This book was written in 1994–99. In 1994–96, I held a British Academy Research Readership awarded for me to write Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel (SNTS.MS 102. Cambridge, 1998), as well as this book. The publication of the rest of the Aramaic Dead Sea scrolls in 1994 enabled more fruitful work to be done than I had planned, but at the same time it ruined the proposed timetable for completing the two books. I am extremely grateful to the Academy for this award, which enabled me to complete a major piece of research, including all the Aramaic for this book as well as the previous one. Other duties and engagements have contributed to the subsequent delay.

I am also grateful to all those who have discussed with me the problems of method and of detail which this work has entailed. I effectively began this research while reading for a doctorate at Durham University under Professor C. K. Barrett, whose extraordinary combination of learning and helpfulness with lack of bureaucracy or interference remains a model to which one can only aspire. I would particularly like to thank also the late Professor M. Black, Professor G. J. Brooke, Professor B. D. Chilton, Professor J. A. Fitzmyer, Professor M. D. Goulder, Professor R. Kearns, the late Professor B. Lindars, Professor M. Müller, Professor C. M. Tuckett and Professor M. Wilcox.