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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
To speak, in general terms, of trends in modern biblical study is often to over-simplify; and certainly to claim that there has been, in recent years, a trend away from the traditional classicist or ‘hellenist’ approach to New Testament problems towards a more Hebraic or semitic-centred approach would be to be guilty of the same exaggeration as E. C. Hoskyns in 1930: ‘(There are) grounds for supposing no further progress in the understanding of … Christianity to be possible unless the ark of New Testament exegesis be recovered from its wanderings in the land of the Philistines (sic) and be led back not merely to Jerusalem, for that might mean contemporary Judaism, but to its home in the midst of the classical Old Testament Scriptures — to the Law and the Prophets.’ There is, nevertheless, some truth in A. M. Hunter's later statement: ‘After ransacking all sorts of sources, Jewish and Greek (and, we may add, starting all sorts of “hares”, some of which have not run very well), (scholars) are discovering the truth of Augustine's dictum, “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is made plain in the New”’ (Novum Testamentum in vetere latet, vetus in novo patet).
page 1 note 1 Mysterium Christi, ed. Bell, G. K. A. and Deissmann, A. (London, 1930), p. 70Google Scholar.
page 1 note 2 The Work and Words of Jesus (London, 1950), p. 71Google Scholar.
page 3 note 3 Cf. Fishbane, M., ‘Revelation and Tradition: Aspects of Inner-Biblical Exegesis’, in J.B.L., Vol. 99 3, 1980, pp. 343–361 (on Isaiah, p. 355)Google Scholar.
page 3 note 4 See the detailed discussion of the use of the Hebrew text of Habakkuk in Stendahl, K., The School of Matthew (Uppsala, 1954), p. 185fGoogle Scholar.
page 4 note 5 For a discussion of both passages, see Fitzmyer, J. A., ‘The Use of Explicit Old Testament Quotations in Qumran Literature and in the New Testament’, in NTS, Vol. VII (1960–1961), p. 327Google Scholar.
page 5 note 6 In his two seminal studies, The Old Testament in the New, Lecture, Ethel M. Wood, London, Athlone Press, 1952Google Scholar, and According to the Scriptures: the Substructure of New Testament Theology (also London, 1952)Google Scholar, work largely inspired by Rendel Harris's equally important studies in his two slim volumes entitled Testimonia (I, Cambridge, 1916, II, Cambridge, 1920).
page 6 note 7 Moule, C. F. D., The Birth of the New Testament, p. 79f, cf. p. 77 on Heb. 1.8fGoogle Scholar.
page 6 note 8 op. cit., p. 142; cf. Moule, op. cit., pp. 53f.
page 6 note 9 op. cit., p. 85.
page 7 note 10 In Text and Interpretation, Studies in the New Testament presented to Matthew Black, edited by Best, E. and Wilson, R. McL., Cambridge, 1979, pp. 231–250Google Scholar.
page 9 note 11 Anderson, Hugh, The Gospel of Mark, New Century Bible (Oliphants, 1976), p. 227Google Scholar.
page 9 note 12 The Gospel according to Si Mark (SCM, 1948), p. 93fGoogle Scholar.
page 10 note 13 See my Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts,3 p. 119f.
page 10 note 14 See Levy, , Chaldäisches Wörterbuch, Bd I, p. 197Google Scholar.
page 10 note 15 Expressing ‘irresponsible or arbitrary action’ (Swete), e.g., 3 Kgds 9.1, 10.13, Ps.113.11, Dan. 8.4 (Theod.), 2 Mace. 7.16.
page 10 note 16 The Four Gospels: A New Translation (London: Hodder & Stoughton) 88, 301, and Our Translated Gospels (London: Hodder & Stoughton) 123 esp. 162.
page 11 note 17 Is πολλ, adverbial like Aramaic sagi' = πολ?
page 11 note 18 The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man (London, 1938), p. 250Google Scholar.
page 12 note 19 Here it seems appropriate to add a note on the Resurrection predictions in the Synoptic Gospels, coming mostly from Mark, at 8.31, 9.31, 10.33f., and all linking Resurrection, as at Mark 9.9f., with the Passion. (Lightfoot, R. H., The Gospel Message of Mark, Oxford, 1950, p. 11Google Scholar, once compared them to the solemn tolling of a minute bell as the party made its way from the slopes of Hermon to Jerusalem.) These passages also include Old Testament pesher (the Resurrection ‘on the third day’ draws on the Targum to Hos. 6.2), but in literary form and content they seem to be later kerygmatic expansions. See my ‘The Son of Man Passions Sayings in the Gospel Tradition’ in ZNW Bd. 60, 1969, p. 4f. I have suggested that an Aramaic pesher tradition may lie behind John 3.14, 12.34 in ‘From Schweitzer to Bultmann: the Modern Quest of the Historical Jesus’ in the McCormick Quarterly, Vol. XX, No. 4, May 1967, p. 279fGoogle Scholar.
page 12 note 20 See especially Glasson, T. F., The Second Advent (London, 1963), p. 60Google Scholar, and Robinson, J. A. T., Jesus and His Coming: the Emergence of a Doctrine (SCM, 1957), p. 57fGoogle Scholar.
page 13 note 21 Cf. McArthur, H. K., ‘Mark xiv.62’ in NTS, Vol. IV, 1957–1958, p. 157Google Scholar.
page 13 note 22 See J. Jeremias, Neutestamentliche Theologie (Gütersloh, 1973), p. 260.
page 13 note 23 How much weight is to be given to the citation of Mark 14.62 in Hegesippus's account of the martyrdom of James (Eusebius, H.E. 23.8–18) it is difficult to say; the story could have Palestinian roots, but the quotation from the LXX of Is. 3.10 in the same passage rather suggests that it is a free quotation from the Greek Mark. If the origin was Aramaic (cf. Lohmeyer, , Galiläa und Jerusalem (Göttingen, 1936), p. 68, n. 4Google Scholar) could Jesus as the ‘Gate’ reflect an Aramaic 'abbula, a rare term used once in Syriac for the ‘Entrance’ or ‘Portico’ of heaven. See Payne Smith, Thes. Syr., I, p. 11.
page 14 note 24 Above, p. 13, n. 23.
page 14 note 25 Edinburgh and New York, 1962, reprinted in Brown Judaic Studies 48, 1984, p. 64.
page 15 note 26 See my article in Jesus und der Menschensohn, Für Anton Vogle, Herausgegeben von Rudolph Pesch und Rudolph Schnackenburg in Zusammenarbeit mit Odelo A. Kaiser, Freiburg, 1975, ‘Die Apotheose Israels: eine neue Interpretation des danielischen Menschensohnes’, pp. 57–73. Cf. now Coppens, J., Le Fils d'Homme Vétero- el Intertestamentaire, Leuven, 1983Google Scholar, for the identification of the ‘saints of the Most High’ with angelic beings as well as ‘faithful Israelites’ (p. 112).
page 15 note 27 Cf. Luke 20.35f. and my Scrolls and Christian Origins, p. 139f. Cf. also Assumption of Moses, ch. 10: And then his Kingdom shall appear throughout all his creation …For the Most High shall arise, the eternal God alone; And thou Israel shalt be blessed, And God will exalt thee, And he will cause thee to approach the heaven of the stars…’ As Charles comments ‘Here … is no metaphor, but a description of Israel transfigured and glorified after the final judgement’. (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Oxford, 1913, Vol. II, p. 422.)
page 16 note 28 op. cit., p. 154.
page 16 note 29 Johannes Theisohn, Der auserwählte Richter. Untersuchungen zum tradition geschichtlichen Ort der Menschensohngestalt der Bilderreden des Aethiopischen Henoch (Göttingen, 1975).
page 16 note 30 The Book of Enoch or I Enoch, A New English Edition, with Commentary and Textual Notes by Matthew Black in consultation with James C. VanderKam, Brill, Leiden, 1985, p. 189.
