Christopher Tuckett

The Gospel of Mary

La figura de Maria Magdalena en els evangelis canonics ocupa un espai molt reduit, com una de les dones que acompanyen Jesus durant el seu ministeri i despres apareix al peu de la creu. Ella es converteix en el focus d’atencio en una serie de textos cristians posteriors, i en particular en el text d’un «evangeli» el qual porta el seu nom. L’«Evangeli de Maria» es el focus principal d’aquest assaig. Es dedica una especial atencio a l’evidencia que aporten els manuscrits per al text, referent a la questio de si es pot dir que es «gnostic» o no i, sobretot en el debat que succeeix al final del text entre Pere i Maria, tot discutint els problemes que suposen la presentacio negativa de Pere i per que precisament es produeix aixo. S’argumenta que l’Evangeli prove d’una data relativament primerenca, abans que les linies divisories entre els gnostics i els cristians s’haguessin endurit i quan tots dos s’enfronten amb hostilitat als estranys.

The book of Zechariah and its influence

The guilty priesthood, Lena Tiemeyer Why is Second Zechariah so full of quotations?, Rex Mason The literary contexts of Zechariah 9:9, Terry Collins Bad divination in Zechariah, Johannes Tromp The Septuagint of Zechariah: an early interpretation of the book, Arie van der Kooij The use of Zechariah in Matthews gospel, Paul Foster Zechariah and the cleansing of the temple in Mark, Henk Jan de Jonge Zechariah and Marks account of the arrest in Gethsemane, John Muddiman Zechariah 12:10 and the New Testament, Christopher Tuckett Jude and the text of Zechariah, Harm Hollander Why would a pagan read Zechariah?, Jeremy Boccabello.

Christology and The New Testament

The relationship between biblical exegesis and modern theology is complex. The two are rarely, if ever, independent of one another. No Christian theology is done in a vacuum, and all Christian theologising is, in a sense, an interpretation of the Christian tradition. 1 Any new theological synthesis is formulated in part as a dialogue with past theologies. In this dialogue, one may be critical of the past; one may wish to preserve the past to a greater or lesser degree. What is determinative is the theologians current apprehension of what Christianity is, but this in turn will have been created and shaped by the interplay between the theologian and the tradition in the past. 2 Christian theologising thus involves a continuous dialogue between the theologian and the tradition.

Christology, Controversy and Community

This collection of essays by an international team of New Testament scholars focuses on various kinds of christological claim, whether by the historical Jesus, in the Q tradition, John, Paul or the synoptics, and their connection with controversy and community.

Q 22:28–30

The saying in Q 22:28-30 has been something of exegetical stepchild in recent Q-research. The saying has attracted more than its fair share of attention in studies of the historical Jesus. The doubts of others about the presence of the saying in Q have in part focused on the allegedly anomalous nature of some other elements of the saying. The theme of the rejected prophets is part of a broader complex of motifs in Q. The prophets who suffer violence are the messengers of Wisdom. The saying in Q 22:28-30 probably follows on the parable of the pounds in Q 19 and may well pick up the promises (and threats) of that parable. The relationship between Jesus and others is a non-reciprocal one and Jesus does have a unique role in Q. Nevertheless, it is a role of enabling others to share in his own position. Keywords: Jesus; prophets; Q 22:28-30

Eric Eve, Writing the Gospels: Composition and MemoryEveEric, Writing the Gospels: Composition and Memory (London: SPCK, 2016); xiv + 172 pp.: 9780281073405, £19.99 (pbk)

This valuable, but highly readable, book focuses on the process of the writing of the Gospels. Building on his earlier work on the material behind the written texts (Behind the Gospels, 2013), Eric Eve here looks at the issue of how and why the Gospels came to be written down. An initial chapter discusses issues about literacy levels, and reading and writing in general in antiquity. Given the general low levels of literacy, it is not at all clear why anyone thought it worthwhile to write down the Gospel stories as written texts. Nevertheless, they were written down; Eve suggests a number of reasons (a desire to fix the tradition, to propagate the message through space and time, and to use the prestige of written texts to promote their own concerns), though wisely claims no certainty and also notes that the four Gospels may differ from each other in this respect. A third chapter outlines the possible sources, or ‘raw materials’, used by the evangelists and Eve argues here, very plausibly, for the importance of memory as a key resource. He then discusses different possible models of composition, and he argues persuasively that the evangelists may have been not so much literary ‘authors’ (like the literary elite of the Greco-Roman world), or creating ‘oral’ compositions, but more ‘scribal’ preservers of memory (though he rightly notes that the role of the ‘scribe’ was very varied, and the evangelists may differ from each other in this respect). To highlight the importance of memory in the process of the production of the Gospels, Eve provides discussions of the nature of memory, both at the individual and the social/collective levels. The treatment here is particularly valuable for those who do not know their way round some of the scholarly literature on these topics and Eve provides a very readable, but well-informed guide through the various issues. In a final chapter, Eve addresses the question of how a general theory that the evangelists worked from memory would affect theories about the Synoptic Problem and the way in which one evangelist may have accessed the work of another. Eve argues that the Griesbach/Two Gospel hypothesis encounters difficulties on such a model (as it seems to require Mark operating with two written texts in front of him), but that the Farrer hypothesis and the Two Document hypothesis, with one evangelist reproducing materials from a source via memory, might fare equally well. Eve does not argue that memory will necessarily explain all the evidence but it is a vitally important factor which should not be ignored. This book is a real gem, providing readers with a highly accessible, but thoroughly researched and deeply informed, treatment of the important topic of memory as a key factor in the process of Gospel writing by early Christians. It should be essential reading for students starting on Gospel studies, and will also be of value for all those interested in the nature of the Gospels, their sources, their aims and their authors.

Lightfoot’s Text of 2 Clement : A Response to W.L. Petersen

This study provides a response to the 2006 Vigiliae Christianae article of William Petersen discussing aspects of the text of 2 Clement in the highly influential edition of J.B. Lightfoot. Petersen discussed four readings in Lightfoot’s edition that he suggested should be changed. He also discussed what he regarded as serious fundamental flaws in Lightfoot’s work which have serious repercussions today in textual study of both the texts of Church Fathers and also of the New Testament. This article examines the four specific readings in 2 Clement discussed by Petersen. It also examines the more general methodological issues raised in his article. It is argued here that Lightfoot’s overall methodology was perhaps not as suspect as Petersen argued and that, while all text editions are open to debate at individual points, the general approach adopted by Lightfoot and others does not perhaps merit the strong criticisms levelled by Petersen.

Book Review: Thomas, the Other GospelThomas, the Other Gospel, PerrinNicholas (SPCK2007), 172 pp, £11.99 pbk

maintaining interest. I would consider myself fairly well informed in New Testament interpretation but soon realized that there were gaps in my reading and some of our library provision. It is not surprising that these come mainly from the third section (‘From Text to Reader’) which focuses on the reader’s own context and the effect this has on interpretation. This accounts for eleven of the approaches and includes some less well-known examples, such as queer, Asian and ecological criticism. As many of the endorsements on the back cover indicate, no other introductory book offers such scope. As such, using this book as an introductory text undoubtedly steers the student towards pluralism rather than the belief that the New Testament offers a clear and straightforward message of salvation. As the book seeks to make clear, all interpretations are ‘interested’, in the sense that they are done for a reason, and the adoption of the book will no doubt illustrate this. Those who wish their students to emerge from their courses with a deep appreciation of diversity will embrace it; those who wish them to emerge with a definite sense of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘error’ will probably not. This is a pity in that it is always helpful to understand positions other than one’s own, but then one could say that this is also an ‘interested’ position. It is one I belong to and I will be ordering multiple copies for our library.

New editions of non-canonical gospels

Recent years have seen a significant increase in interest in noncanonical gospel texts as part of the study of early Christianity. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi library has greatly enhanced our first-hand knowledge of the diversity of early Christian literature, including the production of ‘gospel’ texts, the most famous of which may be the Gospel of Thomas. Other ‘gospel’ texts beside those found at Nag Hammadi are extant elsewhere. Scholars have become aware that some of these texts have been much less studied than those that were included in the New Testament, and therefore have turned to them in the hope of new insights about the history of early Christianity. Some have claimed that these texts tell us things that early Christians such as Luke, the author of Acts, set out to hide. Others have argued (correctly, in our view) that such writings are probably later than most or all of the writings contained in the New Testament, and that they tell us more about Christianity in the second (or possibly third) century than in the first. Notoriously, some quite sensational claims have also been made – sometimes by scholars, but more often by non-academic writers and journalists. One example is Dan Brown’s inclusion in the Da Vinci Code of the admittedly fictional but historically inaccurate statements of Leigh Teabing concerning early Christian gospels. Another is the suggestion that the recently published Gospel of Judas would transform our understanding of what really happened to Jesus. Various authors have responded to these particular claims in different ways, but there are few places to which either scholars or others may turn to find clear, balanced and non-polemical accounts of recent scholarly work on the full range of non-canonical gospels.1 Neither is there any one volume or collection of volumes in which may be found both the original texts of these gospels and an English translation.2 This is a remarkable gap in modern scholarship, and one that we seek to address through a new series of critical editions, the Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts.3 These volumes are intended both to provide an introduction to, and a commentary on, a number of non-canonical gospels. They will also enable readers to see exactly what these texts, many of them fragmentary, do and do not say. In view of the claims sometimes made about some of the details of such texts, it is vitally important that the actual textual evidence be accurately presented, so that, for

Gospels and communities. Was Mark written for a suffering community

This chapter seeks to say something about tMarks community,t the community from which the writer of the second gospel came and for which he wrote his gospel. However, some recent publications have cast serious doubts on the whole enterprise of seeking to identify specific communities lying behind the New Testament gospels. Either Marks readers were already suffering, or Mark thought that suffering was on the horizon; either way, suffering is the real-life historical context in which the gospel is written. The chapter offers a few remarks on these more general issues, seeking to defend the appropriateness of trying to identify the community to which a writer such as Mark may have belonged, and which he may be seeking to address via his gospel. It then raises the question of whether, if it is legitimate to think of a tMarkan community,t that community was a suffering community. Keywords: gospel; Marks community; New Testament; suffering community