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Important manuscripts of the Greek New Testament and other early Christian writings are held by institutions in Alexandria. This report provides an update on the current location and identification of these documents, including the ‘Akhmim Fragment’ of the Gospel of Peter. It also gives preliminary information about four witnesses to the Greek New Testament which have now been added to the official register. These comprise a tenth-century catena manuscript of the Gospels (GA 2937) and three gospel lectionaries (GA L2477, L2478, and L2479).

After an analysis of Jerome’s presentation of the scriptural lemmata in his Commentary on Galatians, their text is compared with variant readings in the tradition and the quotations of the Epistle in the exegetical sections. This sheds light on the complex transmission of the biblical text in this commentary, during which initial lemmata and expository quotations have both been subject to alteration. The earliest interventions precede the extant manuscripts of the work but can sometimes be identified through traces of substituted readings. Despite later preference for the Vulgate form of text, numerous Old Latin readings occur in both the editorial text and critical apparatus of the recent Corpus Christianorum edition. While not all of these are authorial, it is suggested that the significance of the non-Vulgate variants has been underestimated in this edition and that in many places it is possible to recover a form of biblical text closer to that used by Jerome. An appendix is provided of non-Vulgate readings in the commentary.

Scholars typically maintain that the Longer Ending (LE) of Mark subverts Mark's somber message about Jesus' sacrificial death with a triumphant, concluding vision of the risen Lord seated at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19). This study takes a different tack, promoting a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between Mark and the LE by detecting important thematic elements-especially concerning discipleship—that the later passage both adopts and adapts from its host gospel. For the writer(s) of the LE, the resurrection serves less as a dividing-line between Jesus' disciples and Mark's community and more as the bridge that confirms emphatically the new age of God's reign, evident both before and after the passion through those who trust the message of that good news.

Due to the antiquity of the Sahidic Coptic version of the New Testament among early versions of the New Testament, it is a significant resource for New Testament textual criticism, reception history, and the history of interpretation. This article explores the manner in which the Sahidic Coptic version translates the anarthrous nominative singular (AnNS) qe0", and its effect on a key passage regarding the understanding of Jesus’ divinity. It does so by answering two distinct but related questions: (1) Did the Sahidic Coptic translators uniformly translate the AnNS qe0"? (2) How can the assessment of the Sahidic Coptic translation pattern inform the discussion of the history, transcription, and translation of

The purpose of this short study is to survey the texts that link Mark 10:45// Matt. 20:28 with Phil. 2:6―8 in the pre-Nicene period. The texts surveyed are Origen, Fr. Luc. 210; Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 1.9.85.1―2; Quis div. 37.1―4; Acts Thom. 72.

In his Commentary on Galatians (3.6.11) Jerome quotes and criticizes an interpretation of Galatians 6:11 which reads the verse as showing that Paul was unable to write Greek. This article rejects the attribution of the quotation to Chrysostom and suggests instead that it is taken from Eusebius of Emesa. Jerome is known to have used Eusebius' Commentary on Galatians elsewhere in his own and criticizes Eusebius in similar words to the commentary in his Quaestiones hebraicae in Genesim. It is further suggested that Eusebius' own experience of bilingualism may have shaped his perception of Paul's difficulty, and that his interpretation may have influenced Chrysostom's strictures on Paul's inability to write Greek clearly.

The suspicion that the ‘discoverer’ of the letter from Clement of Alexandria to Theodore was in reality its author was raised shortly after its first publication in 1973, and has often been reasserted in the years since Morton Smith’s death in 1991. Yet the fragments of the ‘Secret Gospel of Mark’ are often still interpreted on the provisional assumption that the letter containing them is genuine. This article enquires whether the long-standing suspicion of forgery—occasioned largely by the circumstances of the text’s discovery—can be put beyond reasonable doubt. It proceeds by way of a close scrutiny of the letter itself against the double background of the undisputed writings of Clement of Alexandria on the one hand, and the published work of Morton Smith on the other. It is argued that the letter’s internal anomalies are incompatible with Clementine authorship, as are certain compositional techniques; and that it is the product of interests and influences that predate its supposed discovery at the Mar Saba monastery.

The famous pericope in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin folio 43a, which contains the passage 'On the eve of Passover they have hanged Jesus' and the mysterious phrase 'Jesus was close to the authorities', has long puzzled biblical scholars, who wonder whether we have here an astonishing piece of evidence for the trial of Jesus, but has never been fully expounded. The main reason is that scholars so far have approached the text from a New Testament vantage point. The essay examines the text within a Talmudic frame of reference. Questions of redactional patterns and modes of composition receive close attention, as does Talmudic terminology. It is argued that 'Jesus' in these passages is merely a figure, signifying the sages' concerns about Christian missionaries of Jewish descent, and the whole discourse is a footnote on the biblical imperatives of Deuteronomy 13 regarding Jewish advocates of a foreign religion, the Messit. It was prompted by the dramatic changes in the religious assumptions that underscored Talmudic discourse related to the Messit. The pericope was designed to add a Christian dimension to the existing body of Talmudic discourse on the death penalty. These passages are not anti-Christian polemic; the challenge that motivated its authors was not to discredit Christianity, but rather to offer instruction on what to do about it. It has the Halakhic purpose of equating Christianity with idolatry and the aim of keeping Halakhic traditions relevant in an age of Bible-based foreign monotheistic religions (not Jewish heretics).

In The Resurrection of the Son of God, N. T. Wright argues for the resurrection being the most probable explanation for the facts of the empty tomb and post-mortem appearances. Nevertheless, many sceptics remain unpersuaded because of Wright's inadequate handling of the naturalistic hypotheses. This essay analyses the structure of the dialectic between the apologist and sceptic concerning these facts syllogistically. It is demonstrated that all possible hypotheses concerning the post-mortem appearances can be reduced to seven, and all possible hypotheses concerning the empty tomb can be reduced to eleven. This reduction helps to ensure that all possible hypotheses had been considered before a conclusion concerning whether the resurrection is the most probable hypothesis is made. Based on this reduction, it is argued that all possible naturalistic hypotheses are improbable once the credibility of certain details in the New Testament accounts is established.