Greek Catenae and the “Western” Order of the Gospels

The “Western” order of the gospels—Matthew–John–Luke–Mark—is found in a few important ancient codices in both the Greek and the Latin tradition. Previous attempts to identify Greek minuscule manuscripts with this sequence have been inconclusive. This article presents five Greek minuscules which feature the gospels in the Western order. These five manuscripts, along with two Greek majuscules, contain the earliest form of the catena commentary on Matthew, John, and Luke. The analysis of these catenae reveals that the sequence of their composition is reflected in the codicology of these manuscripts, as well as non-standard orders of the gospels in other catena witnesses. It is therefore the presence of the commentary which explains the adoption of the Western order in seven of the eleven known occurrences in Greek.

“Making My Prayer with Joy”

Drawing on recent literature in the history of emotions, this article describes Paul’s epistolary prayers as emotional practices that aim to harmonize and amplify the emotions of Paul and his addressees, particularly shared joy and longing. In Philippians and 1 Thessalonians, philophronetic topoi and the emotional norms they encode provide the basic cultural logic undergirding these prayers’ affective work. Compensating more or less successfully for the somatic signals otherwise constitutive of collective emotions, Paul’s explicit evocation of presumptively shared emotion nourishes the fantasy of presence and thus the rewards of common feeling, which include emotional sustenance for Paul himself and, if his letter is successful, a renewed feeling of solidarity among his addressees that reinforces their shared loyalty to Paul and his Lord.

Die Christus-Metapher „Widderlamm“

The term ἀρνίον is used no fewer than 28 times in the Revelation of John (starting with 5:6 and ending with 22:3). But the meaning of the word is controversial: “ram” or “lamb”? And it may be asked also whether one has to think of a sacrificial animal in those 28 ἀρνίον-instances of this “book.” Exegetes mostly not take into consideration the accent on the “masculinity” of the ἀρνίον (see esp. 5:6 and 19:7; cf. 19:9; 21:2, 9) and the lacking of the expression “slaughtered lamb” after 13:8, that is, in the concluding parts of the “book” (17:1–22:5/21), which, instead, emphasize the magnificence of the ἀρνίον. The option to translate the word ἀρνίον by “ram lamb” – an animal that matures quite early – should solve the problems. And this suggestion is supported by diachronic observations, including the fact that the Septuagint does not use the term ἀρνίον with regard to cultic sacrifice.

A Philological Study of the Reflexive-Possessive Use of Personal Pronouns in the Fourth Gospel

This study provides a philological analysis of all the occurrences of personal pronouns with reflexive-possessive meaning in the Gospel of John. Here, the author argues that the Gospel highly conforms to the rule of Classical Greek that the deictic force of the article suffices to identify the possessor when it is clear in the literary context who the possessor is. This high conformity enables the author to specify in which cases personal pronouns are strictly necessary to indicate the possessor and where they are redundant. Exegetical case studies (e.g., John 6:52) illustrate the implications of this study for the interpretation of the Gospel.

Paul among the Fluent in Corinth

This article foregrounds the importance of Paul’s letters for studying the experiences and perceptions of persons who stutter in antiquity. It analyzes Paul’s speech alongside the biographies of two other historical figures from antiquity who suffered from speech dysfluency: the great Athenian orator, Demosthenes, and the emperor Claudius. Accounts of Demosthenes’, Claudius’, and Paul’s speech inconsistencies, silences, incomprehensible utterances, oratory weaknesses—and their critics’ accusations that they suffered from madness—are interpreted in light of research on adults who stutter in the contemporary context, as well as studies on listener experiences and stereotypes. In introducing Paul into the study of ancient dysfluency, the article revisits Paul’s conflict with rival teachers in Corinth as it is in responding to these critics’ accusations that Paul is most revealing of his own dysfluency.

The Double Entendre of Paul’s Trade as σκηνοποιός (Acts 18:3)

The word σκηνοποιός (Acts 18:3), a hapax legomenon, has been the subject of intense scrutiny because it may disclose the socio-economic nature of Paul’s trade. However, attempts to reconstruct historically his trade have not confidently identified its accurate historical reference. Since this difficulty derives from Luke’s choice of vocabulary—he uses a word that is very rare in the canon of Greco-Roman literature—this study attends to the word’s rhetorical setting that may explain Luke’s lexical choice. This choice would enhance the word’s symbolic value although weakening its referential value. Σκηνοποιός is plausibly an instance of Lukan etymological wordplay that draws on the continued symbolism of σκηνή in Luke-Acts—a term that captures Luke’s restoration eschatology.