Amongst scholars who say that Paul's letters provide evidence of change and development in Paul's thinking,1 the major emphasis has been seeing this change taking place towards the later stages of Paul's writings, rather than in the earliest stages.2 However, the most significant change in Paul's thinking probably took place shortly before he wrote what are generally regarded as his earliest letters, the letters to the Thessalonians. An exegesis of these letters, together with established research revealing the stages behind the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians3 (though with modifications to certain conclusions about Paul's earliest eschatology), gives support to this suggestion. Whilst changing emphases appear in Paul's later letters, attention should be directed to the probability that the biggest change in his Christian eschatology took place with the surviving correspondence.

The question whether John used one or more of the Synoptic Gospels continues to be hotly debated. It is obvious that John is indebted to other sources for much of his information. But where his material overlaps the Synoptic Gospels, it is more difficult to decide whether he is using independent traditions or not. In one case, however, it can be shown that he had a saying of Jesus which he received in a Greek form transmitted independently of the forms in Mark and Q. All go back to a common Aramaic original. The saying in question is Jn. 3. 3, 5.

The prospect of writing anything further about the prologue of John reminds one of the verdict quoted by W. C. van Unnik in a similar context some twenty years ago: ‘the new things he said were not true and the true things were not new’. The prudent course may, therefore, be to refine an already established position with the hope of being able to say something true, even if it is not altogether new. The thesis of this article is that the prologue is a chiasm with verse 12 b at its centre. That the prologue is chiastic is not a new thesis; that its centre is v. 12 b is. The first part of this paper attempts to establish this thesis. The second part studies the key phrase in v. 12 b, τέκνα Θεοũ, and the implications of its position in the prologue.

To speak of the symbolic in exegesis means running into a veritable mine field. Everywhere, you are in danger of finding ‘booby traps’ liable to explode the most solid systematic constructions instantly. However, I would like to venture with you into the field of John's symbolism, since I think that it has been insufficiently explored and appreciated in the classical commentaries. If this seems a bit grandiose, I would like to attenuate my apparent pretension. I would first like to present you with a global approach to the subject and then I would like to investigate with you a few concrete examples: the sign of the temple, a saying addressed to Nicodemus and the ‘bread of life’. We shall try to see what a so-called ‘symbolic reading’ of these passages can contribute to their understanding.

Mit dem Erscheinen des Greek New Testament 1966 gleichzeitig in New York, London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam und Stuttgart (GNT) zeichnete sich bereits das Bemühen ab, einen Standardtext zu erstellen, der für die exegetische Arbeit die Grundlage bieten soll. Dieses Bemühen wurde von dem internationalen Komitee unter der Federföhrung von K. Aland weitergeführt und brachte mit der 3. Auflage (GNT) 1975 und der 26. völlig neu bearbeiteten Auflage des seit 1898 eingeführten Nestle Textes (N26) den Abschluß, der textkritischen Arbeit des Komitees. Der Fortschritt nicht nur in der Textgestaltung, sondern ebenso in der Qualität des gebotenen Textes ist unübersehbar. Neu gefundene Zeugen, vor allem Papyri, wie eine bessere Kollationierung der vorhandenen haben uns dem Urtext sicher ein erhebliches Stück näher gebracht. Es muß jedoch einerseits gefragt werden, ob es berechtigt ist, diesen Text nunmehr als Standardtext in den Rangeines neuen textus receptus zu erheben, der allen Konkordanzen und Wörterbüchern, allen Übersetzungen und Kommentaren den verbindlichen Maßstab setzt. Zum anderen ist zu fragen, ob das Prinzip des Komitees, die mithilfe des Computers erfolgte Kollationierung der zahlreichen Minuskeln für den Text wenn nicht bestimmend, so doch wesentlich entscheidend sein zu lassen, textkritisch gerechtfertigt ist.

Galatians 3. 28 illustrates the fact that all too often meaning is in the eye of the beholder and that without proper care and attention to the context, text becomes pretext. We are told by some commentators that Gal. 3. 28 is the ‘Magna Carta of Humanity’, and especially the ‘Emancipation Proclamation for Women’. Others insist just as strongly that this text is dealing with one's position Coram Deo and has no implications for social relations within the Body of Christ. One scholar has even suggested that Paul's male–female terminology and his mentioning of baptism means that Paul is arguing for infant, as well as adult, baptism. In light of the present confusion concerning this text, it will perhaps be best to attempt to set this verse in its historical and literary context before proceeding to examine the exegetical intricacies involved.

Über die Aufnahme der Jesus-Überlieferung im frühen Christentum ist schon viel nachgedacht und geschrieben worden. Dabei interessiert das Problem meist wegen des auffallenden Sachverhaltes, daß Pauls allenfalls dreimal ausdrücklich auf Herrenworte zurückgreift (I Kor 7, 10; 9, 14; vgl. I These 4, 15), wobei I These 4, 15 ohne erkennbare synoptische Parallele ist. Verschärft ist dieser Sachverhalt noch dadurch, daß Pauls speziell im I Kor offen zugeben kann, kein Jesuswort zur Regelung von Gemeindeverhält-nissen zu besitzen (7, 12. 25. 40).

It seemed appropriate that a lecture given to honour a scholar whose concerns have been centred on the Old Testament, by someone whose field is the New Testament, should link together these two topics. I have therefore chosen to consider one aspect of the problem of the way in which the Old Testament is interpreted by New Testament authors: more specifically, the authority ascribed by one of them – St Paul – to the Old Testament in relation to the revelation of God in Christ.

Scholars are gradually relinquishing the belief that the Corinthians were Gnostics. As a noted student of Gnosticism concludes, we find in Corinth ‘at most only the first tentative beginnings of what was later to develop into full-scale Gnosticism’. In fact, a kind of agnosticism has emerged with regard to the early Christian community in Corinth. ‘The position in Corinth cannot be reconstructed on the basis of the possibilities of the general history of religion.’ I suggest, however, that it is possible to determine with some degree of precision the nature and background of the ‘proto-Gnosticism’ in Corinth: Hellenistic Jewish religiosity focused on sophia and gnosis.

Die Interpretation von Mk. 14. 55–64 ‘Jesus vor dem Synhedrium’ ist dadurch erschwert, daß sich historische, überlieferungsgeschichtliche, traditionsgeschichtliche und redaktionsgeschichtliche Probleme überlagern, vor allem aber immer historische Probleme ins Spiel kommen, die die Diskussion zwischen Juden und Christen bis heute belasten. Es scheint unvermeidlich, daß die exegetische Argumentation von einer Fragestellung zur anderen springt. Ich nehme mir deshalb vor, den Text zunächst strikt und einseitig nur im Zusammenhang des Markusevangeliums zu interpretieren, und stelle mich an den Ort eines Lesers, der das Evangelium von seinem ersten Verse an aufmerksam gelesen hat, also dem Text nicht als isolierter Perikope begegnet; ich stelle mich damit an den Ort eines Lesers, der als christlicher Leser nicht neutral ist, sondern positiv eingestellt gegenüber dem, was ihm hier von Jesus erzühlt wird, und der beim Lesen Partei ergreift für diesen Jesus gegen dessen Gegner; und ich nehme an, daß ein solcher Leser aus einer gewissen Kenntnis des Alten Testaments heraus Sprachwendungen vielleicht nicht direkt als Anspielungen auf alttestamentliche Texte identifizieren kann, wohl aber durch solche Sprache eine bestimmte Stimmung im Text vermittelt bekommt. Ein solches Lesen ist zunächst unabhängig von literarkritischen und historischen Fragen; gleich wie man diese beurteilt, bleibt doch beim Leser der Eindruck dieses Textes, der so und nicht anders formuliert, wovon er erzählt, auf welchen Vorlagen er auch basieren mag.

Die Apokalypse des Johannes ist hinsichtlich ihrer theoiogischen Bedeutung seit der Frühzeit der Kirche bis in die Gegenwart hinein stark umstritten. Vor allem scheint sie einem Vergleich mit den Grundaussagen paulinischer Theologie nicht standhalten zu können und erfährt daher des öfteren eine Abwertung.1 Im Folgenden soll versucht werden, anhand eines Themenkomplexes, der für die Apokalypse des Johannes von zentraler Bedeutung ist, nämiich das Verhältnis zwischen Christus und seiner Gemeinde,2 einen wesentlichen theologischen Aspekt im letzten Buch der Bibel zu erfassen.

Nur dem unbefangenen Leser kann unser Thema als Tautologie erscheinen; die historisch-kritisch arbeitende Exegese weiß seit Johann Salomo Semier (1725–1791), daß der Autor der Johannesapokalypse nicht mit demjenigen des Johannesevangeliums identisch sein kann. Zwei Jahrhunderte lang haben protestantische Ausleger die sprachlichen und theologischen Unterschiede zwischen Evangelium und Briefen des Johannes einerseits und der Offenbarung des Johannes andererseits zusammengestelit und ausgewertet; die scharfsinnigen Beobachtungen wichtiger Gemeinsamkeiten und Berührungspunkte durch katholische Kommentatoren schienen entwertet durch das apologetische Bemöhen, den Apostel und Zebedaiden Johannes als den Autor des Evangeliums, der Briefe und der Apokalypse des Johannes zu erweisen.

When Paul R. McReynolds and Frederik Wisse developed the Claremont Profile Method, they used as a point of departure the manuscript groups that had been formed in previous text critical studies, primarily the groups of Hermann von Soden. Although they were not satisfied with this approach, they saw no alternative. In an earlier study on the Greek text of I John, however, I showed that the use of predetermined groups proved to be a methodological weakness in the Claremont Profile Method (CPM) so far as I John is concerned, in that the ability of the method to correct von Soden's groupings was only partial. In the study on I John I used quantitative analysis to form tentative gropings rather than depend on the group formations of others.

It is not always remembered that the important and influential work of Albert Schweitzer on the historical Jesus – both as historian of ‘the quest’ and as proponent of an apocalyptic Jesus who was messiah yet who proved amenable to Schweitzer's own emphasis on ethics – rests within the matrix of another, perhaps even broader topic, that of the origin and development of the Lord's Supper. For Schweitzer's first published work in biblical studies, his dissertation for the licentiate in theology degree in 1900, was a ‘Critical Presentation of Various Recent Historical Concepts of the Lord's Supper’, and his initial ‘Sketch of the Life of Jesus’, published 1901 and destined to be reiterated and expanded in his books on Jesus of 1906 and 1913, was Part II of a wider study on ‘The Lord's Supper in connection with the Life of Jesus and the History of Primitive Christianity’.

Papias von Hierapolis, der Sammler übergangener Traditionen aus dem Urchristentum, ist von der Tradition seinerseits vernachlässigt worden. Theologische opinion leaders von Eusebius bis zu Adolf Harnack und semen Nachfolgern haben den unliebsamen Apokalyptiker in den Hintergrund gedrängt. ‘Von seinem fünfbändigen Werk sind nur ganz wenige, kümmerliche Fragmente geblieben; sie lassen den Verlust des Werkes als erträglich erscheinen. Der Historiker Euseb bescheinigt ihm geistige Schwachheit.’ So Hans Conzelmann, der die psychiatrische ‘Bescheinigung’ des Eusebius mit dessen Autorität als Historiker unterlegt, nicht achtend, daß es sich urn ein Tendenzurteil handelt. So fällt es ihm leicht, zu sagen, die Papias-Fragmente seien ‘samt und sonders geschichtlich wertlos’.

The topic of peace has received critical historical scrutiny from the standpoint of the Ancient Orient and the Old Testament and sketchy treatment with reference to the Greek world. There is, however, no comprehensive study which portrays the differentiated nuances of the topic in the various schools of thought in the ancient world preceding the first century. More studies do exist on the topic of war and it is clear that a balanced picture must include the strenuous attempts made by people of many persuasions to define peace and to find a way in which humans can live at peace with each other.

In the development of Christology in the primitive church, the emergence of the worship of Jesus is a significant phenomenon. In the exclusive monotheism of the Jewish religious tradition, as distinct from some other kinds of monotheism, it was worship which was the real test of monotheistic faith in religious practice. In the world-views of the early centuries A.D. the gap between God and man might be peopled by all kinds of intermediary beings – angels, divine men, hypostatized divine attributes, the Logos – and the early church's attempt to understand the mediatorial role of Jesus naturally made use of these possibilities. In the last resort, however, Jewish monotheism could not tolerate a mere spectrum between God and man; somewhere a firm line had to be drawn between God and creatures, and in religious practice it was worship which signalled the distinction between God and every creature, however exalted. God must be worshipped; no creature may be worshipped. For Jewish monotheism, this insistence on the one God's exclusive right to religious worship was far more important than metaphysical notions of the unity of the divine nature. Since the early church remained – or at least professed to remain – faithful to Jewish monotheism, the acknowledgement of Jesus as worthy of worship is a remarkable development. Either it should have been rejected as idolatry – and a halt called to the upward trend of christological development – or else its acceptance may be seen with hindsight to have set the church already on the road to Nicene theology.

In a previous study, the present writer has made an analysis of aspects of the Qumran baptismal doctrine, pointing to a distinction between the washing with water and the purification by Spirit. When a further examination of the stages and conditions of initiation at Qumran is added, a relevance may be seen to certain aspects of the history of baptism in Acts, suggesting a means of dealing with some recognized difficulties.

Der Begriff ‘christliche Exegese’ ist in mancherlei Hinsicht problematisch, nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil er suggerieren könnte, die wissenschaftliche Disziplin der Exegese sei methodologisch differenzierbar in eine christliche und eine nicht- bzw. unchristliche Spielform. Eine derartige Annahme wird in den folgenden Überlegungen nicht gemacht.

Rudolf Bultmann in his magnum opus, Theology of the New Testament, tends to dismiss the Epistle to the Hebrews as ‘allegorical’,1 ‘legalistic’,2 exemplaristic',3 and ‘sacramentalistic’.4 This is overly negative. The Book of Hebrews may be a unique contribution to New Testament thought, and may possess its own peculiar logic and expression; nevertheless, it is a decidedly Christian document.5