A widespread early Christian tradition regarded Solomon as the great exorcist and magician of antiquity, the forerunner of the exorcistic activity of Jesus, and the genius of later Christian magic and divination. In time, this tradition (henceforth the “Solomon magus” tradition) would become increasingly syncretistic and would yield the numerous grimoires and claviculae of the Middle Ages, but in the early centuries of Christianity, the tradition produced texts which were more or less haggadic, that is, engaged in the exegesis of canonical materials and rooted in earlier Jewish interpretive traditions. Modern students of the documents of this tradition have long perceived its debt to the Old Testament, particularly to the portrait of Solomon in 1 Kgs 5:9–14 (4:29–34), a text which both traditional Christian and modern critical interpreters have subsequently explained in nonmagical terms. While Solomon's magical identity is widely recognized to be inspired by the biblical description of his greatness, little is known about how readers in the Solomon magus tradition interpreted the canonical books of traditional Solomonic authorship—the Song of Songs, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of Solomon.

The goal of New Testament textual criticism would appear to be simple enough: to restore the original text written by each author of the New Testament books. Upon examination, however, the notion of simplicity vanishes immediately and each of the key terms here—“restore,” “original,” “text,” and “author”—has its problematic aspects, but more importantly the simply stated goal itself turns out to be inadequate. Grist for the text-critical mill consists of textual readings or variants, which for the relatively small collection of writings called the New Testament are not merely in the hundreds or thousands, or even the tens of thousands, but run to perhaps a third of a million. They stem from the nearly 5,500 Greek manuscripts, some 10,000 versional manuscripts, and innumerable patristic citations of New Testament passages.

The story of Barabbas's release by Pilate appears in all four canonical gospels (Mark 15:6–15; Matt 27:15–26; Luke 23:18–25; John 18:39–40). Although the accounts differ in some details, a fairly consistent plot line emerges: The crowd before Pilate, allowed to choose one prisoner for release, demands the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus. There are, however, a number of puzzling aspects to this deceptively simple story, the most significant of which is the contention of the authors that there existed a custom of the governor releasing a prisoner at the Passover festival. According to Mark and Matthew, this was a Roman custom (Mark 15:6; Matt 27:15); according to John, a Jewish custom (John 18:39). Yet, no evidence for such a custom in Judea has been found. Even more tellingly, Luke's omission of such a custom, as well as his statement in Acts 25:16, shows that he thought such a custom unbelievable. This custom is also considered by some to be at odds with the portrait of Pilate gathered from Jewish literature. Roger Aus states the case most strongly: “[Pilate] never would have allowed himself to be subject to the whims of a crowd, especially an uncontrollable one which bordered on a riot.” For these reasons many scholars have concluded that while a Barabbas may have been released by Pilate, the story as we have it in the gospels is a literary creation.

Justin's social context in the city of Rome may seem to have only a tenuous connection with his beliefs about God, his doctrine of the Logos and the other religious commitments for which he ultimately laid down his life. Perhaps, had Justin lived in Athens or Ephesus, he would have written much the same thing. This, after all, is a man deeply moved by Platonist philosophy and the “perception of immaterial things.” Furnished with such Platonist wings, Justin himself would surely claim to soar high over all such mundane realities as the streets, bridges, and buildings of ancient Rome. It is not surprising that the vast majority of scholarship on Justin and other early Christian intellectuals follows him on a similar trajectory.

In the wake of the investiture struggle and against the background of burgeoning humanist thought, Martin Luther's affirmation of the secular realm as a discrete area of divine activity may be lauded as a judicious recovery of the thought of Augustine and perhaps of Gelasius I. In light of subsequent developments in sociopolitical theory, however, this progressive aspect of the reformer's thought appears to be immediately undercut by its seemingly unbending social conservatism. Instituted by God (Rom 13; 1 Pet 2:13–14), the “law of [the] temporal sword has existed from the beginning of the world,” Luther writes. And while he asserts that “God cannot and will not permit anyone but himself to rule over the soul,” he does, nevertheless, forbid Christians to resort to violence to defend their cause: “For the governing authority must not be resisted by force, but only by confession of the truth. If it is influenced by this, well and good; if not, you are excused, you suffer wrong for God's sake.”