This signalled the great emphasis O'Neill placed on the whole theme of Messiahship in earliest Christianity.In 1986 O'Neill moved to the New Testament chair at the then Faculty of Divinity in New College at Edinburgh University During his tenure of the chair O'Neill would lecture at 9am. Students would often still be debating his teaching two hours later The lectures were always special occasions All students from first to final year would attend together. The set lectures were supplemented with "colloquies", a kind of seminar in which students were vigorously encouraged to think and express views of an independent character.A steady stream of students also called in for individual advice. On Mondays at 11 there was an Honours and Postgraduate New Testament Seminar, which also attracted a wide range of ministers and other visitors. There were also special events such as the "dissertation day" when honours students would be taken off to a conference centre in the Lothian countryside.The lectures and the presentations to the seminar were lively events. An arresting opening claim or assertion would present a problem and offer a new perspective on it and an original solution. The well-worn paths of moderate critical consensus were avoided.

With humour and with paradox a new source analysis would be offered, or some hitherto unnoticed textual variant become the key to fresh insight elegantly presented and defended with aphorisms.Further books included The Bible's Authority (1991); Who Did Jesus Think He Was? (1995); and The Point of It All (2000) He also contributed a host of articles to journals. O'Neill was a critic of much critical New Testament scholarship. He might give the gospels a remarkably late dating, but the tradition within them was assigned to the earliest stratum, even seen to include anticipations of key theological motifs from Jewish texts.His New Testament scholarship went hand in hand with a passionate and deep, but never conventionally predictable commitment to traditional Presbyterian views on Christology and Atonement. Against developmental views he argued that these doctrines could be traced not only to the earliest of Christian origins, but even earlier to Jewish sources and especially the Qumran scrolls. O'Neill engaged in debate with a wide range of New Testament scholars.A highlight of his time in Edinburgh was his hosting in 1994 of the large international annual meeting of the Society for New Testament Studies. He also contributed vigorously to the wider university community, where his advice on teaching methods, his passion for books, and his time as Curator of New College Library were especially appreciated.David Mealand. Remember the wrong kind of leaves? And after that the wrong kind of snow? You might have thought that we had already reached the reductio ad absurdam when it comes to unbelievable excuses for delays on the railways But no.

Yesterday London Transport announced that the Central Line was to reopen after being out of service for nearly 10 weeks. (Residents of the metropolis prepare yourselves to weep, and the rest of you wipe that smug grin off your faces: this line every week carries more passengers that all the national rail network put together. Or it is supposed to.) Remember the wrong kind of leaves? And after that the wrong kind of snow? You might have thought that we had already reached the reductio ad absurdam when it comes to unbelievable excuses for delays on the railways But no. For just 41 minutes, before being closed again because of a fire alert, a defective train and .. wait for it .. the wrong kind of dust on the platforms You couldn't make it up.. Tony Blair's authoritarian attack dog has let himself down again. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has criticised "those who are of a progressive and liberal bent" for treating Allied and Iraqi propaganda as if they were "moral equivalents". He singled out the Arab television channel al-Jazeera as being "linked" to Saddam Hussein's regime.Never mind that the people he in effect labels as Saddam's credulous patsies include the large minority in this country who oppose the war and an overwhelming majority of his own party; but he was made to look ridiculous when, a few hours after his tirade, the Iraqi Information Ministry banned two al-Jazeera journalists from Baghdad, and the station announced that it was suspending operations in the city.Mr Blunkett seems not to have noticed that al-Jazeera last week won an Index of Censorship award for its refusal to follow the line set by any of the autocratic Arab regimes in the region.

Or perhaps he did, and assumed that the honour was conferred by quisling Westerners of a progressive and liberal bent.Al-Jazeera may have made an error of judgement when it screened footage of dead British servicemen, but it is a valuable window on to an Arab view of this conflict.If the Home Secretary was again trying to ingratiate himself with the Daily Mail, that newspaper's man in Baghdad was not impressed. "I find it rather offensive," Ross Benson said yesterday.He is not the only one. Most British people are media-literate enough to understand the biases on information coming from this war zone and to make their own judgements.And if an enterprising small business started to produce badges saying "Progressive and liberal", we suspect many Independent readers would wear them with pride.. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, is a smooth politician who relies on nuance to do his dirty work: he did not say, in plain terms, that he disbelieves The Independent's accounts of civilian casualties sustained in Iraq.