Vetus Testamentum, Volume 59, Number 1, 2009. Loaded on 2009-01-21
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The Greek term ko has often been loosely translated as ‘advocate’, with the assumption that it possesses a vague forensic quality. Hitherto, however, its precise meaning has been imperfectly understood, and there has been no cohesive legal definition for all of its appearances, especially those in the New Testament. This study examines all of the occurrences of the term ko, including previously overlooked attestations in the papyrological and epigraphical record. It argues that the term is a precise calque for the Latin legal term advocatus, meaning a person of high social standing who speaks on behalf of a defendant in a court of law before a judge. The article concludes by showing how this meaning is appropriate to the five appearances of ko in the Johannine corpus.

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The tradition delivered by the missionaries at the foundation of the Thessalonian church had been received as authoritative but had, at the same time, caused the new converts to grieve hopelessly over fellow believers who had died. In response to this situation Paul could not simply abrogate the founding tradition in favour of some new and more palatable ‘word of the Lord’. However, he could perhaps guide the Thessalonians towards an alternative interpretation of the authority they had already embraced. This observation enables the isolation of two distinctive properties of the founding tradition: it caused the Thessalonians’ grief, while also being open to Paul’s alternative reinterpretation. These two features, in combination with other indicators in 1 Thessalonians, provide a means of rigorously testing Didache 16 as a potential candidate for the role of the eschatological tradition behind 1 Thessalonians.

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One of the actors from Vatican II who still plays a major role in the Church today, is without any doubt Joseph Ratzinger. He has been an active theologian, 'advisor' and peritus in the Council, afterwards being named cardinal-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and, since 2005, the Sovereign Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. In our contribution, we will investigate in what way the event of the Council, its texts, but also its subsequent reception, have influenced the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, especially in regard to the constitution Dei Verbum, i.e. the question of the authority of Revelation, Tradition and magisterial hermeneutics. From this perspective, we will comment on some of his famous expressions, among others: 'the real reception of Vatican II has not yet begun', and also, 'it is the dogmatic constitutions which have to serve as reading keys for the other documents', and not the other way around (as in Gaudium et spes, Nostra Aetate, etc.). This engagement with his theology will also lead us to a tentative evaluation of the contemporary discussion of the reception of Vatican II and the question of authority.
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In their description of the history of the transmission of the New Testament text, textual critics can use narrative analysis to elucidate the theological tendencies of narrative portions of an individual manuscript. The current article is an application of this methodology to the text of Mk 16.9-20 in Codex W. The article correlates the theological tendencies of this passage against the rest of the text of Mark in W with the outcome that there is reasonable evidence for a Tendenz focused on the cosmic power of Christ. This, in turn, correlates well with the triumph of the church over paganism in the fourth to fifth centuries CE when W was copied.

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In 'The Roots of a ‘Libertine’ Slogan in 1 Corinthians 6,18' Jay E. Smith defends the thesis that according to some believers in Corinth the physical body is morally irrelevant. This brief note examines Paul’s reasoning in 6,12-20. Paul distinguishes between 'lawful' and 'beneficial' in v. 12ab and thus limits 12a. The general statement of v. 12c no longer remains true; it is corrected by 12d. In vv. 13-14 he opposes 'body' to 'stomach' and 'God raises' to 'God destroys'. V. 18c contains a correction of the general rule of 18b. Paul does not explicitly say that the statements in vv. 12a, 12c, 13a and 18b – or any of them – are Corinthian slogans.
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This article clarifies a perennial problem relating to the concept of ‘orality’ in Gospels studies and attempts to provide some resolution to that problem. Specifically, Gospels criticism has struggled to conceptualize the relation between the Jesus tradition as it was orally performed and early textual (written) expressions of that tradition. The binary opposition ‘literacy/orality’ has failed to provide any help in this conceptualization, and this failure is rooted especially in the rather nebulous (yet widespread) concept of ‘orality’. New Testament scholarship requires a set of culturally specific models of textuality, including the non-communicative functions of written texts and the non-literate use of written traditions. Before we can develop the necessary models, however, we need to deal with the problems we have created by appealing to ‘orality’.

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