Crook draws upon the categories of patronage and clientage within ancient structures of benefaction to characterize Paul’s mission to the gentiles. Paul characterizes his own calling in terms of being called by a divine patron. This would have resonated with Paul’s audience at the time. He also describes his vision of the risen Lord and apostleship in terms of divine benefaction. He reciprocates by proclaiming a message of salvation.

Förster draws upon procedure for publishing a papyrus in order to examine the claims that 7Q5 is a fragment of Mark’s Gospel. He examines the claims made for this identification but rejects them on the basis of the papyrus readings, the text in Mark and the length of the lines.

Choat and Nobbs identify what they call ‘formulae of belief’ in Greek letters from the second to the fourth century. On the basis of identifying these forms and the frequency of their occurrence, they note what they call a monotheistic impulse within the letters that is confirmed by other formulae found in the letters.

Johnson identifies three bodies of ancient literature that are concerned with great suffering before the end of the world—Jewish, Christian and the book of Revelation—and compares how they treat who may expect to endure the tribulation, what form the tribulation will take, the reason for the tribulation, how one endures the tribulation, and, finally, the meaning of the millennium.

Mohrmann offers a new reading of the use of Deuteronomy 30 in Rom. 10.6-8. He contends that Paul creates ‘the-righteousness-from-faith’ as a substitute character, attempting to win over the Jews to his gospel. The choice that is offered is between a life guided by the law and faith in Christ.

Kim surveys the use of ἱλασμός in Plutarch and 1 John in order to determine whether the background for the concept of atonement is found in non-Christian Greek sources. He concludes on the basis of the comparisons that the background is instead to be found in Jewish sources of the time.

Kim surveys five different traditions in early rabbinic literature—the martyr tradition, an atonement tradition, the death of exemplary figures, God’s chastising the great, and some traditional sayings—and concludes that the there is continuity between the Old Testament, Second Temple period and rabbinic writings regarding atonement. He further notes that these traditions are in agreement with 1 John, even though some distinctives remain.

Keener understands the Greek term κεφαλή in 1 Cor. 11.3-7 to be used to mean the wife’s husband and her own literal head. He then goes further and suggests the possibility that Paul’s play on words continues in 1 Cor. 11.10, and that he is saying that ‘the wife ought to have authority over her head [i.e. her husband]’.

James examines participial complementation in Roman and Byzantine Greek documentary papyri, and concludes that the participial construction persisted because it was seen as an adjective. The accusative and infinitive construction was marginalized by the emergence of the direct object.

Svartvik examines the Old Testament and New Testament passages on slavery. As a result, he notes that although Genesis 9 played an important role in pro-slavery discourse, the rights granted slaves in the Hebrew Bible meant that the Hebrew Bible was not used by the slavery movement. Similarly, the letters of Paul are seen by Svartvik to be less clear on the issue of slavery than is the synoptic portrait of Jesus. The parables, and especially Matthew’s teaching on eschatology, provided support for the pro-slavery movement.