This article argues that the expression ‘to the end of the earth’ in Acts 1.8, while not referring to one specific geographical location, as has often been argued in contemporary scholarship on Acts, is best understood as a way of (re)ordering the world geographically and, therefore, ideologically. Drawing on Greco-Roman geographical and literary conventions, the article suggests that the author of Acts invites the work's readers to look at the world in a new way, with Jerusalem and the gospel emanating from it as its centre – and the rest, including Rome, as its ideological (and therefore geographical) periphery. In this way, Acts proceeds to renegotiate the ‘world-view’ of its readers in an intercultural and subversive way.

"Parrhesia" published on 06 Dec 2018 by Brill.

Paul's boasting is often considered to be problematic. This paper explores Pauline boasting from the perspective of Plutarch's views on self-praise. Outlining what kinds of self-praise were and were not acceptable to someone like Plutarch, the paper analyses and positions Paul's boasting in Phil 3 in this context, concluding that, however offensive it may be to modern ears, this boasting was probably less so to the ears of his contemporaries.

‘Adoptionism’ is an early Christian ‘heresy’ often associated with early strands of Jewish Christian tradition. It figures as such in handbooks of church history and New Testament studies alike. This essay investigates the origins of the concept of ‘adoptionism’ in the historiography of early Christianity, offers a fresh analysis of the relevant ‘adoptionist’ sources, and concludes that the concept is a misleading one. Therefore, the proposal is made to abandon the notion of ‘adoptionism’ as a category and to focus on the authors involved as such and to investigate what their soteriological and christological concerns were, rather than to identify them as ‘adoptionists’ and to study them with that identification as a starting point.

Mahl und Nachfolge im Königreich. Untersuchungen zum eschatologischen Mahl und zu neutestamentlichen Utopien von Nahrung im Überfluß.

: This opening article offers an introduction to the theme of this special issue of Exchange: Jesus traditions and masculinities in world Christianity. Highlighting the historical trajectory of feminist theological debates on the maleness of Jesus Christ and its implications for configurations of gender (read: the position of women) in Christian traditions, the article particularly explores two recent developments: first, the critical discussion in academic, theological and ecumenical circles of men and masculinities in contemporary Christian contexts, and second, the growing body of scholarship on the masculinity (or better, masculinities) of Jesus Christ in the New Testament in relation to masculinities in the early Christian era. Building on these debates and this scholarship, the article identifies a new and critical field of inquiry that explores the complex and productive relationships between the ambiguous and unstable masculinity/ies of Jesus Christ and the multiple and changing masculinities that are found today in the local contexts of an increasingly diverse global Christianity.