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Drawing from recent ancient historical, New Testament and Second-Sophistic scholarship, this article proposes that the enigmatic 2 Peter can be better understood with closer reference to anti-sophistic polemical writings. Increasing light has been shed on the sophists’ interest in wisdom, display and rhetoric in contexts such as Athens, Rome, Corinth and cities of Asia Minor in the first centuries CE. After introducing historical attempts to identify a worldview compatible with 2 Peter’s polemical response, this article (1) describes the nature of the Second Sophistic in the first century with reference to two contemporary anti-sophistic polemicists, Epictetus the Stoic and Philo the Jew, (2) highlights features of 2 Peter which resonate with contemporaneous anti-sophistic writings, beginning with 2 Pet. 1.16-21 and (3) observes the way in which the Ante-Nicene Fathers, when seeking to discredit later sophistic opposition, drew heavily from 2 Pet. 2–3. It may outrun the evidence to conclude that 2 Peter’s opponents were professional σοϕισταί‎ per se. It can be affirmed, however, that 2 Peter bears significant resemblance with first- and second-century anti-sophistic polemic and may be best understood with reference to it.

This article examines Eusebius's treatment of the book of Revelation and its place in the New Testament canon. Puzzled scholars have proposed various interpretations as to why Eusebius placed Revel...

This article discusses the Punjabi New Testament in Persian script. It explores different phases of its preparation and its translation features, as well as the individuals who contributed to its translation and revision.

The arrival in England of Tyndale’s New Testament in the 1520s is still widely heralded as a transformative moment. This article argues that the lingering effects of triumphalist Protestant rhetoric concerning the ‘Word of God’ have obscured the many other contexts in which it was possible for the laity to encounter the Bible in early Tudor England. They have also glossed over some of the difficulties of transmitting Scripture to a largely illiterate populace. Protestant insistence on the literal interpretation of vernacular Scripture should chiefly be seen as propaganda for the evangelical cause. Early Tudor print culture demonstrates that the reading of Scripture was understood as a complex process involving a spiritual encounter shaped by faith, imagination and emotion, not just a textual encounter. In practice, Tyndale and other reformers, no less than their more conservative opponents, taught the laity that the Bible needed to be ‘unlocked’ and explained. For the lay reader encountering works of religious devotion and instruction, the ways in which early Tudor print culture mediated the Bible remained heavily indebted to late medieval religious practice. This shaped the context in which the ‘Great Bible’ of 1539 was conceived and published and this first official English Bible should be recognised as a contested text, which in its final form may have been as much a reflection of late medieval attitudes as the achievement of English Protestants.

This article analyzes the instances of using short and long forms of the adjectives the Old Slavonic language, as well as the analytical method of expressing the category of certainty / uncertainty in the Slovene language of the XVI century based on the example of translations of the fragments from the New Testament. The comparison of short and long forms of the adjectives is one of the ways of conveying the category of certainty / uncertainty in the Slavonic language without articles. A similar comparison of short and long forms of the adjectives can be observed in both Old Slavonic and Old Slovene languages. However, in the Slovene language, such juxtaposition ceased to exists as a result of the early contraction in pronominal forms of the adjectives; the XVI century marks the formation of the analytical method of conveying the category certainty / uncertainty using the article “ta” and “en”. The following conclusions were made: the original language could affect the translation strategy and the choice of forms, while in the Slovene language it also pertained to articles; the examples of Slovene translations that preserved the correlation of short and long forms without the presence of the part or article in the originals, testify to the development of special ways of expressing the category of certainty / uncertainty, which replaced the juxtaposition of short and long forms of the adjectives; the analytical forms in the Slovene corresponded with short and long forms of the adjectives in the Old Slavonic language, which emphasizes the similar functional yield of analytical forms with the previous juxtaposition of short and long forms of the adjectives in the Slovene language.

This paper attempts to investigate mitigation in biblical verses and prophetic traditions from a pragmatic perspective. This study tries to answer the following question: what are the most common pragmatic theories by which this phenomenon is conveyed by the speaker and understood by the listener. Accordingly, it tries to achieve the following aims: 1) specifying the most prominent categories of speech acts employed in such texts; 2) delineating the politeness strategies exploited in this discourse; 3) identifying the deictic expressions and pragmatic – conversational strategies utilized in both texts, It is hypothesized that 1) biblical verses and prophetic traditions show variations in the use of directive speech acts; 2) both positive and negative politeness strategies are employed in religious discourse ;3) non-specific reference and second person plural as deictic expressions are supposed to be used widely in this discourse;4) hinting strategy is employed highly in religious discourse because it indicates indirectness. An eclectic model is developed which utilizes Searle's (1969) model of speech acts and Brown & Levinson's (1987) model of politeness. The data of analysis are limited to three biblical texts taken from the New Testament and three prophetic traditions. Findings of the analysis reveal that the first and second hypotheses are fully validated whereas the third and fourth ones are partially invalidated in that non-specific reference pronouns such as 'one' is not used in biblical texts and the hinting strategy is not the most prominent strategy in biblical texts.

Настоящая статья продолжает публикации изосиллабических реконструкций на иврит текстов Нового Завета (журнал «Библия и христианская древность», № 4 (8), № 1 (9)) и предлагает реконструкцию притчи о богаче и Лазаре (Лк. 16, 19-31). This article continues the publication of isosyllabic reconstructions in Hebrew of the texts of the New Testament (the journal «Bible and Christian Antiquity», № 4 (8), № 1 (9)) and offers a reconstruction of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16, 19-31).

Researchers constantly add new items to the bibliography of Lithuanian publications published in East Prussia in the last decade of the 18th century. The initiatives of publishing in local languages of that period were driven by the reforms of the Church and schools carried out by the Prussian authorities while the Enlightenment was coming to an end and the ideo­logy of regional particularism was continuously growing in the country. As can be seen from newly discovered archival documents and already recorded bibliographic information, at least four publications dedicated for primary Christian education were published in Prussia in 1795, namely, the New Testament, the psalm book, the semi-secular reading textbook The Friend of Children (Kūdikių prietelius), and the catechism for rural schools. The editions of the New Testament and Kūdikių prietelius are recorded in the Lithuanian bibliography, however, nothing has been known about the mentioned editions of the psalm book and the catechism so far. The circumstances of their publishing are analysed in the article.

Although women’s words account for a small portion of biblical scripture, the Bible records two related prayerful songs that were sung by female prophets: the song of Hannah, in the Old Testament, and the Magnificat of Mary, in the New Testament. This essay uses typological methodology to explore the songs’ connections, including their shared literary precedents and nearly identical theological themes. Their fundamental similarities suggest Hannah’s song served as a harbinger of the Magnificat. Hannah and Mary’s shared blessing, divinely ordained motherhood, and their shared inspiration, the Holy Spirit, explain the parallels of their prayerful verses and prophetic utterances, which were of great relevance for both covenants of the Judeo-Christian faith.

The paper deals with the biblical prototext in L. Mosendz’s novel “Th e Last Prophet”. This work focuses on the figure of John the Baptist making the most full coverage of the prophet’s personality in Ukrainian literature. Besides the historical sources, the novel is based on the ideological and aesthetic pattern of the Holy Scripture. However, the canonical text has been significantly rethought. The specifics of interpreting the biblical prototext in L. Mosendz’s novel have not yet been the subject of special research, although many scholars paid attention to the biblical basis of the work. Therefore, the purpose of the present paper is to highlight the peculiarities of the biblical prototext embodied in the novel “The Last Prophet”. The analysis of the plot, figurative and stylistic levels was necessary for achieving this goal. At the plot level, the common and distinctive features of the biblical and fictional stories of the John the Baptist’s life have been indicated. The distinctive features appeared to be more numerous as the text of the novel complements rather than repeats the prototext (the Gospel of Luke). Psychologization, the scholarly motivation of events, the manner of filling “semantic gaps” with both oneiric visions and historical narrations are the specific features in reproducing the biblical story. The main characters of the work Jehohanan and Elizabeth, unlike original biblical characters, are endowed with portrait characteristics and shown in the dynamics of age and spiritual growth. Creating them, the author combines the Old and New Testament prototypes: Eliseba — Sarah, the Mother of God; Jehohanan — David, Elijah, Isaiah, Moses, and Messiah. In this context, the figure of Elizabeth appears as a generalized image of the Mother, and the figure of Jehohanan — as a common image of the Prophet. Th e sacred vocabulary, biblical anthroponyms, toponyms, aphorisms, stylistic figures of inversion, amplification, gradation, etc. form the stylistic level of implementing the aesthetic means of the Holy Scripture. Some biblical quotations are given as poetically modified and emotionally characterized by the writer. The biblical prototext secures ideological and aesthetic integrity for the novel but doesn’t give the plot a strict direction. Although deeply rooted in the Holy Scripture, the novel by Mosendz is a completely independent work on the search for values of a man, people, and humanity.

Court tales provide narrative depictions of the imagined interface between the rulers of a society and their subjects and can often provide fuel for readings of self and society. Many of the canonical court tales display patterns of social interaction in new contexts (Egypt and Babylon) and assist in novel corporate contextualization. This article seeks to read the court tales of Bel and the Dragon (Daniel 14) in relationship to both the court tales of Aramaic Daniel (2–7) and the earlier tales of Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 41). It will then anchor these readings within the context of Alexandrian Egypt—one suggested location for composition—and see how they may suggest patterns of identity and social engagement for a plausible audience.

This article examines 33 ‘generic’ citations of Israel’s scriptures in the NT, defined as passages containing an introductory formula or other overt reference to a source, but lacking any actual quoted text. Each passage (from the gospels, Acts and Pauline epistles) is examined in terms of its citation form and particular meaning in context, and then this broader pattern of ‘generic’ citation is compared with Second Temple citation practices. Having rarely been studied collectively, these citations provide interesting insight into how the NT authors draw upon the whole of the OT – without reference to specific prooftexts – to make assertions about Israel’s history, Christology, and the church. They should be given more consideration in the broader field of biblical intertextuality.

A thorough analysis of the genealogies in Gen 4:17–5:32 has shown that they are the result of a highly creative (hypertextual) and at the same time strictly sequential reworking of an older text of Deut 2:9–23. This means that the theories postulating the genealogies in Gen 4:17–5:32 as having come from various hypothetical sources of the Pentateuch (J, P, etc.) are no longer necessary to explain their origin and function. Similarly, detailed analysis of the genealogies presented in Luke 3:23–38 and Matt 1:1–‍17 has demonstrated that the Matthean genealogy is the effect of a deliberate reworking of the earlier genealogy composed by Luke. That, in turn, means that the theory of the “Q source,” intended to serve as an explanation of the origin of the Matthean–Lucan materials that had not come from the Gospel of Mark, is also exegetically superfluous.

Jesus’ appearance is not recorded in the New Testament, apart from some incidental mentions of his clothing. Nevertheless, his appearance is the most recorded feature in the history of world art. None of these images is based on primary sources; most, especially the most popular and influential images, tend to portray Jesus in the guise of a European Christian and not as an observant Jewish male of the first century CE. This distortion in artistic representations of Jesus reinforces mis-cast understandings provided in Christian pious traditions and Christian scholarly discussions throughout the centuries. This article explores the development of artistic presentations of Jesus of Nazareth. It uses the concept of kitsch art to analyse and evaluate the meanings conveyed in popular artistic representations of Jesus. A discussion of educational responses assists religious educators in designing programs that can critically appraise portrayals of Jesus and help students understand the role of art in fostering positive relations between Jews and Christians.

The Hebrew Torah of the Old Testament, is the first text sacred Known by history. Is the Septuagint translation for the Hebrew text of the oldest and most important translation was adopted by the Bible and the Religious language that borrowed directly to the Christian religion rituals and services. Also it considered later the main base for important translations in the old era , and still even now occupies a role important in the field of monetary, interpretive and historical studies. The original Hebrew contain more than one book, the septuagenarian translation, separated between them and made each book stand on its own. Our research deals with the Historical introduction to the Septuagint translation , The language of the Septuagint translation , The Septuagint Style ,The most important manuscripts of the Septuagint translation.The content and status of the Septuagint to the Jews and Christ, Difference and similarity with the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament in terms of the order , number and names of the books and we Shedding light on the most important translations of the Bible from the beginning of the Septuagint to the present day.

This article gives a definition of the concept of parable as one of the genres of the New Testament. The main communicative competences that form the specificity of the parable as a kind of genre are considered. An explanation of the relationship between a parable and a proverb is given, and examples from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew are given. The article describes the extralinguistic and linguistic features of the parable, as well as emphasizes its metaphor.

Предлагаемая публикация продолжает ряд работ прот. Леонида Грилихеса по семитской реконструкции новозаветных текстов. Вместе с тем, она познакомит читателя с принципиально новым подходом к реконструкции, который в ранних работах автора был лишь намечен. Прот. Леонид исходит из того, что притчи Иисуса Христа, а также значительно число Его других речей, представляли собой изосиллабические поэтические тексты. Другими словами, они включали в себя равное количество слогов в каждой строке. Устойчивые модели, стоящие за реконструируемыми текстами, позволяют прот. Леониду описать несколько языковых закономерностей, характерных для оригинального языка притч. Настоящая публикация позволит компетентному читателю ознакомиться с реконструкциями двух текстов: речи Иисуса о Законе Моисеевом из Нагорной проповеди и притчи о Страшном Суде. The present publication continues a series of works by archpriest Leonid Grilikhes on the «Semitic reconstruction» of the New Testament texts. At the same time, it represents a fundamentally new approach to the reconstruction, which was only outlined in archpriest Leonid’s early works. The author presumes that the parables of Jesus Christ, as well as a significant number of His other speeches, were isosyllabic poetic texts. In other words, they included an equal number of syllables in each line. The patterns represented by the reconstructed texts allow the author to describe several «rules» characteristic for the original language of the parables. The present publication familiarizes the competent reader with the reconstructions of two texts, namely, the speech of Jesus on the Law of Moses from the Sermon on the Mount, and the parable of the Last Judgment.

The article deals with the problem of the ratio of approaches to understanding religious cinematography. The focus is on Paul Schrader’s theory of transcendental style in cinema. The main aspects of this theory are revealed. The reasons why Schrader’s theory did not become the dominant direction in the framework of cinema philosophy are shown. The example of Paul Schrader’s film “First Reformed” shows the strengths and weaknesses of the theory of transcendental style. The precedents of the creation of religious cinema in American and Italian cinematic cultures are considered in detail. On the example of films based on biblical subjects, the specificity of constructing the Protestant and Catholic image of Christ is revealed. Until the mid-1960s, American cinema was dominated by the classic epic-style costume film trend. Since the early 1980s, a new trend has been the development of televangelism, in which the television dramas of New Testament stories played an important role. This trend has not spawned quality films. In Italian cinema, the films of Pasolini, Rossellini and Zefferelli are considered the best examples of religious cinema. The evolution of the development of the theme of religious cinema is shown. If the first two directors relied on the tradition of neorealism, then Zeferrelli went from the aesthetics of the classic costume drama. Zeferelli’s film “Jesus of Nazareth” has become the standard of religious cinema. Other formats of religious steel are not relevant since that time. The theory of transcendental style in cinema tried to offer an alternative in the form of auteur cinema with religious overtones. However, the impact of Paul Schrader’s theory was minimal. At the same time, the filmmakers, ranked by Schrader in the transcendental style, became classic examples of theology of cinema. Reflection of new forms was in films, books, articles and interviews by Dreyer, Bresson and Bergman. The combination of Schrader’s theory and these directors allows us to speak about the construction of an improved theory of transcendental style, called in the article the theology of cinema.

Many scholars and lay people try to figure out the reasons why the Lord JesusChrist uses the title of the son of man to designate Himself. He uses the title ofthe son of man throughout the Gospels, but there are some incidents only appear outside of the Gospels. This appearance is impressing to find out the reasons why the term occurrences in the Gospel. However, the term also appears in few passages outside the Gospels. Therefore, using the method of critical analysis through the library research as the qualitative methodology in order to seek the development of the argument from beginning up today and to see how the New Testament scholars clear up the message of Jesus in using that title. Few scholars comment that term has significant for the Christological development of the New Testament due to the messianic proclamation as thesaviour of the world. Furthermore, the idea of representative between man andGod apparently introduces the idea of the high priest in the New Testamentwriting for Jesus’ Christology. This idea will bring the consumption for BiblicalTheology when scholars seek this terminology in the New Testament writing.

Because few manuscripts of the NT writings are preserved from the first three centuries of the Christian era, scholars have debated the extent that modern critical editions of the NT reflect the text in circulation during these early centuries. In order to answer this question, this article will set out the evidence for ancient publication through community transmission. It will consider examples from Cicero, Martial, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger and Galen. These authors reveal that they preferred social networks rather than commercial dealers to circulate their writings. These same communities that copied and distributed an author’s works inadvertently created an environment in which significant alterations and plagiarizing of these same writings became known. Matthew D.C. Larsen, who has recently approached the same problem addressed in this article by examining ancient publication conventions, is engaged with throughout. The conclusions drawn here press hard against Larsen’s assertions.

Paul’s expression in 1Cor 15,37, γυμνὸς κόκκος, has nothing whatsoever to do with a Platonist naked soul or Stoic imagery of sowing and seeds. The context itself indicates that an immortal Platonic soul is not the reference of γυμνὸς κόκκος. The Platonist texts and the Stoic imagery of sowing and seeds do not resemble Paul’s affirmations in 1Cor 15,37. Instead, texts from Greek biology and agriculture are far more illuminating. The naked seed of 1Cor 15,37 are a metaphor for sown dead bodies. The context and comparative texts indicate Paul’s fundamental analogy: the naked seed is to the sown body as the plant body is to the body that will be.

For the last twenty-five years of his life, Martin Luther and his associates were active in Bible translation, publishing first the New Testament, from 1522 onwards, and by 1534—at roughly the mid-point of these endeavours—the whole Bible in German. Across this entire period, until his death, Luther continuously offered reader-viewers of the final New Testament book, Revelation, not only verbal commentary—in a preface (1522), or replacement preface with accompanying marginal notes (1530)—but visual exegesis, in the form of successive series of woodcut engravings designed to illustrate the text. A set of images commissioned for Luther’s 1534 German Bible was the crowning achievement of this visual interpretation: the 1534 Bible even extended pictorial illustration and adornment to the Gospels and Epistles, as well as Old Testament texts. From the perspective of art history, to regard these acclaimed illustrations as “the last word in pictures” represents no novelty, for the 1534 Luther Bible has long been counted among “the finest things that the art of printing produced in the Reformation period” (Schramm 1923, 22–23; my translation). However, to make the same assertion about the Revelation illustrations specifically, from an explicitly exegetical standpoint—and in English—is new and requires substantiation through supporting evidence. I will provide this through close analysis and evaluation of the interpretative moves that the 1534 images make, in conjunction with Luther’s translation and comment, over and against the visual exegesis of their predecessors created, from 1522 onwards, for Luther’s German New Testament.

The article analyzes the biblical motifs and mythopoetic elements in the second part of S. Aksakov’s autobiographical trilogy Years of Childhood [Detskie gody Bagrova-vnuka]. The first experiences of a child in understanding the world are interpreted as ‘living knowledge’ (a term coined by A. Khomyakov). The image of the boy’s wet-nurse represents characteristics of the divine nature, the source of the vital force. The poetic image of ‘the torch of life’ is an allusion to the inextinguishable lamps with which the New Testament’s wise virgins greeted the bridegroom in anticipation of the symbolic wedding feast and life eternal. The chapter ‘First spring in the village’ is written to strongly resemble the biblical account of the Creation of the world, both in style and the manner of artistic associations. The book’s mythopoetic element, enduring imagery, and real-life situations create a unity of the cultural space. The Old and New Testaments’ motifs are depicted to be in natural coexistence. The world is shown through the eyes of a child, with childhood portrayed as a cultural phenomenon.

What difference does the philosophical revolution of Deleuze and Guattari make to our understanding the early Christianity? In honour of the fortieth anniversary of publication of A Thousand Plateaus, this article argues that the discipline of Christian origins is currently premised on a historically condemned mode of subjectivity, that of subject/object metaphysics. The philosophical processes found in A Thousand Plateaus are particularly apposite to the current dilemma of Christian origins: as a rhizome-book consisting of plateaus, machines, singularities and non-representational concepts, this book models new modes of thinking that can help the discipline rejuvenate itself and accomplish new tasks which are presently beyond its reach – for Deleuzian philosophy privileges the virtual over the actual, becoming over being, machinic transformations over static structures, and semiotics over linguistics.

The present article concerns the question of the formulas which both religion and magic use. Although even if they often sound identical, their understanding and their role are radically different. The article consists of four parts. The first part provides examples of Christian magical papyri dating from the first centuries, which show the use of both the New Testament as well as the terms and dogmatic formulas in the magical texts. The second part gives examples of the Fathers of the Eastern and the Western Church in their common criticism of magic. The third part examines differences in the understanding of dogmatic formulas between Christianity and magic. Finally, conclusions of ecumenical character are formulated.

Over the centuries, church liturgical practice has formulated perfect musical forms, the structure of which is built on internal genres, united by the common idea of all parts. The classification of their musical dramaturgy is determined by the musical-philological component that builds the liturgical and artistic integrity of the cyclic form of the work. This form is represented by the Easter canon, which holds a special place among all works of Byzantine hymnography.The purpose of the research is to consider the compositional structure of the Easter canon genre in the context of its theological and musical-poetic content.The methodology of the research is based on a comprehensive music-analytical, theoretical and historical analysis.The scientific novelty of the research is a comprehensive study of the canon genre from the point of view of establishing relationships at the level of melos, poetics and liturgical content.Conclusions. The dramaturgy of the Easter canon is based on the harmonization of theological accents with the means of poetic expression and musical instruments, in particular, intonation, metro-rhythmic, leitmotifs and the like. In this way, the integrity of all 9 canon songs is achieved throughout the cyclical form. The general construction of the Easter canon is inspired by the laws of rhetorical art, as well as by the defining principles of Christian hymnographers whose work was based on a combination of Old Testament and New Testament images. Thus, the musical and poetic logic of the unfolding of the general dramaturgy of the canon genre reveals an alignment of the aesthetic component with the dominant accents of the theological idea of the Easter holiday.

La inmoralidadsexual se menciona repetidamente tanto en el Antiguo Testamento comoen el Nuevo. Se hace referencia a ella con frecuencia a través del término πορνεία y sus cognados. El propósito de este estudio es determinarel significado del término πορνεία y sus cognados —ἐκπορνεύω, πορνεία,πορνεύω, πόρνη y πόρνος— en el texto del Antiguo Testamento de la LXXy en el Nuevo Testamento. El uso de πορνεία en la LXX y en el NuevoTestamento es similar aunque la LXX prefiere el sentido figurado y elNuevo Testamento el significado literal. El estudio sugiere que πορνεία ylos términos relacionados se refieren a actividades sexuales (siempre quese usen en sentido literal) tales como la prostitución, las relaciones sexuales prematrimoniales, el adulterio, el incesto y la actividad homosexual.

History simulations have been shown to promote student learning in classrooms throughout higher education. In an undergraduate course on the New Testament and early Christianity, we sought to foster student learning by having students participate in history simulations that involved the use of fictitious personas known as avatars. In this paper we describe the avatar activities in these simulations, and we examine the effects of our simulations on students’ abilities in “historical thinking”: that is, engaging in the interpretive practices that historians use to reconstruct the past. We argue that our avatar simulations helped our students build upon, refine, and deepen their abilities in historical thinking in small but perceptible ways. We end by noting the extent to which our findings align with research on the use of history simulations and by identifying ways to develop our project moving forward.

In his 1896 study The Great Meaning of Metanoia, the theologian Treadwell Walden (1830–1918) took up a traditional proposition—that the common translation of the New Testament term μeτάνοια...

Building on research relating the New Testament to Greek and Roman literary culture, the article explores the Gospel of Mark's representation of Jesus as speaker. In focus are dialogues in the Gospel's seventh chapter which take place between Jesus and characters with different social background and in different social spaces. The article argues that, in these dialogues, Jesus speaks as a member of the social and cultural elite, as he has access to social spaces and has the necessary skills in rhetoric to adapt his speech to varying circumstances. This representation of Jesus as speaker can have several functions. One is to familiarise readers of the Gospel across the Roman Empire with a distant province, Judaea, as Jesus conforms to expectations for an elite male in Greek and Roman culture. A second is to contribute to Jesus' literary characterisation as subversive or comic, as he engages in ‘rhetorical battles’ with different people and with varying success.

When situating the Gospel of Mark within a Jewish context, incongruities concerning both Jesus’s character and the collective character of Jesus’s disciples become apparent. The Markan Christ, for ...

This paper develops the meaning of a doctor in the wing of the Christian tradition, by starting the thesis from the best and first known physician in the New Testament: St. Luke. Then the premise he was even in a doctor is questioned. However, the whole paper continues to follow the symbolism St. Luke indubitably has not only as one of the Evangelists, but parallelly as a physician, so it then questions what such an expertise would mean when one of the establishing figures is attached to a particular profession. Medical effort is then connected to the notion of Christus medicus as a primary healer. From that point on, a question of the miraculous healing and its effect on human approach to God emerges. This problem occurs when freedom as a central to the acceptance of God’s deeds is installed. In this case, I discuss it on the grounds of a passage from The Grand Inquisitior. Finally, the problem of freedom in the multifaceted context of healing is to be circled in the discussion about the problematic positions both doctors and patients encounter, and ultimately medicine itself.

Critics have commented on the power of writing -the biblical Word as creation- in Bernardo Carvalho’s work. It forges connections through words between others who are out of place, searching for order in what appears to be chaos. However, this motif from both Genesis and the New Testament is also mediated by another creation narrative: the Big Bang or Initial Singularity. Like the undeliverable letters in Rubem Braga’s “O pessoal,” rupturing bonds made of words can be as unpredictable as splitting an atom. A singularity as simple as a letter’s altered trajectory can result in something new and unexpected at the point of disconnection—such as Braga’s cronica. As we examine three novels by Carvalho, Nove noites, Mongolia, and O sol se poe em Sao Paulo, what emerges is that the same process occurs when the undelivered letters of Manoel Perna, the Westerner, and Michiyo fall into the hands of the books’ narrators. On one hand, the progressive entropy in the system can be said to “explode” the Word. However, the narrators then take up the Word to write new realities. By appropriating its power and reinventing how it is used, they explode the Word a second time.

Research objective is to study the musical and historical development of passions (from ancient times to the present) with genre and style accent on Ukrainian passions. The methodology is based on induction methods, genre and style analysis, historical and hermeneutic methods. The scientific novelty consists in proving the existence of «hints» on the passion genre in ancient Egyptian myths. For the first time parallels were made from the ancient Egyptian figures (Osiris, Isida, Egyptians) to the New Testament characters (Christ, Mother of God, the crowd of Israelites), thirsting for Jesus’ death. The study for the first time indicates the phenomenological features of the modern model of Ukrainian passions (“Strasti Hospoda Boha Nashoho Isusa Chrysta”), which appear in the work of the composer Oleksandr Kozarenko. This work is an example of a reference to the primary genre model of passions, which is revived through the musical harangue of Olexandr Kozarenko. This work is an example of a reference to the primary genre model of passions, which is revived through the musical creativity of the composer to the Ostroh antiphons of the Orthodox Service of the Twelve Gospels (early modern period). In his work, A. Kozarenko skillfully combines traditional and innovative aspects of genre formation, which influenced the formation of modern features of the Passion as a whole. The artist successfully combines ancient Slavic tunes with the author’s vision of the passions of our time. Cconclusions. Emphasize that the expansion of artistic cultural space by addressing the genre of passion is a vital spiritual need of today’s reality. A unique creative unit of passions at the beginning of the third millennium are passions “in Ukrainian”. Passions are a unique structure that combines the signs of polymorphism. The work of the Lviv composer Olexander Kozarenko proves the authenticity of the national sources and confirms the significant contribution of modern Ukrainian artists to the culture and work of our universe. The new composer vision of the sacred musical monodic melos not only contributed to its restoration, but also showed the internal potential of sound, proving its relevance today.

At least since the time of Westcott and Hort, the concept of explicitness has been used in the practice of New Testament textual criticism. However, until now, the concept has not been defined or tested. This article examines how explicitness has been understood and used by textual critics, and then outlines how linguistics can support the application of this concept in understanding textual transmission. It then tests the validity of the concept of explicitness for textual criticism in comparison to the results of applying traditional internal and external criteria. It also demonstrates the explanatory power of explicitness by evaluating select textual variants in the Gospel of John. It concludes that the use of explicitness for the evaluation of variants is linguistically coherent and text-critically valid and can assist in the identification of the most primitive reading.

While Jesus is not the author of any of the New Testament writings, the link between the mission and identity of Jesus viewed from the perspective of faith and the content and purpose of the New Testament books is essential for their sacred character from a Christian perspective. This chapter reviews the evolution of the traditions about Jesus in early Christianity, tracking the impact of this tradition on the writings of Paul, on the Four Gospels, and on the Acts of the Apostles and the other New Testament books. The chapter also considers some of the essential elements in the transmission of the New Testament and their writings, including their composition in Greek, the nature of early manuscripts of the New Testament, and the question of translation.

While a convincing case can be made about the sacredness of the New Testament through its proclamation of Jesus Christ and its guidance on the nature of Christian life, this does not mean that over time, or at any particular time, all Christians understand the message of the Scriptures in the same way. This brings us to the question of “interpretation” of the New Testament. How do we accurately understand the message of a particular New Testament book? How would we describe the meaning of the New Testament for Christian life today? How do we understand, from a doctrinal point of view, the identity of Jesus portrayed in the ensemble of the New Testament writings? What do we understand to be the defining characteristics and structures of the Christian community derived from the diverse books of the New Testament? Additionally, who has the authority to determine what is an authentic or valid answer to such questions? And what are the proper methods of extracting contemporary meaning from these ancient texts? This chapter traces in broad strokes the diverse ways the Christian community has approached the meaning of the New Testament over the centuries, with particular attention to the impact of modern methods of interpreting the biblical text.

In Plato’s corpus, the Greek word ἐξαίφνης appears precisely thirty-six times. Translated generally as “all of a sudden” or “the instant” in his Parmenides, ἐξαίφνης emerges in some of the most significant passages of Plato’s dialogues. Put simply, ἐξαίφνης connotes illumination of the highest realities and philosophical conversion experience. In addition to providing a review of Plato’s conception and use of ἐξαίφνης in Parmenides, Republic, Symposium, and the Seventh Letter, our paper brings an ancillary link to light. Namely, the appearance of ἐξαίφνης as a mark for conversion experiences in the New Testament’s Acts of the Apostles and Plotinus’s Enneads. We reveal how the same pattern and employment of ἐξαίφνης established by Plato emerge in both Acts and the Enneads. This pattern suggests a prolonged period of thinking and training, followed by a flash of understanding. Thus ἐξαίφνης, as evidenced by our survey of its strange instantiation in Plato’s dialogues and then subsequently in Acts and the Enneads, becomes a sign for enlightenment, assimilation with the divine, and conversion experience.

Here we present a novel approach for automated creation of parallel New Testament corpora with cross-lingual semantic concordance based on Strong’s numbers. As scientific editions and translations of Bible texts are often not free to use for scientific purposes and are rarely free to use, and due to the fact that the annotation, curation and quality control of alignments between these texts are quite expensive, there is a lack of available Biblical resources for scholars. We present two approaches to tackle the problem, a dictionary-based approach and a Conditional Random Field (CRF) model and a detailed evaluation on annotated and non-annotated translations. We discuss a proof-of-concept based on English and German New Testament translations. The results presented in this paper are novel and according to our knowledge unique. They present promising performance, although further research is necessary.