Journal for the Study of the New Testament

Paul’s heir analogy in Gal. 4.1-2 has traditionally been interpreted against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman guardianship laws. However, because certain conceptual and terminological incongruities in the text have not been adequately explained, a relatively new typological reading, which identifies the analogy as an allusion to the Exodus, has begun to influence many interpreters. This study will defend the traditional interpretation, first by responding to the criticisms and exegetical insights introduced by those who interpret the text typologically, and second by demonstrating that Paul’s use of έπίτροποι and οἰκονόμοι as guardians of a minor—a widely acknowledged crux interpretum—corresponds accurately to Roman legal practice.

Paul enigmatically describes humanity’s universal sinfulness in Rom. 3.23 as a lack of ‘the glory of God’. Interpreters have tried to situate the lack of this glory in various contexts: ancient honour discourse, ancient Jewish Adam traditions, and Paul’s ethical discourse. To interpret this passage, this article utilizes the literary context of glory language throughout the letter. From this we find that glory denotes not only elevated honour, but also incorruption. Thus, the lack of glory in 3.23 refers to mortality and shame as the result of sin. In addition, this study of glory has implications for the burgeoning interest into the question of theosis with regard to Pauline theology.

This article investigates Mark’s story about Jesus’ ‘triumphal’ entry and its relation to Roman imperialism. The article’s first part analyses how that relation has been understood in both a late nineteenth-century biblical commentary and a contemporary political reading respectively. In the article’s second part, a reading is suggested that is informed by the postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha. Special attention is given to how Jesus acquires the colt by αγγαρεία, how he is greeted, and how the procession ends anticlimactically in the temple. The entry story with its subsequent temple incident, it is argued, could be taken as mimicry of celebratory welcomes. This places Jesus in an interstitial third space in-between a clear-cut anti- and pro-Roman position, a space that is characterized by colonial ambivalence.

Seeking the Identity of Jesus offers a fresh and illuminating series of contributions, united by a shared resistance to the reduction of Jesus’ identity in current reconstructions of ‘the historical Jesus’. However, questions can be asked about its approaches to history and memory, while any sustained reflection on the meaning of ‘identity’ is surprisingly absent. The volume also fails to address the need for Christian faith somehow to transcend the diversity of presentations of Jesus in the canon and to form a unified understanding of the identity of Jesus.

Seeking the Identity of Jesus seeks to look at Jesus through ecclesial and theological lenses and to be responsive to the very different presentations of Jesus’ identity in the canonical Gospels. This raises questions about how far some of the aspects of Jesus to be found in the Gospels can be accommodated within an ecclesial view and how selective scholars in this volume are in the aspects of Jesus on which they focus. Jesus’ activity as an exorcist, noted in some at least of the essays, is not easily accommodated within many ecclesial perspectives. The considerable attention given to Jesus’ thoroughgoing Jewishness in recent scholarship stands in sharp contrast to much traditional church teaching about Jesus. It is also notable that this book is very much a European/North American pilgrimage, which may be reflected in the paucity of attention given to Jesus’ concern for the poor.

Bauckham’s response, while focusing on the historical dimensions of Jesus, is right to raise the question of the meaning of ‘identity’. It perhaps invests too much confidence, however, in memory and recollection. Riches’ thoughtful unpacking of some of the tensions in the volume nevertheless downplays the apocalyptic and the narrative contours of Paul’s thought. While Riches’ call for a wider global view might offer fresh perspectives on the situation of poverty in Jesus’ own context, it would hardly enable us to relativize the demonic realm. Seeking the Identity of Jesus calls for an epistemological approach that recognizes not only ‘the historical nature of theological truth’ (Riches) but also the theological nature of historical truth.