My first words must be words of thanks for the great honour done to me in appointing me President of this Society for the year 1954–5 in succession to Professor Rudolf Bultmann. I also wish to express my deep regret that circumstances beyond my control prevent me from being present at Marburg to deliver the address in person.

hatte, überschätzt zu sein. Indessen läßt sich darüber streiten. Sodann scheint mir auch die Nachwirkung platonischer und stoischer Gedanken, die zweifellos wahrzunehmen ist, überschätzt zu sein. Das liegt z.T. daran, daß der Verf. das Corpus Hermeticum zu sehr als eine Einheit nimmt und die Analyse, die W. Bousset 1914 bei der Besprechung von Jos. Krolls ‘Lehren des Hermes Trism.’ in den Gött. Get. Anz. gegeben hat, nicht berücksichtigt, sowenig wie das genannte Buch von H. Jonas. So sind m.E. diejenigen Partien des C. Herm., die für das Verstandnis der joh.

This paper has been prompted by recent discussions of what is called ‘Demythologizing’. The movement which marches under that banner is important because its principal aim is to present Christianity to the modern mind in terms which will be more acceptable than those in which it has been traditionally clothed by Bible, Creed and Liturgy; and this is an aim which, whatever we may think of the method adopted for its pursuit, will be shared by all who have the Christian cause at heart. Those who believe the method to be mistaken are among the first to recognize the worth of the aim and feel all the more constrained in consequence to point to what they regard as a more excellent way.

Das so lange und heftig umkärnpfte Problem des Rechtes im Neuen Testament scheint mir deshaib nicht in fruchtbarer Weise angefalßt zu sein, weil die Partner dieses Gesprächs durchweg moderne Anschauungen und Verhältnisse für die Urchristenheit voraussetzen zu können meinten, gleichgültig ob sie deren Vorhandensein oder Fehien konstatierten. Aber mit moderner Fragestellung ist diesem Problem nicht letztlich und zentral beizukommen. Das eben entnehrne ich der Debatte, die in Deutschland hauptsächlich urn die Thesen von Rudolf Sohms 1892 erschienenen, aber noch heute bewegenden und faszinierenden Arbeit über das Kirchenrecht kreiste. Das Neue Testament selber bietet uns einen andern Ausgangspunkt. Denn es enthält in semen verschiedensten Teilen merkwürdig gebaute Aussagen, die ich vorläufig noch möglichst umfassend Sätze heiligen Rechtes nenne. Was zu soicher Bezeichnung führt und durch sie ausgedrückt werden soil, wird im folgenden schrittweise erarbeitet.

The New Testament conception of history goes back to that of the Old Testament; and this differs from the Greek conception of history. There are, of course, no such differences at primitive stages among all peoples. In the Orient as well as in Greece historical writing begins with chronological enumerations of important events and deeds of rulers and so on; and at the same time with myths and legends in poetical form and with stories. Real historical narrative arises when the stage of chronicle, myth and legend is left behind, and when a course of history begins to be presented as a unity, by the observation of the connexion of events and through reflection on the powers moving the course of events. That occurs when a people experiences the historical processes by which it is shaped into a nation or state.

Is it unfair to say that the ethical teaching of the N.T. is a step-child of scholarship? Over against ten books on N.T. theology one can hardly find one work on N.T. ethics. This holds good both for genera; surveys and for monographs. It goes without waying that the moral implications and consequences of the new faith are not absolutely neglected, but on the whole the doctrinal aspect has been stressed far more than th4e ethical. It is not my task at the present moment to explain this fact, but it did not seem out of place to call special attention to this ‘under-developed country’. Work in this part of the field is not at all superfluous. Therefore the discussion of a particular point in a paper for this general meeting will be fully justified.

Die einzige Stelle, an der in den bis jetzt veröffentlichten Texten der neuen Höhlenfunde vom Toten Meer vom Messias gesprochen wird, ist Sekt. 9, 10–11. Es heißt da: ‘Und sie (die Mitglieder der essenischen Gemeinde) sollen sich richten lassen durch die fruheren Rechtssatzungen, durch die die Leute der Gemeinde (schon) von Anfang an sich zurechtweisen ließen, bis zum Kommen eines Prop heten und der Cesaib ten (Messias) Aarons und Israels’ () Über das ‘Kommen eines Propheten’ wird weiter unten noch zu sprechen sein. Das Auffälligste an diesem Satz ist aber, dαβ das (eindeutig lesbare) Wort im Plural cstr. ‘die Gesalbten’ erscheint. Einige Übersetzer haben diesen Plural einfach als Schreibfehler erklärt und durch Streichung des Jod zum Singular emendiert. Aber es ist natürlich höchst bedenklich, die lectio difficillima des Plural so in den geläufigen Begriff ‘des Messias’ im Singular zu verwandeln. Auch der Vorschlag, das Jod als sog. Jod compaginis zu erklären, wie es gelegentlich im A.T. vorkommt, und auf diese Weise das singularische Verständnis zu erreichen, ist sprachlich nicht moglich. Denn es gibt in den neu gefundenen Texten sonst keiner Beleg fur ein solches Jod compaginis. Die Lesung des Wortes als Plural ‘die Gesalbten Aarons und Israels’ ist sprachlich nicht zu umgehen.

The close affinity in diction and style, and also in the association of ideas, between the first two chapters of the Gospel according to Luke and the great mass of ancient Hebrew literature—even occasionally actual verbal agreements with passages from the thirteenth chapter of Judges or from the story of Samuel's birth—might indicate, yet does not incontrovertibly prove, that the Greek record of Luke i, ii is ultimately derived from a Hebrew literary source. There is nothing inherently impossible in the idea that a Greek writer, thoroughly familiar with the literary character of the O.T. translation and desirous of proceeding with his own narration of the Birth and Boyhood of Jesus, could have intentionally and successfully imitated the style of the Greek Old Testament. He might have adopted Septuagintal mannerisms of phraseology in the belief that a Hebraizing style would be the appropriate means to evoke a congenial atmosphere for the setting of his story. We know from literary competitions in our own time that Englishmen of the twentieth century are capable of imitating convincingly the styles of Ronsard or Rabelais. What is possible for them today would not have been impossible, in his day, for the editor of Luke, who was a man of great literary accomplishment.

The publication of Dr Zuntz's Schweich Lectures of 1946, much enlarged in the interval, is an event of great interest and importance to New Testament scholars, not only to those engaged in the more technical aspects of textual criticism but to all expositors of the Pauline letters. As our author so rightly insists at the outset of his study, expounders of the New Testament must not be content to leave textual criticism to the experts, for ‘textual criticism and exegesis are not independent inseparable endeavours but two aspects of the same endeavour’. The theologian is bound to go astray either if he fails to keep a vital hold upon the text, or, as Zuntz also insists, if he is unwilling or unable to assume the role of philologist as well.

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.

I hope that no apology is necessary for the choice of a subject so closely akin to that of the Presidential Address by Professor William Manson last year.1 It was in fact that address which inspired the present paper. If any further justification is necessary for reverting to this theme I would remind you that a presidential address is by use and wont exempt from criticism, so that last year there was no opportunity for the discussion of a subject which should surely invite lively debate. Moreover, though Dr Manson in his address made occasional reference to Paul's thought, he deliberately confined himself in the main to the ‘Spiritual Background of the Work of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels’. Such promising exploration deserves to be followed up, for it is only with Paul that this background is filled in, in all its tremendous cosmic grandeur. As Dr Manson put it, the spirit world in Paul's thought ‘has taken on new dimensions and acquired a cosmic range and character’. Or again, whereas last year we were meeting the demonic powers ‘in the form of malignant and ghoulish beings, on the earth-level of popular demonic belief’, this year we are confronted by Paul's ‘grandiose hierarchy of cosmic spirits’. But my best justification is the sheer importance of this subject for the understanding of Paul's thought. As Professor J. S. Stewart has remarked in a notable article in the Scottish Journal of Theology (vol. IV, no. 3), we shall never get inside the mind of Paul until we take seriously what has in fact been ‘a neglected emphasis in New Testament Theology’, and cease to treat ‘as secondary and extraneous elements in the primitive Christian proclamation what in fact are integral and basic components of the Gospel’.

Our earliest undisputed authority for the authorship of each of the four Gospels is Irenaeus (III, I, I). ‘Matthew (cf. Matthaeus enim apostolus, Iren. III, 9, I) published a gospel in writing also among the Hebrews in their own tongue, while Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel and founding the church in Rome. But after their departure (death?) Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter (cf. Marcus interpres et sectator Petri, Iren. III, 10, 6) — he also transmitted to us in writing the things which Peter used to preach.

The character of Paul's conversion as it appeared to the convert is clear from his references in his letters. He experienced a sudden conversion which was effected, or at least accompanied, by a vision of the risen Christ, or, as he might have preferred to say, by an encounter with Jesus, alive, exalted and glorified. He had no doubt that the initiative was God's initiative. ‘God revealed His Son in my case’: in view of this phrase in Gal. i. 16, Goguel would take the earlier reference in v. 12, where Paul claims to have been taught his gospel ‘through the revelation of Jesus Christ’ as meaning that Jesus Christ was the object of the revelation.

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.

Papias is primarily of interest to us as the last link in a chain of oral tradition going back to the Apostles, and for the information—difficult as it sometimes is to interpret—which he preserved about Peter and Mark, Matthew, Philip, and the Elder John. We are profoundly thankful for his curiosity and for his belief ‘that things out of the books did not profit me so much as the utterances of a voice which liveth and abideth’, even if some of the oral traditions which he wrote down appear to us legendary, e.g. the report attributed to John, the disciple of the Lord, of the Lord's teaching on the material delights of Paradise, and the account which Papias gives of the death of Judas.

M. Vaganay's important book, Le Problème Synoptique (Desclée, 1954), offers a ‘working hypothesis’ of some complexity. He suggests, among other things, that each of our Synoptic Gospels is dependent on a lost Greek translation (Mg) of a lost Aramaic Gospel; that Luke is also heavily, and Matthew slightly, indebted to Mark; and that Matthew and Luke further shared another lost source (Sg), to be distinguished from ‘Q’ inasmuch as several of the so-called Q passages are to be derived not from Sg but from Mg. In his long Excursus IV (pp. 361−404) M. Vaganay analyses the ‘discours communautaire’ of Matt. xviii. 1−35; Mark ix. 33−50; Luke ix. 46−50, and offers. a reconstruction of this discourse as, he thinks, it appeared in Mg.