The life or death of a church depends on how much its members are willing to proclaim the gospel to the world. If its ministers are satisfied merely with performing their functions and counselling religious people, if its members confess their faith just as far as it is socially acceptable, the church will grow more and more into a sterile institution that is far from the living church of the New Testament. The purpose of this study is therefore to ask what connexion may exist between the church and its mission to the world in both the generally accepted and in the disputed letters of Paul.

Daß der Apostel Paulus mit der Urchristenheit die Auferweckung des gekreuzigten Jesus als eschatologisches, ihn zum Herrn und Christus erhöhendes Ereignis verstanden hat, ist allgemein anerkannter Tatbestand. Dieses Ereignis ist für Paulus der Anbruch des kommenden äon, der verborgen unter dem gegenwärtigen bestehenden äon geschieht. Diesen kommenden äon in der Herrschaft Jesu Christi angebrochen zu proklamieren, ist seine Botschaft, zu der er sich ausgesandt weiß. Wenn er von ihr spricht, wird eine doppelte Stellung zur Tradition sichtbar, deren Beachtung zur Klärung der Fragen führen kann, die mit dem eschatologischen Charakter der urchristlichen und paulinischen Theologie zusammenhängen.

It is usually assumed that Matthew did not know Luke, nor Luke Matthew. The non-Marcan (‘Q’-) materials common to Matthew and Luke, then, ultimately go back to a common source or sources, oral or written, much of which anyway had reached a fixed Greek form. Attempts have been made to split up the source of the Q-materials into two documents, into one-sheet ‘tracts’, and into individual floating sayings.

The present work is intended to furnish a further contribution to the much debated, yet still unsettled question as to whether the Skeireins was the original work of a Gothic commentator writing in his vernacular, or whether it was translated into Gothic from a commentary in Greek or Latin.

The not inconsiderable portions of the N.T. in Gothic bear witness to the manner in which the translators followed the Greek original word by word, and often syllable by syllable. Their literalism extends to the order, the vocabulary, the constructions and often to exact calques of the Greek words.

Commentators usually regard Mark iv. 1–34 as a composite structure based upon a pre-Markan complex, possibly a parable-source. Mark is said to have expanded this source, chiefly by the insertion of extra-traditional material at vv. 11f. and 21–5. Smaller additions and emendations of a more specifically editorial nature are also thought to occur in passages like iv. I a, 10, 13b, 33 and 34.

I will not repeat the technical description of the two Coptic codices now at the University of Mississippi, since that was done two years ago in Oslo by my colleague, Professor William Willis, and summarized in the Journal of Biblical Literature (LXXVIII, part I, March 1959, 15 f.) by Professor Bruce Metzger of the Princeton Theological Seminary. I am interested only in their content and significance.

Although many studies have been published of the history and influence of Codex Bezae, textual critics have hitherto overlooked the contribution which it made to one of the most noteworthy of the earlier English versions of the Bible. This was the sixteenth-century translation prepared by a group of English exiles who had fled to the Continent in order to escape the persecution of Queen Mary Tudor, sometimes referred to as ‘Bloody’ Mary.

The authorship and date of the Book of Revelation have been the subject of much scholarly debate. Additional information from recently published Coptic Gnostic texts will contribute to the final resolution of the debate.

The Gnostic Apocrphon of John, used by Irenaeus as a source in his Adv. Haer., has been known since 1896.