British New Testament Society

John presents Jesus as the restorer of Israel in John 6.1-59. John does so by means of allusions to the exodus wilderness wandering, the direct Moses-Jesus contrasts in vv.31-33; 49-51, and Scripture citation and allusion (LXX Ps 76.17-20, LXX ISA 54.13a and perhaps ISA 55). Exodus symbolism was often used to speak about national restoration (OT and Second Temple literature) and I argue that this is what is going on in John 6. In addition, the second exodus/restoration motif is heightened when Jesus' command to his disciples to "gather (sunago) the left over fragments that nothing may perish (apollumi)" in 6.12 is followed by the narrator's notice that the disciples "gathered them and filled twelve baskets" (6.13). Wayne Meeks argued many years ago (1967) that 6.12-13 should be understood as an intentional symbolic allusion to the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel. Some have scoffed at this interpretation (recently, C.S. Keener). However, I will argue that on the basis of evidence outside as well as inside the Gospel Meeks' view should be given more serious consideration. Jesus is thus the restorer of Israel, the one who leads the Second Exodus restoration of Israel..

Of these verses, Green writes that Luke's reference to a 'scriptural' suffering messiah is an oxymoron; that Luke's overt reference to psalms is a consequence of his use of them in his Passion Narrative; that Luke's 'the messiah must suffer' melds Davidic messiah with Isaianic servant.

However, because his logic is questionable and his use of Lukan evidence problematic, Green's case for a servant concept controlling Luke's passion narrative is flawed. In reply to Green, a six-fold, cumulative argument demonstrates that Luke's statement "that the messiah must suffer and be raised" emerges from a single David-model derived from the Book of Psalms.

This cumulative argument begins from Luke's appeal by name to the Book of Psalms; establishes the frequency and density of Luke's use of psalms; examines occurrences of 'David' and 'messiah' in relation to Luke's using psalms; explores a Davidic autobiography implied in those psalms featuring in Luke's subtext; reveals that apostolic speeches are arguments textured from psalms and rooted in a comparative biography of David and Jesus; demonstrates that distinctive elements in Luke's Passion Narrative are associated with the context-fields of psalm allusions in his portrayal of Jesus' death and burial.

Luke was right; Green mistaken.

Many scholars agree that Luke's account of the creation of the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15 is incompatible with Paul's recollection of his meeting with the apostles in Galatians 2. Among other difficulties, why did Paul neglect to quote the Decree if such a document had arisen at the council?

This short paper brings evidence from the Didache to argue that a Decree was issued as a result of Paul's meeting with the Jerusalem Apostles, but that its ruling was more ambiguous than the anti-circumcision party were willing to admit.

In the 1980's a large deposit of Denney's unpublished papers was lodged at New College, Edinburgh. They consist of sermons, theological papers, class lectures and other items. Amongst these are several papers of considerable significance not only for our understanding of Denney, but for the light they shed on views of biblical authority as these evolved in Scotland at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

In particular it is possible to identify papers which refer directly to the controversy Denney stirred up in Chicago 1894, and to place several other papers on biblical criticism in contexts such as the George Adam Smith controversy of 1902.

In addition the large cache of sermons provide primary evidence of believing criticism as practised by a scholar preacher whose fame rests on a conservative understanding of atonement, but built on a progressive doctrine of Scripture.

Denney's role as a frontline apologist for believing criticism is both enhanced and illuminated by a study of selected papers from the unpublished corpus. To my knowledge, these remain largely unknown and unexploited. My own PhD is an intellectual and contextual study of Denney incorporating this new material.

Modern scholarship remains polarised on the question of whether Acts portrays the Pharisee Gamaliel, Paul's teacher, positively or negatively. Nevertheless, all agree that he remains a Jew. In the early Church, however, an explicit expression of this position is wholly absent. The same interpretation of Gamaliel is offered by both Jewish Christians (Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1) and Gentile Christians (John Chrysostom); he must have become a believer in Jesus. The 'religions' of the Gamaliels produced, however, are radically different. This paper seeks to answer the question of why these very different interpreters agreed on seeing a convert, and asks what implications this has for modern studies of Luke-Acts?

In his seminal article entitled 'Paul's Tentmaking and the Problem of His Social Class' (see JBL 97 [1978]: 555-64), R. F. Hock examines the apostle's remarks regarding his work in an attempt to ascertain if he was cut out of an aristocratic bolt of cloth. Based primarily upon his reading of 1 Cor 9.19 and 2 Cor. 11.7, Hock concludes that Paul, not unlike a self-respecting member of the upper class, displayed a 'snobbish attitude toward work and thought of his labour as 'slavish and demeaning' (562). More recently, J.J. Meggitt in his immensely learned book Paul, Poverty and Survival (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1998) has called into question Hock's assessment of Paul's social location. In doing so, Meggitt contends Hock's claim that Paul possessed a negative attitude towards his toil as 'extremely ill thought out' (88). In his monograph, however, Meggitt does not explore this provocative criticism in any degree of detail. This paper considers anew the apostle's remarks about his labour, and having sifted through the pertinent evidence to hand, concludes that Paul's attitude towards his trade was far more complex than a simple "negative" or "positive" depiction allows.