This essay seeks to understand the use of the title ‘Son of God’ in relation to Jesus of Nazareth, as described in St Mark’s gospel. The essay therefore naturally consists of three major parts: after considering some preliminary questions I shall firstly investigate what the author of Mark meant by the use of such a title; secondly, what Jesus understood by that title; and thirdly, what the readers of the Marcan tradition understood by it. In considering the first part, we shall examine the instances of where the Evangelist uses ‘Son of God’ to describe Jesus, as well as those passages in where this is inferred, and assess what author is trying to mean. The second part shall examine Jesus’ use and understanding of titles generally, and this one in particular. Finally we shall consider how such a term would be understood by those to whom it was first addressed. This follows a classic hermeneutical pattern where the author, the reader and the text is analysed. The essay shall conclude with a brief summary and after all the foregoing analysis, attempt to answer the question ‘what does the title Son of God mean? And how was it understood?’

This article examines the reception-history of Mark 15,39 to shed new light on this pivotal and disputed verse. Mark’s earliest known readers emended the text to clarify the centurion’s feelings about Jesus and to explain how the centurion came to faith. Copyists inserted references to Jesus’ final yell around the same time that patristic commentators were claiming that this yell was a miracle that proved Jesus’ divinity, an interpretation which was enshrined in the Byzantine text and the Vulgate. The article concludes that a “sarcastic” reading is a more adequate description of 15,39 as found in B NA28 etc.

This article is a response to the recent work of Michael F. Bird and Michael R. Whitenton, in which they argue that Hippolytus's De Christo et Antichristo provides a clear instance of a subjective genitive πίστις Χριστοῦ construction and unambiguously identifies πίστις as Jesus' death on the cross. However, in light of (1) a significant textual variant, and (2) the role that πίστις plays in Hippolytus's theology of martyrdom, the construction in fact supports the reading of an objective genitive.

The debate over the meaning of πίστις Χριστοῦ␣ has been continuing for some time and shows no signs of abating, yet one conclusion has remained constant: the Church Fathers, generally, did not understand πίστις Χριστοῦ in the Pauline materials in the subjective sense as the ‘faithfulness of Christ’. Furthermore, there has heretofore been no text that correlates Jesus’ faithfulness with his death on the cross in patristic writings. In light of that, the aim of this study is (1) to offer a critique of recent work on πίστις Χριστοῦ in the Church Fathers, and (2) to break the longstanding silence by presenting over- looked evidence from Hippolytus’s De Christo et Antichristo that unambiguously relates Jesus’ faithfulness to his death on the cross.

This article is a response to the recent work of Michael F. Bird and Michael R. Whitenton, in which they argue that Hippolytus's De Christo et Antichristo provides a clear instance of a subjective genitive πίστις Χριστοῦ construction and unambiguously identifies πίστις as Jesus' death on the cross. However, in light of (1) a significant textual variant, and (2) the role that πίστις plays in Hippolytus's theology of martyrdom, the construction in fact supports the reading of an objective genitive.(Online publication September 05 2011)

This thesis proposes that Mark had in mind a motif of the relationship between - and the interchange and development of - Jesus' identity and authority as His identity was increasingly revealed to the disciples. This study takes into account Christology (particularly Markan) and its development in scholarship, the concept of the Messianic Secret, Markan literary structure, and the history of and varying views regarding the passage that might be considered 'turning point' in Mark's narrative. This latter is explored because I propose here that when viewed through the lens of Christ's Identity and Authority, the turning point of Mark should be placed at the Mount of Transfiguration rather than the preceding (and most commonly held) pericope of Peter's confession of faith.

The objective of the book is to reconstruct the new social identity implied in the Markan story about Jesus. The Markan proposal of a new way of being, thinking and feeling within the purview of a community is not merely a matter of understanding the material facts of a group, or the history and origin of a group, or the organization of a group, but rather deciphering the social meaning and cognitive significance of ones belonging to the Jesus-group. To achieve this purpose, this investigation has given equal importance to both the content and form of the text. It takes into account not only the textual data but also the rhetorical force behind the Markan composition by which the text message is communicated by the author to the reader. This book considers the scholarship of the Markan community to which the gospel was addressed as its point of departure. The vast and diverse studies on the Markan community have not yet reached a consensus on the location and vital context, situation of the real audience, authorship or date of composition of the text. The diverse hypotheses and subsequent uncertainty on the definition of the Markan community in the context of the studies of primitive Christianity serve this thesis as a stepping stone to deviate from the past route of investigation into the historical community of Mark to the audience within the Markan story. This route of investigation marks mainly three differences from those of the current studies on the historical Markan community: first, a shift of interest from searching and enumerating mere sociological factors of the real community to the searching for a socio-cognitive description of the Jesus–group in the literary world of Mark; second, an exegetical shift from the rigid use of method to an integral use of interpretive analytical strategies with the support of social scientific models; third, in spite of the entire Markan story with its literary coherence, a special interest in the theme of discipleship and disciples as 'a social form', identifies the focal area of this investigation as textual data. In the task of reconstructing the Markan proposal of the new social identity of the Jesus-group, this thesis explores two basic kinds of data: Emic and Etic. The exegetical method used in this investigation, namely socio-rhetorical analysis, provides perceptions and understanding from the Emic