To Paul the traditions from and about Jesus had authority similar to that of the Scriptures: a logion or story served as text for paraphrastic expositions. Such expositions are also seen in John's Gospel. - It is insufficient to discuss 'John and the Synoptics'. A better scope is 'John within early gospel traditions'.- Paul and Philo maintain a cosmic understanding of Jesus and the Jewish people, respectively. Correspondingly, Jesus is seen in cosmological perspective in John's Prologue. Philo illuminates the role of God's logos relative to creation and revelation. - Archaeology testifies to...

Articulate first century Mediterranean society, Jewish and Christian included, expressly favoured harmonious order in society, in individuals, in communication, and in thought. Its common basis was the patriarchal family, the rule of law, rational self-control, and rational thought. Yet there was also resistance to oppressive and unjust order in all spheres; and while law could be held educative, yet there were substantial first century critiques of law, not just Paul's, and awareness that judicial procedures could be chaotic and biassed. Strands of such dissidence appear in Jesus and in...

Between 1973 and 1983 three volumes of collected essays by Willem C. van Unnik appeared under the title Sparsa Collecta. All the essays in these volumes had been published between 1930 and 1970. The editors of the present volume decided to publish a fourth volume with a selection of his later papers, some of which appear here for the first time in English (they were originally published in Dutch).

Translation of Een onderzoek naar de authenticiteit van de Brief aan de Ephezi'ers.

Following recent intertextual studies, Kyle B. Wells examines how descriptions of 'heart-transformation' in Deut 30, Jer 31-32 and Ezek 36 informed Paul and his contemporaries' articulations about grace and agency. Beyond advancing our understanding of how these restoration narratives were interpreted in the LXX, the Dead Sea Literature, Baruch, Jubilees, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and Philo, Wells demonstrates that while most Jews in this period did not set divine and human agency in competition with one another, their constructions differed markedly and this would have contributed to vehement...

The study sheds fresh light on aspects of the lawsuit motif in John from the background of Diaspora-Jewish and Greco-Roman data and perspectives. - John's narrative of the attempts on Jesus for such crimes as breaking the Sabbath, blasphemy, and seduction are illuminated from Philo's perspectives on vigilante execution. - Furthermore, John's narrative of the official Jewish and Roman forensic procedures against Jesus can also be situated within the framework of the Greco-Roman administration exemplified by the legal papyri from the Roman Egypt. - Philo's expectation of an eschatological...

In 2 Cor. 10-13, as in the entire Pauline corpus, the use of the first person plural is surprising. Paul oscillates between singular ('I') and plural ('We'), sometimes within the same sentence. While this literary feature has never been seriously explored, this study undertakes in the first part an investigation of the meanings of 'we' in ancient Greek texts through several literary genres, from Homer to the Hellenistic period. The second part, devoted to 2 Cor. 10-13, shows the neat architecture of these chapters, and the way the key theological message about weakness...

This bibliography is a comprehensive listing of books, facsimiles, collations and articles relating to some 3,500 Greek New Testament manuscripts, including references to photographic plates and albums. These are divided into the conventional categories of papyri, majuscules, minuscules and lectionaries, as classified in the current Gregory-Aland register. This third revised edition supersedes the two previous editions. Entries from those earlier editions and from three supplements, published as articles in Novum Testamentum, as well as newly published material, are to be found here....