Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

Why does the church have four different written Gospels, although according to Paul there was only one orally proclaimed Gospel from the very beginning? Martin Hengel attempts to answer this question by showing how the collection of the four Gospels developed in the 2nd century and by tracing their origins. The reading of these four Gospels, in addition to the texts of the Old Testament, during the church service played a decisive role in the collection and the affirmation of these Gospels as part of the church canon. The author also deals with the authors of the Gospels and the time in which they were written. He bases his study on the fact that Mark was the first to write a Gospel. It is very probable that Matthew, who wrote the later Gospel, was familiar with the earlier Gospel according to Luke and that he used this. The numerous minor agreements between Luke and Matthew against Mark make it reasonable to suppose this hypothesis to be correct.
This is the substantially enlarged German version of the English book The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, translated by John Bowden, published by SCM Press in the year 2000.

Regard for the self has recently been rediscovered as one of the central themes of Hellenistic philosophy. Taking the Jewish theologian Philo of Alexandria and the Apostle Paul as her main examples, Gudrun Holtz shows how theological anthropology was developed in contrast to contemporary philosophical conceptions of the self, particularly to the Stoa. The common core of the theological-anthropological conception of both authors can be captured in the phrase "not of people, but of God". The Pauline doctrine of justification proves itself to be a reification of this shared essence. Other than has been repeatedly assumed lately, the stoical perception of God can not be understood to restrict the philosophical demands of the self.