The Gospels record that Jesus purported to forgive sins. What significance would such a claim have had for his contemporaries and what would the implications have been for his identity as a first-century popular prophet? Tobias Hägerland answers these questions and more as he investigates the forgiveness of sins in the mission of the historical Jesus. The Gospels are interpreted within the context

The placement of verse 20 in Psalm 72 has long puzzled scholars and has raised a number of questions: Why is תפלה used? Why does it state that the prayers of David are ended? Where does this leave Solomon (v. 1)? Why is it placed after the doxology of vv. 18–19? And why is it found in the middle of the Elohistic Psalter? To solve these problems, a number of suggestions have been presented, none of

This article discusses what it meant for Jesus’ disciples to be disciples of a prophet and, consequently, what the presence of such prophet-disciples can tell us about his mission. This is done by situating the Gospel material about Jesus’ disciples in the context of early Jewish conceptions of prophetic discipleship, ultimately based on the Old Testament narratives about ancient Israelite prophet

The question of how to punctuate John 1:3-4 has confounded both ancient and modern readers. Various textual and linguistic arguments have been used to support one of at least four suggestions about how to punctuate the passage. The present state of research, which supports both Reading A (belongs to the sentence in 1:4) and Reading B (belongs to the sentence in 1:3), is based primarily on textual

The purpose of the present study is to understand and clarify how Jesus is presented as a leader in the Gospel of Matthew. The usage of common leadership terms in reference to Jesus early in the story, the biographical genre of Matthew, and the consistently negative portrayal of other leaders in the story give good reasons for the inquiry. Three main questions are at the forefront: How does the th

The analysis of the virtues of Jesus in the Gospels has not gained a lot of interest in New Testament studies. Some scholars hesitate to use the term “virtue” in reference to Jesus, emphasizing the difference between the NT and the Greek philosophical tradition. Other scholars suggest that the Gospels are not concerned with the character of Jesus, but with his identity as Messiah and Son of God. B

In this article, Giorgio Agamben's essay Pilate and Jesus and in particular its notion of suspension as stalemate is treated as an important contribution to an ongoing exegetical conversation about the theological valence and event of John 18:28.19:41. In Agamben's essay, the suspension created by the dialogue between the Christ and the "Vicar of Caesar" demonstrates a peculiar stalemate of immane