This article, originally presented as the Presidential Address at the 2022 SNTS Meeting in Leuven, explores the ways in which Paul configures giving and ‘wealth’, both in relation to the Macedonians and Corinthians (as contributors to the Jerusalem collection) and in relation to Christ. Drawing on the dream-interpretations of Artemidorus, it illustrates how ‘wealth’ could be understood in antiquity as performance rather than possession: one is wealthy in giving and not (or not only) in having. In this light, Paul offers a striking image of the Macedonians who in their poverty were ‘rich’ in their unreserved commitment to the collection, fulfilling the dream of the poor by acquiring the dignity of giving. The Christological statement of 2 Cor 8.9 can also be understood (and integrated) in a new way: it was in his wealth (of self-sharing) that Christ became poor (in the weakness of the cross), so that the Corinthians, participating in this momentum, might become ‘rich’ in the same self-giving of Christ. Although grace and money are not identical, neither are they unrelated ‘economies’: the grace of the Christ-event transforms its beneficiaries into givers, rich in multiple forms of generosity, including material gift. The text thus evidences principles of a non-competitive mode of social relations operative in the material sphere, with the capacity to stimulate a theological challenge to dehumanising forms of capitalism.

Angesichts der fortschreitenden Publikation der Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR), der Weiterarbeit an den Bänden des Evangelisch-Katholischen Kommentars zum Neuen Testament (EKK) und der Fortsetzung von Blackwell's Kommentarserie Through the Centuries lautet die Leitfrage des vorliegenden Artikels: Wie kann zur Theoretisierung und Methodisierung einer Rezeptionsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments beigetragen werden? Um diese Frage zu beantworten und Perspektiven zu entwerfen, unternimmt der Artikel den Versuch einer neuerlichen Klärung der Begriffe ‘Wirkungsgeschichte’ / ‘wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein’, ‘Auslegungsgeschichte’, ‘Rezeptionsgeschichte’ und schlägt zwei Fragenkataloge vor, die das Vorgehen einer cross-temporal und cross-cultural ausgerichteten Rezeptionskritik des Neuen Testaments inhaltlich und methodisch reflektieren und kontrollieren.

A response to the article by Christina Hoegen-Rohls.

The history of reception is suffering from a fundamental misunderstanding. Since the publication of Truth and Method, everyone has had the impression that reception history is just another exegetical technique. However, the heart of Gadamer's argument is not the history of the effects of the text, but the historicity of understanding: a text is seized only within the limits of the historical situation of its interpreter. To demonstrate this point, this paper takes the example of the Markan ending. Surprisingly, a 16th-century Thomistic theologian, Cajetan, and a contemporary commentary are so close that one might think they are defending the same view of the text. Both intend to maintain the canonicity of verses 9–20, but both point out that it may be adventurous to build any doctrine or practice on these verses alone. But the context is different, obviously. The first one tries to justify a conception of faith that does not depend directly on miracles; the second one affirms a hermeneutic centred on the interpreter's response, being wary of its ecclesiological drifts. This confirms that theological considerations rather than philological ones have prevailed in challenging Mark's ending.

The present article first presents and explains the theses that emerge from Régis Burnet's monograph ‘Exegesis and History of Reception’ (Tübingen 2021) and from his SNTS Main Paper published in NTS 2023, ‘Why “Reception History” Is Not Just Another Exegetical Method: The Case of Mark's Ending’ (Leuven 2022). It then develops questions and perspectives that result from the dialogue between Burnet's approach and my own approach and continue this productive, unfinished discussion. It should be postulated that the history of interpretation and the reception history belong to the field of theological encyclopaedia and have the potential to lead to an ‘aesthetic theology’.

For centuries, Christians have understood some of the texts included in the New Testament as ‘Jewish,’ in the sense of them being written by (converted) Jews for other Jews. From a historical perspective, a new development in the academy suggests that such approaches do not do justice to the nature of these texts. Indeed, even more recent attempts at understanding the New Testament against the background of Judaism are also found wanting. Instead, placing these texts within the broader context of the diverse ways of embodying Jewish ancestral customs in the pre-rabbinic Second Temple period, this interpretive trajectory, involving scholars from a wide array of backgrounds, insists that Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Revelation etc., should be understood as expressions of Judaism. This article highlights key issues involved in such re-readings of New Testament texts, including ways in which they may or may not relate to normative-theological positions among Christians and Jews today. First, the study looks at how the question is asked in our contemporary setting. Then, moving down historical layers, issues related to history and categorisation are addressed before we, finally, return to the present to consider possible implications of our findings.

Numismatic inscriptional evidence consistently employs the ΕΥΕΡΓ- word group in describing a superior providing some material public benefit to an inferior, typically an entire city, nation or kingdom. This is evidenced in the present study's comprehensive survey of several hundred numismatic types, extant in many thousands of specimens from the second century bce to the first century ce. Within this context, 1 Timothy 6.2 is discussed, wherein it is noted that the apparent identification of a slave's labour as ɛὐɛργɛσία not only heightens the significance and value of that service but is a deliberate inversion of expected social and linguistic norms.

Λιβανωτός is a rare word in the Biblia graeca and means ‘frankincense’. It appears once in the canonical Septuagint in 1 Chron 9.29 as part of a list of ingredients which were under the care of the Levites: flour, wine, olive oil, incense and spices. In the Apocrypha, it appears in 3 Macc 5.2 as a drug, together with unmixed wine, for maddening or running elephants wild. Then it is used only in Rev 8.3, 5 in constructions which made lexicographers unanimously define λιβανωτός as a container (censer or brazier). However, when one examines the usage of this noun in Greek writing at large, he or she observes, not without surprise, that λιβανωτός exhibits impressively stable semantics. Virtually everywhere in the history of Greek, the term is a spice (frankincense). Why then should Rev 8.3, 5 be an exception? The study probes into the claim that λιβανωτός means ‘censer’ in the Johannine Apocalypse, shows how well the regular meaning of incense fits in the scene John witnesses, and draws important implications for the understanding of the text and the lexicographical task.

The article explains the problematic Second Teacher episode in the so-called developmental interpretation of IGT recently proposed by M. R. Whitenton and J. R. C. Cousland. The article shows that the killing of the second teacher in the text of Gs, which is appropriately identified as problematic for the developmental interpretation, appears to be a later version of the episode that most likely already sought to supplement a more original account. In the earliest recoverable form, preserved in the early versions (Syriac, Latin and Ethiopic), the story consistently does not blame Jesus for the death of the second teacher, either in the episode itself or in the other passages. So in the earliest surviving version(s), the teacher dies but not because of a curse from Jesus. Therefore, this episode does not disturb the so-called developmental interpretation.

The so-called Hymn of the Bride is found in Chapters 6–7 in the first Act of the apocryphal Acts of Thomas. The manuscripts containing it show a particular history of the text which does not always coincide with that of the rest of the Act. For instance, family gamma (Γ) often presents a summarized version of the first two Acts, thus heavily shortening the Hymn.

A study of the text is essential to establish a new edition with translation, which is the aim of the project in which this study is embedded. However, analysis of the manuscripts omitting or summarizing the Hymn is also relevant for other goals, such as a proper understanding of the interrelationships between the different manuscripts and of the interest in the text, and its use by early Christian communities and by later readers.

Consequently, in this paper, I will analyse the particularities of such a textual tradition and offer a few conclusions that will, in turn, contribute to the broader analysis of the Acts of Thomas.