Ausgehend von der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung zu Familienalben und deren Gemeinsamkeiten mit dem Neuen Testament lädt dieser Beitrag dazu ein, darüber nachzudenken, was sich verändert, wenn wir die Fragen der Einführung in das Neue Testament durch die Brille der Theorie des sozialen Gedächtnisses betrachten. Aufbauend auf Forschungsergebnissen der Oral History und kulturwissenschaftlichen Gedächtnistheorie wird argumentiert, dass die allgemeine Einleitung in den Bereich des kulturellen Gedächtnisses und die spezielle Einleitung in den Bereich des sozialen/kollektiven Gedächtnisses fällt. Beide sind durch den Floating Gap getrennt, was die vielfach wahrgenommenen Veränderungen in der ersten Hälfte des zweiten Jahrhunderts erklärt. Im nächsten Schritt wird ein Modell, das auf dem Dreigenerationengedächtnis, der Generational Gap (nach einer Generation), der Floating Gap (nach 3-4 Generationen) und den ersten Generationen von Jesus-Anhängern aufbaut, mit Vorschlägen zur Datierung neutestamentlicher Bücher aus der Einleitungswissenschaft ins Gespräch gebracht. Es zeigt sich, dass die vor und nach dem Generational Gap verwendeten Genres je unterschiedliche Eigenschaften haben, die den Erwartungen an Medien des sozialen und kollektiven Gedächtnisses entsprechen. Der Beitrag schließt mit allgemeinen Fragen zu Medien und Medienwandel im Neuen Testament, d.h. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit, identische Texte und Textkritik, dem Kanon als primärem Kontext, der Ausweitung des Geltungsbereichs sowie fluiden Gattungen, und kommt zu dem Schluss, dass kulturwissenschaftliche Gedächtnistheorie in der Tat neue Perspektiven für die Einleitungswissenschaft bietet.

In this paper, I examine several sources of authority to which Origen laid claim as he set about the task of interpreting scripture. On occasion, in both his commentaries and his homilies, Origen provided accounts of his access to three different, though connected sources of authority that contributed to his self-presentation as an expert interpreter. These sources are as follows: 1) participation in the lineage of the apostles, particularly his exegetical role model, Paul. The second source of authority is a result of the first: 2) direct communication from the Logos, whom he understands to be Christ himself, and 3) angelic assistance and engagement with his pastoral exegetical project. In some instances, Origen even claimed to be on par with two of these sources of authority; he can be found claiming to have exegetical abilities similar to Paul's and, on some rare occasions, to have reached the same epistemological level as the angels. This analysis provides us not only with a case study of the kind of self-fashioning and authorising strategies used by elite scriptural exegetes in the first few centuries of the common era, but it also allows us to shift our focus away from exegetical methods towards the figure, personality and social position of the exegete him or herself. From this shift of focus we gain a better appreciation of a topic to which exegetical authors themselves dedicated considerable energy: just who it was that could occupy the office of authoritative Christian exegete and why.

First Corinthians 6.1–6 is consistently read as a Pauline criticism directed against members of the Pauline ekklēsia in Corinth, taking each other to Roman courts. I argue that this understanding of 1 Cor 6.1–6 is implausible in light of practices of Roman law in the provinces and in the colonies. Within a formal court procedure, the Corinthians would not have had the freedom to appoint their own judges, as Paul's language implies. I suggest instead that it is private arbitration which Paul criticises. Papyri dealing with private arbitration and mediation support this reading. Much of Paul's legal terminology in the passage is found in these papyri, making private arbitration a highly plausible suggestion. The suggested reading points to the community's good social ties with the pagan population in the city. It also depicts Paul as working within the framework of Roman law rather than against it. The article exemplifies the benefits of integrating up-to-date studies of Roman law in New Testament Studies.

The meaning of the verb ἀλληγορέω stands at the heart of the debate concerning Paul's hermeneutic in Galatians 4.21–31. If by using the term Paul means ‘I am interpreting these things allegorically’, then the question of Paul's interpretive procedure would be all but answered – he would likely be allegorising as the Greeks did before him and the early church fathers did after. However, if he does not mean this, then the question remains open. This article argues that the phrase ἅτινά ἐστιν ἀλληγορούμɛνα means ‘these things are symbolic’, which would indeed leave this question open. This rendering is best for two reasons: First, the majority of the uses of ἀλληγορέω available in the two hundred or so years surrounding the writing of Galatians mean ‘to speak symbolically’. Second, the contextual clues surrounding Paul's use of the term in Galatians itself, such as his call to hear the law in verse 21, strongly suggest such a reading. To prove this thesis, this article provides detailed exposition of the texts in which ἀλληγορέω occurred around the time Paul wrote Galatians before turning to Paul's own use of the term in Galatians 4.24.

Scholars have long been aware of the close relationship between two ninth-century Greek-Latin bilingual manuscripts, Codex Boernerianus (GA 012, VL 77) and Codex Augiensis (GA 010, VL 78). However, assessments of the nature of this relationship differ. The present article seeks to resolve this question by comparing full electronic transcriptions of the Greek texts of these manuscripts in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and First Timothy. An examination of the points of divergence, including unique readings, word division, corrections and lacunae confirm that their Greek text was either copied from the same exemplar, or that one served as exemplar for the other. Close analysis of the types of errors and the way in which corrections in Codex Boernerianus are handled in Codex Augiensis proves that the latter was copied from the former. These findings indicate that, as a copy of an existing manuscript, Codex Augiensis should no longer be cited in the apparatus of the Greek New Testament.

There are good warrants for believing that either the word Christianos or the word Christiani, a reference to the Christians, was probably in a graffito on the wall of the atrium of the house now identified as vii.11.11 in Pompeii when Giuseppe Fiorelli excavated it in 1862. Karl Zangemeister edited it in 1871 as CIL iv, 679 and included two divergent transcriptions. In 1995, Paul Berry published a book in which he claimed that he had made an image of the word Christianos using an industrial microscope and high-intensity light. A research project to investigate that claim could be potentially useful for verifying or falsifying Berry's results.

Der 2. Korintherbrief sucht in seinem ersten Hauptteil (1.15–7.16) die Anstöße aufzuarbeiten, die die Gemeinde im Vorfeld des Briefs an der Ausübung des apostolischen Dienstes durch Paulus genommen hat. Wie die Eröffnung dieses Hauptteils in 1.15–2.2 zu verstehen ist, ist aber in der Forschung umstritten.

Der Aufsatz untersucht die literarische Verortung, den formalen Aufbau und die sprachliche Ausgestaltung des Gedankengangs, um dessen Sinngehalt und Funktion zu klären. Es wird aufgezeigt, wie der Abschnitt einerseits die Modifikation der paulinischen Besuchsabsichten, andererseits das Unterlassen eines angekündigten weiteren Aufenthalts verteidigt. Vor dem Horizont einer grundsätzlichen Reflexion der Basis, Eigenart und Aufgabe des paulinischen Apostolats korrigiert er die negative Wahrnehmung des Paulus auf Seiten der Adressaten und zeigt in drei Schritten auf, dass dieser gerade mit seinen die Gemeinde enttäuschenden Entscheidungen den ihm und seiner Mitarbeiterschaft gegebenen apostolischen Auftrag sachgerecht wahrgenommen hat.

Paul's letters depict gentiles and Jews with different characteristics of sin. This article focuses on Paul's rhetoric about Jewish shortcomings and argues that he has an eschatological myth of Jewish sin: it is the period in the Jewish deity's plan when he has hardened his people into disobedience and disloyalty. While scholars have traditionally tried to connect Paul's ideas about Jewish sin to deficiencies of historical Jews, Paul's claims are primarily animated by his Jewish eschatological scheme and competitive rhetorical needs. Paul re-emerges as a Jewish writer within his competitive social landscape wherein ethnic differentiation was an expected way of imagining the human and divine realms.

Dans la perspective de la préparation d'une nouvelle édition annotée de l'Évangile selon Thomas, à paraître dans la collection « Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi » (Leuven, Peeters), cet article revient sur quelques-unes des questions qui ont été débattues à propos de cet écrit, à savoir son lieu et sa date de composition, ainsi que sa langue d'origine.

The numerous testaments on papyrus provide a valuable basis for an investigation of legal language around διαθήκη in the Pauline letters. Of particular importance is the ancient practice of revoking wills, which I consider to be the legal frame of reference for the recipients of the Pauline letters to grasp expressions like καινὴ/παλαιὰ διαθήκη. In the Corinthian correspondence the conformity to the current legal practice is evident, but in Galatians Paul turns the whole procedure upside down, manipulating in the construction of his argument not only the practice of testamentary cancellation, but also the traditional connection of Abraham with circumcision. We are compelled to a text-internal solution of the problem in Gal 3.15–17 by the fact that the papyrological evidence shows clearly that no other type of document than the ordinary revocable διαθήκαι can be taken into consideration. This approach is not compilatory, as it is often the case when dealing with documentary papyri applied to New Testament texts, but heuristic, with the purpose of elaborating new exegetical insights in old controversies.

This short paper considers and critiques the view that the named people greeted in Romans 16.3–16 are not also among the recipients of the letter to ‘all God's beloved in Rome’ (Rom 1.7). Variants of this view spring from the work of Mullins (1968): that the second-person greeting involves the greeting of ‘a third party who is not intended to be among the immediate readership of the letter’ (Mullins, 1968: 420) and are found in Thorsteinsson (2003), Stowers (2015) and Campbell (2023). A series of arguments are made against this view. In particular, the plural form of the imperative (ἀσπάσασθɛ) and the open nature of the addressees mean that Mullins' simple principle does not apply. In addition, Paul's usage elsewhere (including in Romans 16.16) contradicts Mullins' principle.