A. H. B. Logan

THE NEW TESTAMENT AND GNOSIS

FOREWORD
It was indioative of Robert McLachlan Wilson's breadth of interest that
when in October 1978 he succeeded Principal Matthew Black to the Chair
of Biblical Criticism at St Mary's College in the University of St Andrews
he chose as the title for his inaugural lecture The Study, the Pulpit and the
Pew', The title roflected his concern to set his scholarship at the service of
the Church of Scotland which he had served both as a parish minisier and
as a teacher at the oldest of her Divinily Faculties, For, alter finishing his
doctoral research at Cambridge, he served from 1946to 1954 asminister ol
Rankin Church, Surathaven, in Lanarkshire, When ho was appointed to a
lectureship in St Mary's College he was still persistent in his desire to herve
the Church of Scotland, as well as latterly the many other denominations
whose students werc admitted to St Mary's for the study of theology
Constantly he kept the demands of the purish ministry in mind and sought
to combine those demands with those of the most cxacting scholarship, a
well as continuing to serve the Church of Scotland in such demanding
work as convening onc of its committecs.

Buit is with Professor Wilson s the scholar that his volume is
primarily concerned, a scholar who has reccived, deservedly, some of the
ighest honours which can come the way of those engaged in this ficld: he
Is, for instance, both a Fellow of the British Academy and was elected
President of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas for 1981-2. This
volume appears at the time of his arrival at two landmarks in his
distinguished career; in the autumn of 1983 he steps down from the
editorship of New Testament Studies and from the Chair of Biblical
Criticism in St Mary's College, both of which he inherited from Prineipal
Matthew Black.

It is with some trepidation that the editors of the present volume submit
such a collection of articles to this scholar who has himself edited and
translated so many volumes in the course of his long carcer: the English
ions of Henurcks and Schneemelcher's New Testameni Apocrypla,...… (mais)