Pericope Adulterae is an interpolation.For a thousand years prior to the Renaissance, the Latin translation known as the Vulgate had been the Bible in common use, and the Greek text was largely ignored. This changed in the 1500s, which brought a renewed interest in compiling the original versions for study and comparison with Latin. The…

The Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7) reads:For there are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are oneInauthenticityBruce M. Metzger writes:That these words are spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is certain in the light of the following considerations.(A) External…

Five variants in 1 Cor 14:19

P52, a tiny scrap of papyrus that has been dated only on paleographic grounds and could date anywhere in the second or third century. Naturally, conservative scholars take the earliest possible dating as if it were set in stone. Brent Nongbri has an article here on why it should not be relied on for dating…

The textual history of the concluding section of the Gospel of Mark is signifi cant from the perspective of textual criticism. In the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, the minuscule 304 from the twelfth century, as well as in Syriac, Georgian, and Armenian translations and at least one Sahidic manuscript, the Gospel of Mark ends in…

Introduction There are several overviews of the early iconographic depiction of Paul in the Catacombs of Thecla and the complex history of the grave of Paul in the basilica named after him outside the walls of Rome (Jens Schröter, “Archäologische und ikonographische Zeugnisse der frühen Paulusverehrung,” in Paulus Handbuch, 568–574; David Eastman, Paul the Martyr.…

Dating probablyfrom the mid-2nd century,the Epistula Apostolorum in cludes afull account of the conversion of Paul, largely independent of Acts and outlined in advancebythe risen Jesusasheprepares his disciples for their fu ture mission. As in Acts and Galatians, Paul’sJewishness is emphasized here. As in Galatians but in contrast toActs, there is no indication thatPaul’sperse cuting…

A. The Anti-Israel Set B. The Pro-Israel Set Contradictions of Paul: Now the problem emerges. Point by point, the two sets contradict each other: Circumcision is of great value; it counts for nothing. The Law is holy; it places its followers under a curse and cannot justify them before God. All Israel will be saved;…

Universalism and Particularism according to Campbell and Tucker William S. Campbell and J. Brian Tucker both speak of a “particularistic” Paul and understand most of scholarship to represent another, “universalistic” view (Tucker, You Belong to Christ, 66–67). In their view, the universalistic stance claims that Paul taught that all believers share one, universal identity in…

Article Paul, Jewish and gentile sin have different histories and characteristics. For Paul, whereas gentiles are dominated by their passions and have corrupt minds as a punishment for ‘idolatry,’ Jews of his cosmic era are not idolaters and are not by dominated by their passions and corrupted minds. Paul instead has a different myth of…