned to make love present in the world. They are equal among themselves in their immediacy to Jesus, as members of the community of discipleship. A mission-theological use of the harvest metaphor is already found prominently in John 4.35–8 and 12.24–6 and thus in two texts, each of which describes the mission of the followers in correspondence to the mission of Jesus. The vine metaphor deepens that and how Jesus’ followers are to contribute to the enlargement of the community of followers even after his departure, whereby the pre-Easter community of followers is the model for the post-Easter community.

The article analyses the Epistle to the Galatians with regard to textual elements that can be related to language or political performances in the imperium Romanum. To this end, political interpretations in research are first presented and critically discussed: the alleged persecution in Gal 6.12; gods, elements and the calendar in Gal 4.8–10; and the νόμος as Roman law. In a second step, political models of language and thought from the Roman imperial period in the Epistle to the Galatians are considered: the ‘present evil age’ in Gal 1.4; the idea of a new world-view through the concepts of the ‘Gospel’ and the ‘Son of God’; the cross of Christ as a break from the world; the turn of the ages in Gal 4.1–7; the new community according to Gal 3.28. A conclusion summarises the resulting new world-view and its consequences.

Several recent studies have proposed that according to Paul gentiles join Abraham's lineage in a quasi-physiological way by being infused with material πνɛῦμα. This article assesses that proposal, finding it to be an inaccurate description of Paul's language and rationale, and sets forth an alternative proposal based on Romans 4 and Paul's descriptions of baptism. This alternative proposal is that Paul understood the forging of an Abrahamic and divine pedigree for gentiles to be a divine act of creation from nothing, that is concomitant with believers’ proleptic death and resurrection in solidarity with the messiah.

This article defends the salience of situating Christ worship in the context of urban neighbourhoods and identifies some historical problems in conceptualising belonging at that level of society, akin to similar work on other levels of society such as the household and polis. An ekklēsia or collegium is, like all neighbourhood structures, capable of fostering or delimiting social interactions among neighbours who identify differently. A case study of 1 Cor 14.22–5 illustrates how Paul's model ekklēsia functioned in the context of the neighbourhood, and considers the impact of adding the ekklēsia to the street on which it was located.

The Gospel of Thomas (GThom) is a collection of sayings, most of which come with the stereotypical introduction ‘Jesus said: …’ The GThom thus looks like a loose collection of disparate material. However, several sayings in the collection are introduced by ‘He said: …’, thus omitting explicit reference to Jesus as the speaker. This points to greater (narrative) coherence: when the speaker's name is missing in a logion, the logion depends on the surrounding context and ceases to be a self-contained unit. This article views the GThom as a sayings collection on the way to becoming a literary composition titled ‘The Gospel according to Thomas’.

First Peter 1.3–2.10 weaves a new familial and ethnic identity for believers through a complex series of interlocking metaphors. How does this identity influence the ethical exhortation beginning in 2.11? The current article argues that an answer is found in the Greco-Roman structures of exemplarity. First, the article identifies four explicit markers of exemplarity discourse in 1 Peter: ὑπογραμμός (2.21), the footsteps idiom (2.21), the term ἀντίτυπος (3.21) and the term τύποι (5.3). Next, it surveys how exemplarity functioned in the Greco-Roman world. Greek and Roman literature demonstrate a clear preference for domestic exempla. Similarly, as a new family and ethnic group, Christian believers require new exempla suited to their new Christian identity. In this light, 1 Peter's ethical instruction can be more deeply appreciated. Finally, this article investigates how exemplarity dynamics illuminate Jesus as exemplar par excellence in 1 Peter. First Peter depicts Jesus’ passion with language of the Isaianic suffering servant (2.22–5). Jesus’ exemplarity is given to slaves, who are implicitly held up as models for all believers. Exemplarity thus draws its strength from the past (the suffering servant, Jesus) as it challenges those in the present and future (slaves, all believers) to become like these models.

Jesus’ hyperbolic saying that ‘it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven’, present in the synoptic tradition (Matt 19.24; Mark 10.25; Luke 18.25), has long been subject to the suggestion that the ‘eye of a needle’ does not refer to an actual needle but is the name of a small gate in the Jerusalem wall. Today, most biblical scholars are convinced that this theory is incorrect, but no study identifies the sources of the error and traces the history of this myth. This note focuses on tracking the origins of the flaw and points specifically to the sources of the misconception that the term ‘eye of a needle’ should not be taken literally.

The earliest note that mentions a gate called the ‘eye of a needle’ seems to be a gloss attributed to Anselm of Canterbury (11th cent.). This gloss can be found in the thirteenth-century work of Thomas Aquinas Catena aurea. What is false, however, is the oft-repeated belief that the source of the information is the eleventh-century Gospel Commentary of Theophylact.

In 1963, New Testament Studies published an article by Pierson Parker in which he argued that the commonalities of the Third and Fourth Gospels result from direct contact between their respective authors. This article strengthens Parker's case. It highlights additional patterns of commonality between the two Gospels. It demonstrates that these areas of commonality align with events in the Fourth Gospel allegedly experienced by the Beloved Disciple. It considers the best explanation of this phenomenon.

In this article I catalogue and analyse every form of the title – inscriptions, subscriptions and kephalaia – that appears in the New Testament papyri, bringing together this material for the first time. The titles provide new evidence for examining questions related to traditions of entitling in antiquity more broadly and offer a space to consider the dynamic relationships between medium, materiality, book-forms, paratextuality and interpretation, both in antiquity and in our own scholarly culture that stands between print and digital forms. The material also highlights interesting divergences in labelling strategies between the titles of works in the various New Testament sub-corpora and suggests that the kat’ andra formula is not the only way to entitle a Gospel.

This is the second part of a two-part article focused on a fragmentary parchment codex, whose three extant leaves, designated in Leo Depuydt's catalogue as P.MorganLib. 265, are housed at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. These fragments bear witness to 1 Cor 2.12–3.18; 7.16–30; 15.3–30 in the ‘classical’ variety of Fayyūmic Coptic (dialect F5). The first part of this article was published in NTS 68 (2022) 89–104. In the second part, I discuss the witnesses to the Fayyūmic version (fa) of First Corinthians, the relationship between fa and the Bohairic version (bo), and the text-critical value of the variant readings attested in P.MorganLib. 265. This is followed by the editio princeps of the manuscript, notes on the Coptic text, an English translation and images.

This article, originally presented as the presidential address at the 2021 SNTS meeting, held virtually via Leuven due to Covid-19 conditions, investigates the nature of Pauline interpretation, past and present. It brings into the scholarly conversation a neglected ancient source, John Chrysostom's occasional homily on 1 Cor 7.2–4 (Hom. 1 Cor. 7–4 (CPG 4377)), and provides an analysis of key passages showing how the late antique orator-bishop seeks to turn Paul's words from the fifties to Corinth into a magical incantation, and, as inscribed on various materials, a talisman against the evils associated with porneia. The article concludes with defence of the category ‘Christian love magic’ and an argument that New Testament studies constitutes a unified field which should unite (rather than separate out) the work of philology, historical contextualisation, literary criticism, humanistic commitments and hermeneutical sophistication as we trace and analyse the ways human agents construct meanings with New Testament texts, then and now.

It has been often suggested that Paul's escape from Damascus (2 Cor 11.32–3) alludes to the corona muralis, a Roman military award originally given to the first soldier to surmount the enemy wall during a siege. This article evaluates this hypothesis, employing an extensive range of ancient references to the corona muralis to determine where relevant passages from Second Corinthians (10.3–5; 11.30–3) may signal an allusion to the corona muralis.

The Synoptic Gospels contain a significant number of so-called doublets, i.e. sayings or narratives which appear twice in one and the same Gospel. Since the nineteenth century these doublets have functioned as a classical argument in favour of the existence of Q. Focusing on treatments of Luke's doublets within the contemporary rivalry between the Farrer hypothesis and the two-document hypothesis, the present article contributes to a not-Q-biased discussion of the evidence. While adherents of the two-document hypothesis should not overestimate the force of doublet-based arguments, defenders of the Farrer hypothesis should pay greater attention to the creation and elimination of doublets as part of Luke's alleged redactional activity.

This is the first part of a two-part article focused on a fragmentary parchment codex, whose three extant leaves, designated in Leo Depuydt's catalogue as P.MorganLib. 265, are housed at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. These fragments bear witness to 1 Cor 2.12–3.18; 7.16–30; 15.3–30 in the ‘classical’ variety of Fayyūmic Coptic (dialect F5). Most of these verses have been hitherto unattested in Fayyūmic and thus allow us to attain better insight into the history and text of the Coptic Bible. In the first part of this article, I discuss the codicology of P.MorganLib. 265, its linguistic features, provenance and date.