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This article explores ancient and modern reflection on inference generation and its implications for potential audience inferences concerning the Markan Jesus and whether he drinks the wine the bystander offers him while crucified (15.36). By examining this logical possibility from the perspective of hearing, rather than silent reading, this article sets forth previously underappreciated evidence that Mark’s narrative is intentionally vague at this point, prompting listeners to decide the matter for themselves. Moreover, I argue that the flow and rhetoric of the narrative both suggest that hearers were meant to infer that Jesus does indeed drink – and in so doing enjoy an ironic foretaste of Mark’s vision for the kingdom of God.

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Whether or not the boy Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT) is portrayed as an ‘idealized child’ or a true-to-life child is a question that, whether implicitly or explicitly, lies at the heart of some of the most recent contributions to this second-century supplement to the Gospel of Luke. However, the potential contribution of ancient conceptions of child development to this conundrum has remained thus far overlooked. This article addresses this lacuna by approaching the characterization of the boy Jesus in IGT from the perspective on ancient views of childhood development, tracing his age-specific acquisition of self-control and benevolence for others across the narrative. Cast in this light, IGT imagines what sort of child would develop into Luke’s Jesus and, in so doing, supplements what may have been perceived to be lacking in the third gospel.

The debate over the meaning of πίστις Χριστοῦ has been continuing for some time and shows no signs of abating, yet one conclusion has remained constant: the Church Fathers, generally, did not understand πίστις Χριστοῦ in the Pauline materials in the subjective sense as the ‘faithfulness of Christ’. Furthermore, there has heretofore been no text that correlates Jesus' faithfulness with his death on the cross in patristic writings. In light of that, the aim of this study is (1) to offer a critique of recent work on πίστις Χριστοῦ in the Church Fathers, and (2) to break the longstanding silence by presenting overlooked evidence from Hippolytus's De Christo et Antichristo that unambiguously relates Jesus' faithfulness to his death on the cross.