Die Interpretation der neutestamentlichen Haustafeln ist bis heute bestimmt durch die von Martin Dibelius begründete und von seinem Schüler Karl Weidinger ausgeführte These, die Haustafeln seien in der Tradition der Pflichtentafeln vor allem der stoischen Philosophie zu interpretieren. Der klassische Text, der seither in kaum einer Äußerung zum Thema fehlt, ist Epiktet, diss. 17, 31: ‘Ich will als Frommer und als Philosoph und als umsichtiger Mensch wissen, was meine Pflicht gegenüber den Göttern ist, was gegenüber den Eltern, was gegenüber den Brüdern, was gegenüber dem Vaterland, was gegenüber Fremden.’ Wichtig ist hier auch das von K. Praechter aus verschiedenen Stobaios-Exzerpten rekonstruierte Werk des Stoikers Hierokies – spätere Textfunde haben Praechters Rekonstruktion glänzend bestätigt. Die Aufnahme solchen traditionellen ethischen Guts geschah nach Dibelius unter Vermittlung durch das hellenistische Judentum, was er und Weidinger mit Josephus, Philo und PsPhokylides belegen.

The Apocalypse is not a random jumble of ‘prophecies’: it shows clear evidence of ordering. The problem, however, is to know on what principles the ordering has been done, and which principle has been dominant or primary, and which less influential. For example, the Seven Letters, Seals, Trumpets and Bowls seem at first sight to dominate the book; but then every commentator has some embarrassment in explaining the intrusions of chs 7 and 10–11, let alone the second half of the book. Even then, we need an explanation of the symbolism of the seals, trumpets and bowls, which is in no obvious sense given: so, on their own, the four Sevens are only a partial answer to the question.

In 1964, Enrico Cerulli published a treatise On the Resurrection of the Dead which he had found in Ms. Palat. Orient. 148 of the Bibliotheca Mediceo–Laurenziana at Florence. The text of this treatise turned out to be a very important theological treatment of the final resurrection. Since the text dated from the fourteenth century, it was thought that it would shed some fresh light on the theological discussions of the Ethiopian church of that age. The treatise deals with an existing heresy which called in question certain orthodox opinions with respect to resurrection. Therefore, Cerulli concludes, there must have been a group of people which had spread heretical ideas with respect to the doctrine concerning resurrection in Ethiopia at that time; and he suggests that they may have been connected with a gnostic movement which, it can be demonstrated, existed in Ethiopia during the fourteenth century. I am not qualified to judge the correctness of the theological Sitz im Leben which Cerulli gives to this text. Whether or not the Ethiopic text gives us a clue to a better understanding of the historical conditions of the Ethiopian Church in that period, I am not able to decide. What I wish to demonstrate in this short note is that from another angle Cerulli's publication is most welcome.

Synoptic studies, in spite of two centuries of intensive research, have reached something of an impasse. Our own SNTS Synoptic Problem Seminar after eight years of discussion seems no nearer agreement. This is a strange phenomenon, because the synoptic problem is an inescapably real one. It is not like a discussion of the contents or order of Q, where no one knows for certain whether a Q document ever existed. The three gospels exist, there is some relation between them; if this relation could be correctly stated all the data would be satisfactorily explained without remainder. Have we missed a vital key? A hypothesis is here offered which, if tenable, would put the whole problem in a new light. Few passages are more difficult to explain than the travel narrative of Luke ix. 51–xviii. 14. The crux of the problem lies in the ‘Q material’, concerning which there are two main views: (1) that it comes from a lost source or sources also used by Matthew; (2) that Luke extracted the material direct from Matthew's gospel.

This paper draws attention to two features of the teaching about the kingdom of heaven in the first Gospel. Firstly that ή βασιλєία τῷν ούρανῷν is pictured as an imminent but entirely future reality, in distinction to the five occurrences of ή β⋯σιλєία το⋯ θєο⋯ which represent a present kingdom. Secondly, that ethics and faith are presented as conditions for entry into the kingdom of heaven and not as future possibilities realizable only when the kingdom of heaven is present. I shall examine all the sayings about the kingdom of heaven under a series of headings, following for the most part the order in which they appear in the Gospel, but occasionally linking later passages with earlier discussions to avoid repetition. The sayings about the kingdom of God will be examined as a group at the end.1

This paper takes its cue from L. Hartman's study of ‘Scriptural Exegesis in the Gospel of Matthew and the Problem of Communication’,1 and more specifically from two comments on that paper made by Professor M. D. Hooker.2 The first was to the effect that the title of Hartman's study involved a promise which was not fulfilled, in that he did not in fact deal significantly with ‘communication’, in the sense of discussing what the ordinary reader might have been expected to get out of Matthew's scriptural quotations and allusions. The second was the related question whether the ordinary Jew of New Testament times, as opposed to the professional theologians or the exegetes of Qumran, could be expected to have as full an acquaintance with the Old Testament as Hartman assumed. This last point reminded me of a principle set out in a recent article by Humphrey Palmer, which neatly articulated a persistent doubt which I have felt when reading suggestions of sophisticated midrashic developments in the Gospels: ‘The complexity of allusion intelligible to a modern scholar with lots of books and little else to do is much greater than that accessible to any member of Jesus' audience.’3 A civilization based on the printed book may be in danger of forgetting that a scroll of even one Old Testament book was in the first century an inconvenient and expensive luxury, and so of assuming an ease of reference which is more appropriate to the age of the ‘pocket Bible’ than to primitive Christianity.

(1) Dans le domaine des recherches concernant le Nouveau Testament au cours des deux dernières décennies, un grand rôle a été joué par la thèse de la diversification de la christologie primitive. Contrairement à l'affirmation plus ancienne de Wilhelm Bousset sur l'origine pagano-chrétienne du titre Kyrios-Seigneur et aux théories plus anciennes sur l'évolution dialectique du jeune christianisme soutenues par l'ecole de Töbingen, il est symptomatique pour la situation actuelle qu'on suppose une origine indépendante des divers motifs, titres et idées qui ont influencé la façon de penser de l'eglise primitive. En résumant les résultats de ce travail, il faut compter au moins avec les types suivants de la réfléxion christologique: Dans un domaine, Jésus a été attendu comme un personnage apocalyptique (le plus souvent comme le Fils de l'homme) qui viendra pour juger a la fin du monde prévue pour bientôt (Lc. 12, 8s, Mc. 14, 62, 1 Th. 4, 16, cf. 1 Co. 16, 22, etc.); dans un autre milieu rassemblant les sentences de Jésus, il a été conçu comme la sagesse incorporée qui survit dans ses paroles (Mt. 11, 19; 12, 42;Jn. 8, 51; Ev. de Thom. log. 19), ailleurs il a été fâte comme thaumaturge et l'on collectionnait les histoires de ses actions puissantes (strate littéraire dont le sommaire est représenté par Jean 20, 30s) et enfin il y avait une christologie qui exprimait l'importance de Jésus principalement par les paroles concernant sa resurrection;ses images et termes ont été pris de l'apocalyptique juive. Des sentences courtes originelles concernant la résurrection (p. ex. Rm. 10, 9) on a vu naître dans le milieu nonjuif des formules dans lesquelles la résurrection est expliquée comme une élévation lors de laquelle Jésus assume la fonction du Fils de Dieu (Rm. 1, 3s; 2 Tm. 2, 8). Un autre développement du message fondamental ont été des for- mules de la foi telles que 1 Co. 15, 3b–5.

In the NT there are two occurrences each of ¡λàσкєσθαĮ,¡λàσµÓà¡λ¡λλĮ and ¡λàσ. Of these, ίλaσμός in 1 In. 2. 2, 4. 10 and ίλaσυήπϖν in Rom. 3. 25 have special exegetical and theological importance. It is generally agreed that LXX usage should make a serious contribution to their interpretation and NT scholars are familiar with standard treatments of the subject: C. H. Dodd's 1931 article in JTS XXXII, reprinted in The Bible and the Greeks (1935), pp. 82–95, the contributions of Büchsel and Herr- mann in TWNT III (1938), L. Morris's chapter on ‘Propitiation (1)’ in The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (1955), pp. 125–60, and D. Hill's treatment of ‘The Interpretation of ίλáσκєσθaί and Related Words in the Septuagint and in the New Testament’ in Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings (1967), pp. 23–36. These valuable studies, however, are not satisfactory for various reasons. The section in TWNT cannot take account of discussion in the last forty years and the form in which its material is presented does not directly help NT exegetes. Dodd's treatment was too narrowly confined to the question whether the root should be translated by ‘propitiation’ or ‘expiation’, and Morris's partly justifiable reply is too much occupied with rejection of Dodd's conclusion and commendation of the wrath of God. Hill's investigation in this respect leans too heavily on Morris.

The question of ‘traces’ of history in the Fourth Gospel is not new. In 1968 Louis Martyn published his History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. His thesis, reduced to utter simplicity, was that the Gospel is a drama presented at two levels, one concerning Jesus and the other concerning the community of the evangelist in which the Jesus tradition had been shaped. Thus the Fourth Gospel is seen as a Jewish Christian composition shaped in the dialogue/conflict with the synagogue. More recently Raymond Brown has given us his own penetrating reconstruction of the history of the Johannine community. This is presented in four phases: from its beginning until the exclusion from the synagogue; the situation at the time the Gospel was written; internal division (Epistles); and the final disappearance of both groups in the second century, absorbed, either by the emerging great church or by Docetism, Gnosticism and Montanism.

In the course of an inquiry into the origins of Luke's understanding of the poor I was forced to ask the question how far Luke might have been influenced not only by certain texts in Isaiah but also by wider themes. In answer to this question one is often referred to C. H. Dodd's According to the Scriptures, where he concluded that when NT authors quoted small OT texts they often did so with knowledge of larger passages or collections of passages from which the text was drawn. This principle has become a commonplace and is frequently used illegitimately to find ideas in the NT which are not otherwise discernible.1 The recent study of B. Lindars (‘The Place of the Old Testament in the Formation of New Testament Theology: Prolegomena’, N. T. S. xxiii (1977), 59–66) argues that NT writers had no interest in the meaning of the OT for its own sake, but simply quarried texts to support and illustrate a pre-existing NT theology. Both these views need to be kept in mind. It may be that each is correct in different places. What is needed is a closer study of the practice of individual authors and their use of different parts of the OT. Only then will it be possible to give any confident judgement of how much an NT author may have carried in the way of related ideas, theology and contextual understanding when he quotes or alludes to the OT.2

A study of the use of the Old Testament in (by) the New should have a privileged place in our attempts to discover the hermeneutical processes which stood behind the growth of the New Testament as literature. Studies of this nature are not speculating upon the possible interior dispositions or mental processes of the communities and individuals who formed our New Testament books. These factors will always remain outside our scientific control. A study of the use of an Old Testament passage in the New gives us the raw material of the author's positive use of Israel's authoritative word of God to describe the event of Christ. The recent ‘prolegomena and response’ in New Testament Studies between Barnabas Lindars and Peder Borgen has shown that there is still a great deal to be learnt from such a discussion.

In the Journal of Biblical Literature LXIV H. A. Rigg carefully developed the remarkable theory that Jesus of Nazareth was known to his contemporaries as Jesus bar Abba and that crowds of people called for his release at the time of his trial.1 Twenty-five years later, in New Testament Studies XVI (1970), H. Z. Maccoby independently arrived at a virtually identical conclusion.2 Both men based their arguments on the fact that the tradition of the privilegium paschale is unlikely to have had any historical foundation.3 Rigg, further, makes a case that the reading ‘Jesus who is called Barabbas’, found in some early texts of Matthew, is authentic.4 The intention of this short study is not to rehearse their arguments—and both men adduce more than mentioned above—but to show that there is even more evidence in support of their theory than their articles presented and that their theory is worthy of very serious consideration.

It has been and still is debated whether the speeches attributed to characters in the Acts of the Apostles should be taken as their own, more or less accurately recorded; or as based on an early pattern of preaching; or as reflecting the beliefs of churches contemporary with the writing of the book (AD 65–95, or later still); or as the product of the imagination and conviction of the author. I wish to suggest that there is enough evidence for yet another possible explanation to demand consideration: Luke is portraying the teaching of the Christians as a creditable variant of the kind of ethical providential monotheism that educated pagans might be expected to attend to respectfully. The phrases used may well come from contemporary Christian stock (if not necessarily). The criteria for selection and for emphasis are drawn from the range of beliefs and attitudes already likely to be found among a high-minded pagan readership. I draw my evidence mainly from Flavius Josephus and from Dionysius of Halicarnassus.

Four of those tractates from Nag Hammadi for which as a group the convenient but nebulous label ‘Sethian’ has been adopted use a strange and previously unknown designation for the primal Man that has so far defied satisfactory decipherment. The scholar last to venture a solution to the riddle prefaces his attempt, and a bibliographical litany of earlier attempts (including one of his own), with the discomforting admission that ‘eine voll befriedigende Deutung dieser Bezeichnung steht m. E. noch aus. Jede der bisher vorgeschlagenen Deutungen hat ihre offenkundigen Schwächen’.1 In this paper I propose to review and evaluate the interpretations that have so far been suggested and, at the risk of adding only another discordant note to the chorus, to offer what I believe is the correct solution, together with some suggestions as to the setting in which the name was formed, and why. It is of some significance for the history of early speculation about the prototypical Adam.

Ce verset (Mc. 16. 5) figure dans le récit final (16. 1–8) de l’évangile de Marc, qui rapporte la venue des femmes au tombeau de Jésus. Au cours des dernières années, ce verset a d’abord fait l’objet d’une interprétation christologique, puis d’une interprétation baptismale. Un certain nombre d’exégètes ont vu en effet dans le jeune homme qui s’y trouve mentionné une représentation symbolique soit du Christ ressuscité lui-même, soit du chrétien, associé par le baptême à la résurrection de ce dernier.