I distinctly recall how excited I was to read Trajectories through Early Christianity some twenty-five years ago. In 1970 I had just finished doctoral studies and had begun teaching at the University of Notre Dame. One of the first lessons I received from a senior colleague at that time was: “Elisabeth, remember you are not teaching here as a theologian but as a critical exegete and historian. Consequently, never allow your students to ask what is the religious or theological significance of biblical texts and interpretations for today. If you allow this question your scholarship will flounder on the slippery slope of relevance.” I was puzzled and disturbed by such counsel—to say the least—because as a student in Germany I had not encountered such anti-theological positivism but rather had been reared in the hermeneutical-theological tradition. The exciting part of reading Trajectories, therefore, was the realization that epistemological, hermeneutical, and theological questions were also the cutting edge issues of American biblical scholarship. For Trajectories set out to initiate a critical discussion and revision of the categories and conceptualizations not only of biblical-historical interpretation, but also of the criteria for theological evaluation.

One manner in which to investigate the life of Jesus' sayings in the early church is to ask how communities preserved and transmitted their memory. I ask here, however, a somewhat different question, namely, what did Christians accomplish by remembering certain words and actions specifically as those of Jesus. In particular, I inquire in this article into the consequences of remembering Jesus' words and actions as authoritative within the cultic context of the Corinthian community. What is the memory of Jesus that informs chapters 10 and 11 of 1 Corinthians? What light, moreover, might an answer to this question shed upon the formation of a narrative about Jesus? To this end, I present a reading of materials in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 that attends to cult, both its ritual and its narrative, and to the function of authoritative speech in cultic context.

One of the many contributions that Helmut Koester has made to New Testament scholarship is his attention to the importance of archaeological and epigraphical evidence for the study of early Christianity. I offer this study as a small token of gratitude to him for that contribution. It attempts to show the importance of certain inscriptions for the signification of the saying attributed to Jesus in Mark 10:45: “For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Contemporary New Testament scholarship gives evidence of two trends. Some scholars, particularly those interested in the historical Jesus or the source of collected logia (Q) are going backward, trying to reach Christian origins and still influenced by the romantic dream of the pure beginning. Others are pressing forward, tracing the development of early Christian traditions, both in the canonical and non-canonical texts (particularly the Nag Hammadi Codices) in an attempt to follow the several streams of Christianity. These scholars continue to be influenced by the philosophical construction of organic evolution.

Due in part to the prominence of the word ⋯γαπάω in the New Testament, readers of that book have often believed that the early Christians as a group considered ⋯γαπάω to refer to a superior form of love than that represented by the Greek word φιλέω. One of the primary reasons for this conviction is the way in which the apostle Paul uses ⋯γάπη and ⋯γαπάω to such an extent in his epistles. In fact, Paul's usage of the ⋯γαπάω word family is so consistent that with one exception the word φιλέω is entirely absent from his vocabulary. Likewise, in the Septuagint the occurrences of ⋯γαπάω outnumber those of φιλέω by a ratio of 266 to a mere fifteen.1

Professor Helmut Koester has offered this incisive criticism and insightful characterization of research on the sayings traditions of the Gospel of Thomas:

What is most puzzling about the composition of sayings in this wisdom book is the arrangement and order of the sayings. There is seemingly no rhyme or reason for the odd sequence in which the sayings occur in the Gospel of Thomas…. several attempts have been made to find the author's compositional principle, none of them convincing.

The theme of this special issue is “Jesus’ Sayings in the Life of the Early Church.” I wish to expand the theme slightly to “Jesus’ Sayings and Deeds in the Life and Appeal of the Early Church.” I add the word “deeds” because the two concepts of words and deeds are intimately linked in the classical tradition and the culture in which Christianity arose. I have added the word “appeal” because this article will present a chain of events indicating how the words and deeds of Jesus, as emulated by Christians, strongly appealed to the Greco-Roman world.