This volume, which appears on the occasion of Marinus de Jonge's retirement as Professor of New Testament at Leiden University, brings together twenty essays which he wrote recently for various periodicals and collective works. A number of articles deal with the expectation of the future in Jewish sources, like Ps. Sol., the Qumran Scrolls and Josephus. Closely connected with these are some essays on the question of how such titles as 'Christ', and 'Son of David' came to be applied to Jesus. Eleven essays delve into various important aspects of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: eschatology, ethics, paraenesis, but also their use of Jewish source material and their view of the history of God's dealing with man, a view related to that held by Justin and Hippolytus. This book throws light on the Jewish origins of early Christian theology and on its relationship with the Hellenistic culture in which it developed. The book also includes Marinus de Jonge's bibliography.

R. H. Charles (1855-1931) was Professor of Biblical Greek at Trinity College Dublin (1898-1906), He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1906, and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford in 1910. In 1925 he was the first recipient of the British Academy Medal for Biblical Studies. Charles also received honorary degrees from the Universities of Belfast in 1923 and Oxford in 1928. His publications include: 'The Apocalypse of Baruch, ' 'The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, ' and 'The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English' (2 vols.)