The Expository Times

This article publishes for the first time an 11^th-century Greek lectionary manuscript housed at the University of Edinburgh Library. Written in archaic majuscule script and exquisite calligraphy, this manuscript is surely a treasure in the University’s possession even if it is not well known. Offered here is a physical description of the item, a transcription and English translation of its text, and a discussion of the manuscript’s significance as a millennium-old artifact of Christian worship.

This paper explores how two realms in which humans have traditionally been thought to hold unique capacities, in suffering and in redemption, are increasingly challenged. With scientific evidence pointing strongly towards the reality of non-human suffering, new questions are also raised in theodicy. Part of the solution to the problem of suffering is redemption, and the latter half of this paper introduces and critiques several different models of creaturely redemption. These perspectives cause us to recognise the deep continuities between human and non-human animals, and they therefore encourage us to define human uniqueness more in terms of role rather than capacity.

‘Tongues, then, are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers’ (1 Cor 14:22). In the course of his extended instructions concerning public worship and order at Corinth, Paul refers to the presence, among the worshipping community, of those who are described as apistoi and idiotes (most commonly translated as ‘unbelievers’ and ‘uninitiated’ or ‘outsiders’). Whilst some have understood this to be a rhetorical device, there is good evidence for assuming that the conduct of early Christian worship at Corinth was accessible, in some way, to such persons, to the extent that they may be roughly analogous perhaps to the Gentile ‘god fearers’ who frequented Temple and Synagogue worship. If so, there are, here, some potentially fruitful missiological insights and imperatives for the 21^st-century church, both in the conduct of its public rites, and especially in the manner in which it engages with those in its midst who may be unbelievers, baptised but ‘non-practising’, or among those commonly referred to today as ‘seekers.’