The recent debate on the date of the Muratori Canon has allowed it to be established that this was the first known list of Christian writings. But from the text called 'western', a stage is reached that is prior to the forming of the New Testament, whose history ranges from Clement in Rome, before the year 100, to Polycarpus, at the end of his life, around year 160, by way of Ignatius of Antioch, Marcion and Justine. The canon for the books of the New Testament is almost completely established towards the year 160, as a result of the dual tradition that comes at the same time from Antioch and Ephesus, written within the Jewish-Hellenistic culture, which will soon be abandoned in favour of the Greek-Roman culture.

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This article develops the Christological implications of the three-fold grammatical interpretation of specific passive occurrences of verbs that designate transference with Jesus as the verbal subject. The discussion considers the Greek conceptualizations of transference and motion, the conditions that accommodate a three-fold grammatical interpretation of passive occurrences, and procedures for evaluating the contextual viability of these grammatical interpretations. The discussion then identifies verbal occurrences that admit to a three-fold interpretation with Jesus as subject, clarifies their traditional English translations, and develops the Christological implications of the three-fold interpretation of verbs in Mark 14,41, Heb 9,28, and Acts 1,11.

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In the last years a new consensus has arisen in textual critical circles that favors the omission of 'Son of God' from the prologue of Mark’s gospel.
The new angle by which I want to approach this problem is to investigate its significance for Markan Christology. I will argue that the shorter Markan prologue, 'The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ' does not sufficiently capture Mark’s theology of the person of Jesus. The paper includes two sections, the first discussing Markan Christology and the second evaluating the textual evidence. In the Christological section I first challenge the assertion that Peter’s confession of Jesus’ Messiahship (8:27-30) is the turning point of the Gospel of Mark. Then I demonstrate that an additional title like suffering Son of Man or Son of God is necessary to adequately capture Mark’s Christology. Finally, I argue that Matthew and John have similarly positioned crucial Christological titles in the prologues of their gospels. In the textual critical section I provide evidence for the inclusion of 'Son of God' at Mk. 1:1 and argue that the omission of this title in a few manuscripts must have occurred through periblepsis occasioned by homoioteleuton.

The article argues that Jesus euphemistically refers to homosexual behavior and similar sexual offenses against the Jewish law by use of the term ἀσέλγεια on his list of sins that 'defile the human heart' in Mark 7:22-23. The article examines the use of ἀσέλγεια by Jewish, pagan, and NT writers, and uses the Syriac translation to attempt to identify the original Aramaic word used by Jesus in this verse and what he may have meant by it. Jewish writers use ἀσέλγεια to refer to what they considered to be shocking violations of the sexuality taught in the Torah.

This article argues that John adopts a lack of clarity as a strategy for communication in the Book of Revelation. This lack of clarity can be identified in his use of the asyndeton, καί, anarthrous nouns and cataphora. His use of cataphora is investigated in three areas; in Revelation 1, in his use of ἃ δεῖ γενέσθαι and the colours of the horses. The conclusion is that exegetes should not impose readings on passages in Revelation that are, in themselves, inherently unclear. Instead, they should wait until John clarifies his own ambiguity so that the full rhetorical force of the text can be provided.

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This article is a pilot study on the feasibility of investigating the grammar, both in terms of words and sentences, of the Gospel according to John in a systematic manner. The reason is that in general the commentaries and even specialized articles have different foci, inter alia, focusing on the historical nature or the theological and literary aspects that the Gospel is so well-known for. In surveys of commentaries on the Gospel it becomes apparent that real grammatical studies are far and few between, and that there is a tendency among commentators to copy grammatical material from one another. More often than not, grammatical issues are simply ignored and the unsuspecting and trusting reader will not even realize that there is a dangerous dungeon of grammatical problems lurking beneath the surface of the text. Apart from that, the significance of grammatical decisions are often underestimated in studies of John’s Gospel.

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In Acts 13:44-52, Luke narrates the events in Antioch of Pisidia that follow his speech in the synagogue. A series of critical variant readings arise in the text of Codex Bezae that alter significantly the perspective of the narrative. While the Alexandrian text presents the incidents, and the response of Paul and Barnabas to them, as being of local relevance and importance, Codex Bezae indicates that they also relate to a wider dimension involving the whole history of Israel, and their relationship as a people with God and with the Gentiles. Indeed, in the face of the hostile reaction of the Jews to their message about Jesus, Paul and Barnabas declare that the time has come for the gifts that had hitherto been their privilege to be shared on a universal scale with non-Jews. Thus, this passage is a key text for understanding the on-going relationship between Paul and the Jews throughout the rest of his mission.

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