In the Protestant tradition the Bible has long been regarded as the sole norm for the Church. It was from this root that, in the seventeenth century, there sprang first of all ‘biblical theology’, from which New Testament theology later branched off at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Radical historical criticism too kept closely to this tradition, and F. C. Baur made such a theology the goal of all his efforts in the study of the New Testament. Since that time the question how the problem thus posed is to be tackled and solved has remained a living issue in Germany. On the other hand, the problem for a long time held no interest for other church traditions, although here too the position has changed within the last two decades. In 1950 Meinertz wrote the first Catholic exposition, while the theme was taken up in France by Bonsirven in 1951, and by Richardson in England in 1958. Popular developments along these lines were to follow.

This paper will deal with a number of passages in the Fourth Gospel in which Jews express Jewish beliefs concerning the Messiah. Three of these are found in the debates among various groups in Jerusalem which are recorded in chapter vii; they all deal with the coming of the Messiah.

In modern study of the development of theology in the earliest Christian church one of the distinctions most frequently drawn is that between its Palestinian and Hellenistic elements. The purpose of the present paper is to draw together a number of criticisms of certain uses of this classification and hence to assess its validity and usefulness in New Testament research.